Book Bought, Books Read: April 2021

Books Purchased April 2021

• Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster. (audible audiobook). 1 April.
• Fifty-nine in '84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had by Edward Achorn. (kindle and audible audiobook). 3 April.
• The Big Green Tent: A Novel by Ludmila Ulitskaya. (audible audiobook). 3 April.
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. (audible audiobook). 7 April.
• The Town by William Faulkner. (kindle). 8 April.
• Money: A suicide note by Martin Amis. (audible audiobook). 10 April.
• The Darkness Around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford. (paper). From amazon. 13 April.
• London Fields by Martin Amis. (kindle and audible audiobook). 15 April.
• Temporary by Hilary Leichter. (kindle). 19 April.
• Philip Roth: The biography by Blake Bailey. (audible audiobook). 22 April.
• Empire of Pain: The secret history of the Sackler dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe. (audible audiobook). 22 April.
• The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth. (aduible audiobook). 24 April.
• Zuckerman Unbound by Philip Roth. (audible audiobook). 24 April.
• The Anatomy Lesson by Philip Roth. (audible audiobook). 24 April.

Books Read:

• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.
• Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster.
• Fifty-Nine in ‘84: Old Hoss Radbourn, barehanded baseball, and the greatest season a pitcher ever had by Edward Achorn.
• The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway.
• When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz.
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.
• Money: A suicide note by Martin Amis.
• Monument: Poems, new and selected by Natasha Trethewey.
• London Fields by Martin Amis.
• The Darkness Around Us is Deep: Selected poems of William Stafford. Edited with an introduction by Robert Bly.
• Zorgamazoo by Robert Paul Weston.Inside Story by Martin Amis.
• Empire of Pain: The secret history of the Sackler Dynasty by Patricke Radden Keefe.
• Philip Roth: The biography by Blake Bailey.*
• Goodbye Columbus and Five Short Stories by Philip Roth.

*A major scandal emerged shortly after Bailey's book was published. As Alexandra Alter and Rachel Abrams reported in the Times:

Earlier this month, the biographer Blake Bailey was approaching what seemed like the apex of his literary career. Reviews of his highly anticipated Philip Roth biography appeared before the book came out, with major stories in magazines and literary publications. It landed on the New York Times best-seller list this week.

Now, allegations against Mr. Bailey, 57, have emerged, including claims that he sexually assaulted two women, one as recently as 2015, and that he behaved inappropriately toward middle school students when he was a teacher in the 1990s.

His publisher, W.W. Norton, took swift and unusual action: It said on Wednesday that it had stopped shipments and promotion of his book. “These allegations are serious,” it said in a statement. “In light of them, we have decided to pause the shipping and promotion of ‘Philip Roth: The Biography’ pending any further information that may emerge.”

Alexandra Alter and Jennifer Schuessler followed up with further information about the book:

W.W. Norton said in a memo to its staff on Tuesday that it will permanently take Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip Roth out of print, following allegations that Mr. Bailey sexually assaulted multiple women and behaved inappropriately toward his students when he was an eighth grade English teacher.

The announcement came after the publisher decided last week that it would stop shipping and promoting the title, which it released earlier in April. On Wednesday, the digital versions of the book were no longer available on Amazon or Barnes & Noble’s sites, and Recorded Books, which published the audio version, said it was removing it from sale. It wasn’t immediately clear what would happen with existing printed copies of the book.

Personally, I liked the book, but I do agree with Parul Seghal at the Times who said that the book goes into a lot of detail about Roth's life and his many relationships with women, but it does not dive deep enough into the books he wrote.