Brian's comments (member since Mar 10, 2009)

Brian's comments from the 50 Books A Year group.

86. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

I read this book and fell in love with a woman named Janie. And I think given the chance she would have loved me back for I would never have wanted to change her. Zora Neale Hurston created this woman and for that I feel much obliged. I imagine Janie is back in Florida, sitting on her porch and telling jokes and laughing and playing games. And I would love to stumble on to her porch, grab a chair and play a game of checkers with her. Later we could go fishing.

She knew things that nobody had ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. She often spoke to falling seeds and said, 'Ah hope you fall on soft ground,' because she had heard seeds saying that to each other as they passed.

This is a story of real people, people that just jump off the page (or porch) and into your heart. Though the characters were African Americans in the early 20th century, I felt that they could have been any flavor of the human race in practically any century and in any place. Their zest for life was infectious. And their wisdom was overabundant. When told to keep a secret one woman simply says "Ah jus lak uh chicken. Chicken drink water, but he don't pee-pee".

One of the main characters of the story is the small town porch. Without the porch the story could not have been told. The porch was the heart of the community. It was a place to go to lift the spirits (and drink the spirits) and share the wonders of each day. Everyone should have a porch they can go to. I think the porch could be the answer to many of the world's problems (well, that, and bacon).

Zora Neale Hurston wrote this book in 7 weeks. She must of been a woman possessed because the tenor of the book is pitch-perfect.

Janie stood where he left her for unmeasured time and thought. She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered

That's just beautiful writing. And one of my favorite parts is when ZNH personifies the buzzards. I really did love Janie and I loved this book.

After reading Sutton E. Griggs and his "oh we are oppressed and must fight or die" and then Nella Larsen and her "woe is me for being neither black nor white", Zora Neale Hurston's joy of life in the face of adversity was a refreshing song.

85. Quicksand by Nella Larsen

The 2 page introduction written by T.N.R. Rogers nearly drove me to tears with the description of the life of Nella Larsen. And then I moved on to the book and got a little pissed-off with Helga Crane, the main protagonist and the alter-ego of Nella Larsen.

Helga was born to a Danish mother and West Indies father. The father split when Helga was just a young girl and the mother remarried to a white man. They had another daughter and the dark little Helga was basically abandoned. Now you have to admit that is a pretty sad affair.

Helga is educated. She teaches at a southern African-American school. She's got job security and people who love her. But she's restless. Not happy with the current state of affairs of the school. She must move on but needs to hurt the feelings of a couple of men first.

Chicago. Woe is her. No money, no job. But she networks, gets a job and moves to New York's Harlem district where she lives with the high society in a Harlem Mansion. But she's restless. Not happy with the current state of affairs. She must move on but needs to hurt the feelings of a few people first.

Denmark. Her Aunty and Uncle welcome her with open arms. She lives in luxury. Dresses to the nines. Goes to concerts and high society artsy parties. She's proposed to by a prominent artist. But she's restless. Not happy with the current state of affairs. She must move on but needs to hurt the feelings of a few people first.

New York City. Rich. Mingling with the best of Harlem. Lovers past and present. But she's restless. Not happy with the current state of affairs. She must move on but needs to hurt the feelings of a few people first.

Alabama. A preacher's wife. Poor. Birthing like a rabbit. Playing Martha Stewart to the local ladies. But she's restless...

Now I understand that not being fully African-American and not being fully Anglo Saxon at the turn of the century was a precarious position to be in. But it seems she was generally accepted into each place she ran off to. She was just never satisfied. Aside from being materialistic she was also an egoist. She scorned her African-American culture and disdained the Anglo Saxons. Her problem didn't seem to be a racial problem. It appeared to be a personal issue of not 'counting your blessings'.

In my life I've run away from places I didn't like and like Helga was happy for the first couple of years then grew dissatisfied with each locale. But I learned to appreciate the good things about each place I lived. Made new friends. Looked at the world in wide-eyed wonder. But damn Helga, you had friends, wealth, acceptance and still groaned about how hard your life was. You were blind to your blessings. Belittled the friends you had and ruined your life in the process. You have no one to blame but yourself...

Helga reminded me of Anna Karenina. I didn't like Ms Anna but in the end felt pity for her. In Quicksand, I didn't like Ms Helga and in the end still didn't like her. But I enjoyed the book.

84. Imperium in Imperio by Sutton Griggs

"The Bible which the white people gave us, teaches us that we are men. The Declaration of Independence, which we behold them wearing over their hearts, tells us that all men are created equal. If, as the Bible says, we are men; if, as Jefferson says, all men are equal..."

I don't even need to finish the above quote from Sutton Griggs' book Imperium in Imperio for one to see where that simple logic leads. It's clear, but all still so murky in practice.

This book was self-published in 1899 and sold door-to-door or revival tent-to-revival tent making it a best seller of its day. In this book Griggs, a Baptist minister and social activist, creates a scenario where African Americans start a government within a government complete with a mirror congress in Waco, Texas (Waco... so many strange things about that place).

He was a prolific writer, not a great writer... but greatness isn't necessary if the message is clearly conveyed. And it is... in this book.

Now considering the quote above I wonder what Griggs really thought of women, and whether their sex was included in Jefferson's famous quote...

Her pretty face bore the stamp of intellectuality, but the intellectuality of a beautiful woman, who was still every inch a women despite her intellectuality.

83. Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti

If you're one that has nightmares (or daymares) this book will seem familiar. If you're one that usually dreams of fluffy bunnies and flowers that may change if you read this book. What is a nightmare but a familiar place or action that is intensified, put under a magnifying glass until it's presence is overwhelming? I enjoy my nightmares when I can get them because there's always the surety of waking up even if that option isn't evident during the action. Reading Ligotti is like having a waking nightmare... you can always close the book, but would you?

Thomas Ligotti creates people and places that appear just off the edge of what we might consider reality. Pegged as a horror writer, he doesn't build suspense and surprise you with sudden attacks from hideous beasts. He doesn't charge at you with ax brandishing crazy people. Forget the ghosts, spirits and vampires that lurk in other horror tomes. Ligotti's prose slowly wraps around you and pulls you down into places that appear believable, places that seem familiar, and peopled by characters that you may have met (most are of the artistic character). Before you know it, he has brought you into a town you'd rather not visit and introduced you to people you'd rather not know. The horror of Ligotti lies in the familiar that is just slightly skewed.

Outside the walls of the Crimson Cabaret was a world of rain and darkness. At intervals, whenever someone entered or exited through the front door of the club, one could actually see the steady rain and was allowed a brief glimpse of the darkness. Inside it was all amber light, tobacco smoke, and the sound of the raindrops hitting the windows, which were all painted black. On such nights, as I sat at one of the tables in that drab little place, I was always filled with an infernal merriment, as if I were waiting out the apocalypse and could not care less about it. I also like to imagine that I was in the cabin of an old ship during a really vicious storm at sea or in the club car of a luxury passenger train that was being rocked on its rails by ferocious winds and hammered by a demonic rain. Sometimes, I thought of myself as occupying a waiting room for the abyss (which of course was exactly what I was doing) and between sips from my glass of wine or cup of coffee I smiled sadly and touched the front pocket of my coat where I kept my imaginary ticket to oblivion.

82. Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

... the failure to relax a particular tension can lead to madness.

That's probably my favorite line in this short little book about writing. Ray Bradbury put together a few essays about how he writes. He came across kind of nerdy, but hey, he did write The Illustrative Man, one of my favorite science fiction books. I could have done without the poems that ended the book but I read them too. This was my second reading and he said the same thing the second time around... word for word. Funny that.

81. VALIS by Philip K. Dick

I'm not sure how to rate this book. It was good, at times tedious (I'm really not into theological debates or philosophical musings)... but, I liked Horselover Fat aka Philip Dick aka the insane guy.

So take one crazy guy slightly twisted in the head due to taking too many 'uppers', let one of his girl friends jump out of a window, let his wife leave with the kid, kill off another one of his girl friends and then set the poor guy on a course trying to figure out just what we humans are and where are we going. Oh, and be sure to throw in a pink laser beam containing mysterious information and aim it at his brain, and surround him with a handful of other wacky characters. Dip into Greek mythology, gnosticism, Christianity, and an unexplained dead cat... well, it's explained how it died but not the why it died, well, according to little Sophia, the new messaih, the why is because it was stupid. Put all of this together, bring a sane, stable mind to the table (yourself I'm assuming, but I may be wrong) and watch yourself unravel.

It's fiction. It's partly autobiographical. It's a crazy new religion, if I were to use religion in a general sense that's defined as why we're here and where we're going and what we should do to go where we're going.

It confused me until Eric Lampton (Eric Clapton/Peter Frampton combination, name-wise with the mind of Jim Morrison??) and Mini (Brian Eno??) came into the picture and confirmed that all of this was indeed crazy. But then, Horselover Fat came back and I was confused again.

I really don't know what I'm saying here. I really don't know how to discuss this book. I do want to read The Chronicles of Narnia. Funny thing that this book would lead me to that book. But then nothing is really funny... except for Kevin's dead cat.

And one more thing... my number 714 was mentioned in this book. That's cool. Maybe I'll go to India now. Something needs to be found.

80. Poachers Stories by Tom Franklin

Man but I loved this book of short stories! I never imagined southern Alabama could be so dark and deadly but there are many things I haven't imagined... yet. I might have to go back to Mobile and visit the place.

Like the blurbs spew out all over the cover of this book... Raymond Carver's in the south... a world created by Cormac McCarthy... imagination of Faulkner... yeah, I could see all of that. And I would add a bit of Stephen King's creepiness to the mix.

The book's namesake is the longest short story and probably one of my favorites. Reading it made me feel all humid and I think moss started growing on me. I know I had mud and muck stuck to my shoes. And getting bit in the neck by a water moccasin really does suck.

Interestingly I read a few reviews over at the Amazon site and the people who didn't like it didn't like it because of the cruelty portrayed to animals... um... what about the cruelty to the humans? What about the title 'Poachers'? Wasn't that sort of a clue as to what might be in the book?

One of the best southern pieces of literature I've read in a long time. It's not about mint juleps, and sisterly love, or making green fried tomatoes. It's about fighting to stay alive and staying alive to fight. It's the south I remember. It really is there.

79. The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil

Törless is confused. He goes to an all-boys school. He is confused. He thinks of women. He thinks of men. Things happen. One boy steals. Other boys find out about the theft. They take advantage of this knowledge. Törless is confused. He wants to see cruelty. He's indifferent. He cares. He doesn't care. Visits to the attic and sermons, sermons flavored by Kant, sermons flavored by Indian traditions and myths, sermons served from a confused Törless. Törless is confused. Brian was confused. When Törless started to understand, Brian started to understand. Too much philosophical talk gives me headaches. Then we had WWI, and because we didn't know, we had WWII. Musil evidently knew, but Musil confused me. It was the confusions of an older Brian.

Dying is only a consequence of the way we live. We live from one thought to another, from one feeling to the next. Because our thoughts and feelings do not flow peacefully like a stream, they "occur to us", they drop into us like stones. If you observe yourself very carefully, you will feel that the soul is not something that changes its colours in gradual transitions, but rather that thoughts leap forth from it like numbers from a black hole. One moment you have a thought or a feeling, and all of a sudden there's another one there, as though it had sprung from nowhere. If you pay attention, you can even sense the moment between two thoughts when everything is black. That moment - once we have grasped it - is nothing short of death for us.

Well, dammit... I went and confused myself again...

78. Savage Night by Jim Thompson

It's like this... whenever I read one of these 'hard-boiled' crime type novels I can't help but read it in a James Cagney's voice... you see. This I believe was my first Jim Thompson novel and I really did enjoy it. Carl Bigelow aka Charlie 'Little' Bigger arrives in a small town to take care of business for 'The Man' and runs into a little problem with the dames. Having bad teeth, damaged eyes, wearing platform shoes and suffering from consumption doesn't seem to stop him from getting the dames either.

Strange characters (including a hot dame with a baby foot), thrilling plot complete with twists, and an ending to die for... what more could you ask for?

"Sure there's a hell..." I could hear him saying it now, now, as I lay here in bed with her breath in my face, and her body squashed against me... "It is the drab desert where the sun sheds neither warmth nor light and Habit force-feeds senile Desire. It is the place where mortal Want dwells with immortal Necessity, and the night becomes hideous with the groans of one and the ecstatic shrieks of the other. Yes, there is a hell, my boy, and you do not have to dig for it..."

some of these i've read and some i'm going to read. the miller book you gave me has to move up my list... soon. it's also time for me to read snow country. i've still got a few kawabata i haven't got to yet.

oh, and i just ordered A Burnt Child by Stig Dagerman. i had it sent to georgia. they wouldn't send outside of the u.s. strange when you consider most people don't give a shit about it. it's a christmas gift to myself. thanks for mentioning him earlier.

this list thing, though tedious, is good for remembering what you've read. i forgot some of the books i read last year. these lists jog my feeble memory.

looking forward to reading your next 20...

77. The Bells of Nagasaki by Takashi Nagai

"Go to the mountains and meditate! If you stay in the hurly-burly of this world, you'll run around in circles without ever finding your way. You'll become the kind of person who just stamps and screams. But the blue mountains are immovable and the white clouds come and go."

This was Takashi Nagai's advice a few weeks after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. This book was non-fiction... unfortunately.

Takashi Nagai was a doctor, a nuclear physicist, and dean of the radiology department in the medical school of the University of Nagasaki and a devout Christian. On Thursday, August 9, 1945 at two minutes past eleven in the morning he was in his office about 700 meters from the epicenter of the blast. From first hand accounts he tells the story of life immediately before the blast, during the blast, and after the blast. That he survived is nothing short of miraculous.

The description of seeing up-close the results of colliding atoms is nightmarish. It starts with the sound of a plane and then... the blinding white light, darkness blacker than night caused by a cloud of debris covering the sun, the coming of a red tinted light, a drop in temperature, the invisible wind, the instant disappearance of a world known... and ends with the appearance of hell on earth.

"No. The sun must have exploded," said Choro.
"Maybe so... the temperature has suddenly dropped." Shiro's voice was thoughtful.
"If the sun explodes, what happens to the earth?" Now it was the anxious voice of Nurse Tsubakiyama.
"It's the end of the world," said Choro with resignation.
They remained silent and waited. No light returned. A minute passed. Someone's watch kept ticking in the darkness. Tick, tick, tick...

Takahi was a scholarly writer before the dropping of the bomb. Afterward, before his death in 1951, he became a poet, artist, humanist, and mystic and wrote over 20 books.

76. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

This was a good old-fashioned ghost story, the kind of story that gets into your head, the kind that makes you lock the door... at least it was for me, especially that night, when reading about the noises coming from behind the locked door, and the dog was growling scared, and the noises didn't stop, and the lights went out...

Gothic, Victorian-like story of a woman in black in the northern coastal marshes of England. Trust me... you don't want to see her.

Yeah Dan... it's been a good year for reading a bad one for productivity.

75. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Marco Polo describes the many cities he's visited to Kublai Khan. Between the city descriptions Polo and Khan talk. This is Invisible Cities. If you're looking for story, if you're looking for character, if you're looking for lost symbols conjured up by a certain Brown... you won't find it here. You will find wonderful ideas and beautiful descriptions of cities and people. This was a little book that required a slow reading to enjoy the dense writing of Calvino.

One day I hope to look up at the city of Baucis and wave.


'After a seven days' march through woodland, the traveler directed toward Baucis cannot see the city and yet he has arrived. The slender stilts that rise from the ground at a a great distance from one another and are lost above the clouds support the city. You climb them with ladders. On the ground the inhabitants rarely show themselves: having already everything they need up there, they prefer not to come down. Nothing of the city touches the earth except those long flamingo legs on which it rests and, when the days are sunny, a pierced, angular shadow that falls on the foliage.

There are three hypotheses about the inhabitants of Baucis: that they hate the earth; that they respect it so much they avoid all contact; that they love it as it was before they existed and with spyglasses and telescopes aimed downward they never tire of examining it, leaf by leaf, stone by stone, ant by ant, contemplating with fascination their own absence.'

74. The Uncommon Reader A Novella by Alan Bennett

'Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato - one finishes what's on one's plate. That's always been my philosophy.'

... so says the queen... and I concur, for good or bad.

'At eighty things do not occur; they recur.'

... I'll have to wait a few years to validate that last quote...

One day (and I really think this book should start with 'Once upon a time...') the queen picked up a book from a mobile library... purely by chance, you see. It was not an exciting book... rather dry... a book by Ivy Compton-Burnett. But the act of reading proved interesting. So she got another and another and the queen became an avid reader and a less enthused queen. Such was the power of words.

The Uncommon Reader is a short novella... or witty fable. And although it is a light and fun read, it does offer interesting insights into what a reader is and how an involved prolific reader might just want to take that next step and pick up a pen and paper...

'Am I alone', she wrote, 'in wanting to give Henry James a good talking-to?'

It was Henry James she was reading one teatime when she said out loud, 'Oh, do get on.'

hehe... that was funny; so is the book.

73. The Wasp Factory A Novel by Iain Banks

Something howled. Some animal - my God, I hoped it wasn't a human making that noise - screamed in torment. It was a rising, anguished wail, the note produced only by an animal in extremis, the noise you hope no living thing ever has to make.

-----

What a delightful little book. It should have been a favorite pick in the 'beach reading' category since most of the story takes place on the dunes and shores of a small island in Scotland. Oh... but it is macabre and slightly offensive to animal lovers, what with burning dogs, catapulting hamsters wearing shuttlecock skirts, and homemade bombs and bunnies, it certainly is the SPCA's biggest nightmare. But there is a story here, an interesting story of growing up different. I guess you could call it one of those 'coming of age' books... with a twist.

Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim.

That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again.

It was just a stage I was going through.

This is a book you would either love or hate. 'The Times (London) called it "Rubbish". 'The Scotsman' says "There's nothing to force you, having been warned, to read it; nor do I recommend it."

'The Independent' calls it "One of the top 100 novels of the century" and 'The New York Times' says "Brilliant... irresistible... compelling."

Brian says "ask the Wasp Factory and pray before the alter of Old Saul for guidance on whether you should pick up this book. It is a delightful read if you find delight in dark, twisted minds".

72. The Following Story by Cees Nooteboom

An instant can last a long time. It can last as long as this short novel. If it were a long novel it could last that long. I don't think you can apply time to an instant.

Time is measured by our physical contact with the world... and with clocks. I think our soul measures time differently. Nooteboom is good with words. And he is great with ideas. When he puts the two together you get something like this book. It's short, in a physical sense, and long in a soulful way.

Herman Mussert goes to sleep in Amsterdam and wakes up in Lisbon and he talks about his life and then you realize what's going on.

I believe the mind could recall every detail of our life in a second but because we're still living in this shell of a body we wouldn't be able to understand it. Our mind is too smart for us.

Clocks served two purposes, in my opinion. The first was to tell people the time, and the second to impress upon me that time is an enigma, an intractable measureless phenomenon into which, out of sheer helplessness, we have introduced a semblance of order. "Time is the system that must prevent everything from happening at once."

-----

If one is immortal oneself, the stench emanating from mortals must be intolerable.

71. Magnetic Field by Ron Loewinsohn

This book starts off like a crime novel with a couple of brutal scenes and some really screwed up characters. Then it's not.

Being violated... being the violator...

If this book is like a house and you just walked through the front door you would expect to be in the foyer or living room. You know that the door to the right will be a kitchen but when you look inside it's a porch. What you thought would be the bathroom turns out to be the garage... this book kind of does that to you. Nothing is quite what you expect but it's exactly what you thought it would be. The story appears to shift directions but then you realize that it really didn't.

It's not a philosophical book but it does make you think about 'where' you are and 'who' you are (sorry for the apostrophes... and now the parenthesizes). Think a bit Calvino but not as meta. Loewinsohn uses repetition and coincidence beautifully. Walls and mirrors will never be the same... I think I might prefer a room in the deserts of the West where the horizon is out of reach and there are no surfaces to hang a Dick Tracy print. My house no longer feels right.

Kind of hard for me to articulate my feelings about this book. Just read it. It is good.



"Lots of beautiful things," he went on, "are filled with pain and darkness. This house, next door."

70. Nine by Andrzej Stasiuk

She wanted them to come back, to open the door and talk to her and touch her, because human pain is better than inhuman fear.

I've had this book for a while. Bought it because I liked the cover and the big red number '9' for a title was cool. I like the number '9'. But about the book...

I won't even attempt to pronounce this writer's name and compared to the street and neighborhood names in the book his name is as easy to say as 'Bob'. The book was originally written in Polish. The English translation was beautiful.

Stasiuk, or 'Bob' as I called him, writes like a poet. The prose is a bit stream-of-conscience like. Reading '9' is like being a wraith floating around the streets of Warsaw bumping into some of the seedy characters trying to get by in a new capitalistic society. It's a simple story. Pawel owes money to a loan shark. They are after him. He runs around the city and mixes with drug dealers and low lifers. But Stasiuk holds this simple tale together by introducing the main protagonist, the city of Warsaw in the 90's.

The book is dark. It is dismal. There are some light moments (the crippled cat not being one). I'm glad this book wasn't called '3'... because I might not have bought it.

"A book like this makes most British and American writing seem so asinine." - Tom Tomaszewski, Independent on Sunday

Read the entire review here: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entert...

And the NY Times review is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/books/...

Stasiuk on Beckett's face: "I would like to go to Ireland. I'm a great Van Morrison fan. And Samuel Beckett is a first-degree star. Of all writers in the world, his face is the most beautiful. I have written two essays about his face. His way of ageing was just so much in tune with the way minerals and trees age."

The complete Guardian article is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/feb...

69. The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Basho

Matsuo Basho was a poet. He traveled throughout Japan. He wrote poems about it... and short essays. Prose and poetry mix. It is a beautiful thing when the two meet seamlessly.


...it was a great pleasure to see the marvelous beauties of nature, rare scenes in the mountains or along the coast, or to visit the sites of temporary abodes of ancient sages where they had spent secluded lives, or better still, to meet people who had entirely devoted themselves to the search for artistic truth. Since I had nowhere permanent to stay, I had no interest whatever in keeping treasures, and since I was empty-handed, I had no fear of being robbed on the way. I walked at full ease, scorning the pleasure of riding in a palanquin, and filled my hungry stomach with coarse food, shunning the luxury of meat. I bent my steps in whatever direction I wished, having no itinerary to follow. My only mundane concerns were whether I would be able to find a suitable place to sleep at night and whether the straw sandals were the right size for my feet. Every turn of the road brought me new thoughts and every sunrise gave me fresh emotions. My joy was great when I encountered anyone with the slightest understanding of artistic elegance. Even those whom I had long hated for being antiquated and stubborn sometimes proved to be pleasant companions on my wandering journey. Indeed, one of the greatest pleasures of traveling was to find a genius hidden among weeds and bushes, a treasure lost in broken tiles, a mass of gold buried in clay, and when I did find such a person, I always kept a record with the hope that I might be able to show it to my friends.

To talk casually
About an iris flower
Is one of the pleasures
Of the wandering journey.

Regardless of weather,
The moon shines the same;
It is the drifting clouds
That make it seem different
On different nights. written by a priest

Autumn air whispers
A fallen leaf speaks gently
Basho is with us. Brian

68. The Izu Dancer & Other Stories by Yasumari Kawabata and Yasushi Inoue

A book of short stories that offers a sampling of two great writers, Yasunari Kawabata and Yasushi Inoue.

The title story, The Izu Dancer is by Kawabata and is about a small troupe of traveling performers and a student infatuated with their young drummer girl. A beautiful little piece.

Inoue's contributions include The Counterfeiter, Obasute, and The Full Moon. All three stories deal with separation, loneliness, and alienation. Inoue takes the isolation, the loneliness of the character... a minor chord... and strokes it into the beautiful riff of nature. If he were a musician, he'd be singing the blues... with a smile as he looked out in his mind's eye over the mountains in the early autumn.

Kawabata is no stranger to me and I love his work. Inoue is fast becoming my newest friend in reading.