“On the Radar” provides small incidental rundowns on books which I’ve discovered, but haven’t yet purchased. These are titles which I’ve either added to my wishlist, or am keeping a close eye on with a view to adding them. In addition, these are books which I feel may be of some interest to fellow readers, and I welcome feedback as always, on your own opinions and thoughts on the listed titles – especially if you’ve already had the ‘pleasure’ of reading them.
New York in the Forties by Andreas Feininger (Dover Publications) – My passion for New York City continues (as if it would ever stop 
), and I was lucky enough to pick up a framed print the other day of a photograph taken in 1940 by Andreas Feininger. It’s a black and white shot taken down a smokey Oliver Street, Lower Manhattan, with the west tower of the Brooklyn Bridge silhouetted in the background. It’s a beautiful shot – very contrasting in its tones (a real trademark of this photographer) – and seeing it sent me on an online hunt for more New-York flavoured creations from the German-American photographer. Not only did I discover this fine online stash of photographs, but I also discovered this superb book which contains 162 of Feininger’s finest New York City shots. It’s under £10 too, so an instant addition to the ever expanding wishlist.
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Fun With Problems by Robert Stone (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) – USA Today has a nice mini round up of recently published short story collections, and this one really caught my eye. Even though I should have read Robert Stone by now I haven’t, and this new collection of seven stories looks like essential reading. With stories that ‘search the shadowy corners of people’s lives’ the reviewer, Craig Wilson describes the collections as ‘unsettling’. Definitely my cup of tea (which when I think of it is quite disturbing), and it’s been planted on my wishlist. Actually any of the four short story collection in the mini round up has a certain appeal to it, but this one, I think, stands above the others.
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Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos (Penguin Modern Classics) – If I’m being completely honest with you here, I can’t remember exactly where and when I first discovered this book. But ever since I did it’s hung in my head like a bat in the barn rafters. And the reason for that is a portion of the blurb which promises that the book is ‘a powerful and often lyrical meditation on the modern city’, which for me is a real kicker. Couple that with the the fact that Manhattan Transfer is also described as ‘an experimental montage and collage techniques borrowed from the cinema’ and that it contains ‘the jumbled case histories of a picaresque range of characters from dockside crapshooters to high-society flappers’ and you can be assured that this book is an essential wishlist add for me. 2
About Rob
Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul" - 
says:
i ve dos passos usa trilogy on my shelves to be read at some point he seems to be writer that time has forgotten a bit