Today I'm returning a bunch of library books that I don't see myself getting around to reading in the near future. Lest I forget to come back to them:

Another City, Not My Own, by Dominick Dunne. It's Dunne's O.J. book, and routinely ripped as a shallow exercise in name-dropping. I'll read it someday, but I've already got library copies of Paula Barbieri's book and the O.J. book that Toni Morrison edited (!) waiting at home.

Become What You Are, by Alan Watts. A collection of previously-published articles, split between essays from the mid-'50s and shorter pieces from the late '30s, from Mr. Eastern-thought-for-Westerners. From Shambhala, the Eastern-thought-for-Westerners publisher. Not to be confused with the Juliana Hatfield album of the same name.

Behind Bars: Surviving Prison, by Jeffrey Ian Ross and Stephen C. Richards. Ross is a professor of criminology who worked for several years in a correctional facility. Richards is a professor of sociology and criminology who spent eleven years in the federal system. It's intended as a how-to book.

The Getaway, by Jim Thompson. Like many of Thompson's books, this one was made into a movie. Two, actually, but one looks terrifyingly awful.

The Getaway Man, by Andrew Vachss. I'm not always a big fan of modern noir, but this one is self-consciously retro. And it's published by Black Lizard, who have put out some very good short-story anthologies.

Giants of Jazz, by Studs Terkel. Terkel's first book, from 1957. It's full of quotations from interviews, kind of a harbinger of things to come. I love Terkel nearly as much as I love jazz. Thirteen musicians: King Oliver, Bessie Smith, Bix Biederbecke, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Woody Herman, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. I'm surprised I haven't read this one already.

How Proust Can Change Your Life, by Alain de Botton. Proust reimagined as a self-help writer. Supposedly very funny. Chapter titles include 'How to Read for Yourself' and 'How to Suffer Successfully.'

Jazz Spoken Here, by Wayne Eustice and Paul Rubin. Interviews. I read the Charles Mingus and Henry Threadgill ones. Someday maybe I will read the others. Quote from Threadgill:

"We're not really radical at all. There's really no such thing as being radical, I don't think. You can't be that new. We're not doing anything new--it's just an extension. Your children are going to start using words differently; they're going to add more meaning to them. The jargon is going to change; the colloquialisms are going to be changed and added to. That's all we're doing. Nothing just jumps out of space. Things just don't appear. You don't even catch a cold that way. It's a continuum."

McLibel: Burger Culture on Trial, by John Vidal. I like the documentary.

Truck, by Katherine Dunn. An earlier novel by the author of the deservedly-hyped-a-few-years-ago Geek Love. This one is about a teenage girl runaway.   ¶ 2:10 PM