I’m still picking up my paperback of Archy & Mehitabel and reading an entry or two on occasion. I really like the short episodic format, which comes from it having been a newspaper column, I would reckon.
I just finished Ubik, by Philip K. Dick. About 8 months ago, I bought 4 Dick novels online from a DAW series published in 1983, because I wanted to read some and really like the cover art by Bob Pepper. This is one of those. To see four of the Pepper covers, click the link of his name above and scroll down. I’m missing the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and hope to track it down when I can afford to. Here’s a short essay on Pepper’s cover for A Scanner Darkly which talks about Dick and Pepper in general as well, and has a link at the end to the other Pepper cover I’m missing, We Can Build You (I definitely have to track that one down.)
Ubik strengthened my appreciation of PKD, but it’s too fresh for me to analyze it. I may read it again in a month or so. I definitely like Dick’s working class protagonists, uncertain reality, and his examination of what it means to work for a corporation and, simply, to try and exist in a world with them.
I’ve just started Jurgen, by James Branch Cabell (wiki entry here), with a sweet early Penguin cover (bad photos here and here, apparently it doesn’t photo well). Neil Gaiman recommends Cabell in a recent journal entry, and goes into more detail in an entry from 2004 or so you’ll have to search for.
All during Ubik and still, I’m slowly making my way through a collection of Leonard Cohen’s Poems 1956 – 1968.
