Wants to read Lady Stuff: Secrets to Being a Woman
book
Rated Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic 10/10
Excellent. Would love to see the musical.
Rated Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional 10/10
<div>I have followed Isaac Fitzgerald's literary career ever since he was an editor at The Rumpus back in the late 2000s, and it's been great to see where he's gone since then. A couple of these essays, I read wherever they were originally published, though long enough ago that I don't know whether or not they changed in any significant way. This is a great memoir, full of honest, insightful memories, and it's also interesting to see what was happening "behind the curtain," so to speak, during some of the times I was paying attention to his professional work. He's the same age as I am, so some of his childhood attitudes and memories felt very familiar, even though I did not grow up in the same area (and my childhood was considerably more stable). Like, of course you just get up to shit in the woods and are glad for only loose supervision! Of course every teen boy was obsessed with Fight Club and the Pixies after the movie came out! I definitely knew guys like the friends he describes.<br><br>Also, Zeitgeist sounds like an amazing bar.</div>
Rated One Day 10/10
One Day is an excellent book — one filled with as many funny moments as there are heart-crushing. One of the best books I've read all year.<br><br>(Full review can be found on <a href="http://glorifiedloveletters.blogspot.com/2010/08/one-day-by-david-nicholls.html">Glorified Love Letters</a>)
Wants to read Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry
Rated The Thing About Thugs 8/10
In some ways, the darker elements and seeing the killer's point-of-view reminded me of Patricia Highsmith's work, though she did not set any of her stories (that I know of) in Victorian times. The methodical way everyone justifies their bad behavior, killer or not, is also very much like her. The difference is that Khair doesn't write with underlying disdain for society. There is still an element of magic, though not the fantastical kind. It's magic in the form of hope, the willful suspension of disbelief, and the transforming power of a good story. I certainly recommend tracking down this book.<br><br>(My full review appears on <a href="http://glorifiedloveletters.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-thing-about-thugs-by-tabish-khair.html">Glorified Love Letters</a>.)
Rated The Zero 10/10
Not in recent memory have I read a book so enthralling, heartbreaking and with such deadpan humor. In what he calls his "9/12" novel, Jess Walter’s <i>The Zero</i> follows "hero cop" Brian Remy, who is trying to make sense of the world while also suffering from memory lapses. His journey is at once bewildering and mournful, and though I’m not one to go on about perfect first lines, Walter had me at the outset:<br><br><blockquote>They burst into the sky, every bird in creation, angry and agitated, awakened by the same primary thought, erupting in a white feathered cloudburst, anxious and graceful, angling in ever-tightening circles toward the ground, drifting close enough to touch, and then close enough to see that it wasn’t a flock of birds at all — it was paper.</blockquote><br><br><br>Is it a long first sentence? Yes. Does it matter? Absolutely not.<br><br>Part existential crisis, part satire, <i>The Zero</i> also presents some of the ridiculousness of government during this time. There’s talk of “evildoers” and an entire agency dedicated to collecting all those scraps of paper, The Department of Documentation. “Things will be better when all the paper has been cleaned up.” Cops and firefighters are getting agents and their faces on cereal boxes; tourists pose for photos by the wreckage. Even in the event of a national tragedy, capitalism and consumerism worm their way into the larger discussion.<br><br>(Full review can be found at <a href="http://therumpus.net/2010/07/sara-habein-the-last-book-i-loved-the-zero/">The Rumpus.</a>)
Wants to read Thoughts Without Cigarettes
Rated Wuthering Heights 6/10
<div>Audible threw me another free month, and I saw this available to stream, so I thought I'd finally give it a go. I've previously had luck with finally getting around to various classics via audiobooks, but I think maybe I would've found reading this a bit easier in print because of all the similar names. This is no slight on Joanne Froggatt, who narrates it very well. I was just having my own moments of "Wait, now WHO are we talking about?" so I had to consult the Wikipedia page to refresh my memory. Ymmv!<br><br>That said, this is a grim tale with some interesting bits, some less so, but I'm not sorry I listened.</div>
Rated Ghostwritten 10/10
If I had a different life and was an MFA student, I'd be tempted to make my thesis studying David Mitchell's work. This made me want to reread everything, closely, making notes.
Rated Ghost Wall 10/10
<div>I generally enjoy what I pick to read, very rarely dnf, prob just a handful of clunkers read each year, but every once in awhile, I feel like that Gordon Ramsey meme: Finally, some great fucking art. <br><br>Ghost Wall is about a teenage girl dragged along by her family on a two week "vacation" to live as people did during the Iron Age, alongside some local university students and a professor. Her dad is... think the British Isles Iron Age-obsessed version of a North Idaho homesteader. You know the type.<br><br>But this is also a book about nature, queer awakening, and about the pernicious way certain living conditions seem normal from the inside. It's also got what I'm referring to as Chekov's bog. You'll see what I mean. </div>
Rated Doctor Who and the Pirates 8/10
<div>This is a mostly very silly one that reminded me a little bit of that episode of The X-Files with the vampires (and Luke Wilson), though this involves pirates. Part 3 is a Gilbert & Sullivan-style musical, but there are touching moments throughout, including the ending. The Sixth Doctor and Evelyn remain a great pair.</div>
Rated Lawnboy 6/10
Is it fair to compare one writer to another? Is the comparison ever quite right? Blurbs for <i>Lawnboy</i> compared Paul Lisicky to [a:Michael Cunningham|1432|Michael Cunningham|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1198584594p2/1432.jpg] (<i>The Hours, A Home at The End of the World</i>, etc.), and the cover even boasted a blurb from Cunningham himself. While certainly flattering, how does Lawnboy compare?<br><br>Non-straight characters? Check.<br>Coming of age/awakening type plot? Check.<br>Complicated romance? Checkity-check-check.<br><br>But couldn’t one say this about plenty of other books? Francesca Lia Block also had these things, but <i>Wheetzie Bat</i> and <i>Lawnboy</i> and <i>The Hours</i> are three entirely different books. Then again, it’s been a little while since I’ve read Cunningham’s work. Still, there is one clear way that Lisicky and Cunningham reminded me of each other: It took me the first third of the book to really get into it. That’s not to say I spent the first third uninterested; I just questioned how much I would enjoy the whole thing. Lawnboy is divided into three parts, and by Part 2, I became much more engaged in how things turned out.<br><br>I enjoyed <i>Lawnboy</i> well enough that I will keep an eye out for Lisicky’s other work. The lingering, awestruck descriptions of physicality, and the unabashed searches for affection were enough to make me want more. It doesn’t matter whether Paul Lisicky writes anything like Michael Cunningham — Let the man stand on his own.<br><br>(Full review can be found at <a href="http://glorifiedloveletters.blogspot.com/2010/07/lawnboy-by-paul-lisicky.html">Glorified Love Letters</a>.)
Rated Night of the Living Rez 10/10
<div>I really loved this collection of stories that revolve around one family and their surrounding community. It's grim at times, but also funny and always interesting. It was an excellent book to read after having recently finished an Alice Munro story collection.</div>
Rated Doctor Who: Something Inside 8/10
Another "amnesia" story. Man, that whole "regenerating under anesthetic" thing is rough on a Time Lord! The brain worm seems like a precursor to the memory worm used on the show, and it's a little bit funny to hear things like, "It's the brain worm!" and take it seriously, but this is a pretty good story all the same.
Rated Doctor Who: The Deviant Strain 8/10
This was an excellent story that would have been great on screen too (though with later series' budgets), but the sentence fragments during moments of action were frustratingly bad.