Butterfield 8

The sexual frankness of Butterfield 8 must account for a large measure of its success on publication. Even today its treatment of the main female character has the power to shock. As a document of "the way we live now" and thwarted dreams, it takes its place with classics of the period like Manhattan Transfer and The Beautiful and the Damned.

Van Morrison - On Hyndford Street (Live from Cyprus Avenue, Belfast)

Appointment in Samarra

A Greek tragedy, projected onto a snowdrift in anthracite coal country, fueled by booze.

Hope of Heaven

This short John O'Hara novel highlights, along with his skill at dialogue and characterization, the impossibility of his writing a bad sentence. The story, set in Hollywood of the 1930s, is a modest thing, but O'Hara makes it seem bigger.

Brandenburg

This spy thriller by Henry Porter only truly becomes the "gripping page-turner" advertised on the cover blurb around page 300 (of 550). Before then, and in parts afterward, it is mainly an account of people moving from here to there, getting in and out of cars, and entering and leaving hotels. Things happen, but where characterizations and political and philosophical digressions would be most welcome, they are mostly absent.