SWEPT AWAY 
John Nova Lomax, on his just-published guide to Houston dive bars: “I am sad that some of the book is already obsolete. I have heard that the Spot and the Red Hog have already eaten it. Ernie’s on Banks is now in Brad Moore’s able hands. Even the things that never seem to change in Houston change the minute you try to pin them down or preserve them in amber. But hollering about Houston changing reminds me of when my toddler son yelled at the ocean to stop wrecking the sand castle he was trying to build in the surf: it’s futility and hubris defined.” [Eating Our Words]
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1) In which case, books like this become memorials to the past as well as receptacles for collective memory, and therefore have a value that goes way beyond the merely transitory. (See for example, Sig Byrd’s Houston.)
2) This book is a quick, witty read. Even if you aren’t a barfly, I highly recommend it. Lomax is one of the best writers in town (which I realize is damning him with faint praise).