Eighth Book
The Member Of The Wedding : Carson McCullers
Bantam : 1973
Bought at Strand Book Store for $3.00+
Recommended by Amanda Patten

Started 1.23.05
Finished 1.25.05

The Line: "She also changed the seasons, leaving out summer altogether, and adding much snow. She planned it so that people could instantly change back and forth from boys to girls, which ever way they felt like and wanted" (92).

The neurotic girl,
the clumsy boy, the anti-
mammy: sounds like home.
  ¶ 01:07 0 comments

  Seventh Book
Independence Day : Richard Ford
Vintage : 1996
Donated by Davy Rothbart

Started 1.8.05
Finished 1.22.05

The Line: "The worst thing about regret is that it makes you duck the chance of suffering new regret just as you get a glimmer that nothing's worth doing unless it has the potential to fuck up your whole life" (44).

Within ten pages
I was thinking (sans consent)
in parentheses.
  ¶ 17:38 0 comments

  Sixth Book
The Rum Diary : Hunter S. Thompson
Scribner : 1998
Bought at Housing Works Used Book Cafe for $5.00+
Recommended by Hillary Dickerson

Started 1.17.05
Finished 1.19.05

The Line: "Not much of what he said was original. What made him unique was the fact that he had no sense of detachment at all. He was like the fanatical football fan who runs onto the field and tackles a player" (43).

I've never tasted
alcohol, yet this novel
makes me want to drink.
  ¶ 23:15 0 comments

  Fifth Book
The Blue Guide To Indiana : Michael Martone
Fiction Collective Two : 2001
Bought at Housing Works Used Book Cafe for $5.50+
Recommended by Michael Powell

Started 1.16.05
Finished 1.16.05

The Line: "The blaze of color, carefully recorded by countless snapshots and video cameras, is due, more often than not, to the artificial leaves which now, to most, look more like fall foliage than the fall foliage itself" (89).

Absurd yet sincere:
a prose complement to poet
James Magorian.  ¶ 23:43 3 comments

  Fourth Book
The Sweet Hereafter : Russell Banks
HarperPerennial : 1991
Bought at Housing Works Used Book Cafe for $5.50+
Recommended by Liz Woodbury

Started 1.6.05
Finished 1.7.05

The Line: "A wizard, they say, with fabulous eye-hand coordination, and when sitting in front of a video game, he was supposed to be capable of scary concentration. It was probably the only time he felt competent and was not lonely" (20-21).

Not seen the movie,
picture perfect Dolores:
Frances McDormand.  ¶ 22:21 0 comments

  Third Book
This Is Not It : Lynne Tillman
D.A.P. : 2002
Bought at Strand Book Store for $3.98+

Started 1.4.05
Finished 1.5.05

The Line: "It was strange to be alive, always, but stranger to feel invigorated and happy in a place where there had been a battle, a life and death struggle. Maybe it wasn't weird, she consoled herself. Maybe it's like wanting to have wild sex right after someone dies" (143).

If I make art with
her book, she'd write about it.
Whoa: meta-licious.
  ¶ 13:54 0 comments

  Second Book
Gilles Deleuze : Claire Colebrook
Routledge : 2002
Borrowed from Hannah Barnes

Started 12.30.04
Finished 1.4.05

The Line: "Literature for Deleuze has its own singular power of affect, one quite different from the visual arts. What is realised in literary affect is not this or that message, not this or that speaker, but the power that allows for speaking and saying -- freed from any subject of enunciation" (106).

The lens' gaze; our
gaze filmward; my gaze at you
gazing: We steal us.
  ¶ 01:38 0 comments

  First Book
Dear Dead Person : Benjamin Weissman
High Risk : 1994
Bought at Housing Works Used Book Cafe for $4.50+

Started 12.30.04
Finished 1.2.05

The Line: "I need to lie down. I can't look at anything else right now. Terrified, struggling, curly haired people being killed and eaten by animals. I'm frightened for them; at the same time, it's totally cool" (38).

Would that I could write
the hush of a werewolf in
mid-flight: a soft kill.
  ¶ 17:33 0 comments

  Recommendations
Jessica Anthony
In Cold Blood : Truman Capote
Desperate Characters : Paula Fox
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby : Tom Wolfe

Hannah Barnes
Veils : Helene Cixous and Jacques Derrida
Moby Dick : Herman Mellville
Cat's Cradle : Kurt Vonnegut

Liz Bevilacqua
Middlesex : Jeffrey Eugenides
Waking The Dead : Scott Spencer
The Secret History : Donna Tartt

Travis Catsull
Autobiography Of A Flea : Anonymous
The Diary Of Mr. Pinke : Ewald Murrer
Voice Through A Cloud : Denton Welch

Hillary Dickerson
One Hundred Years Of Solitude : Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Nine Stories : J.D. Salinger
The Rum Diary : Hunter S. Thompson

Erin Dowding
Aloft : Chang-rae Lee
Straight Man : Richard Russo
Low Life : Luc Sante

Ben Ehrenreich
The Red Cavalry Stories : Isaac Babel
Riddley Walker : Russell Hoban
The Long Goodbye : Raymond Chandler

Scott Heim
Child Of God : Cormac McCarthy
The Basement : Kate Millett
State Of Grace : Joy Williams

Crystal Hernandez
Winesburg, Ohio : Sherwood Anderson
I Remember : Joe Brainard
As She Climbed Across The Table : Jonathan Lethem

Shelley Jackson
Ryder : Djuna Barnes
Invisible Cities : Italo Calvino
Wittgenstein's Mistress : David Markson

Jackie O
City Of Glass : Paul Auster
The Maltese Falcon : Dashiell Hammet
Take The Cannoli : Sarah Vowell

Amanda Patten
Clumsy : Jeffrey Brown
Member Of The Wedding : Carson McCullers
Fingersmith : Sarah Waters

Scott Pierce
As I Lay Dying : William Faulkner
Women In Love : D.H. Lawrence
Sophie's Choice : William Styron

Michael Powell
Herzog : Saul Bellow
Tales Of Pirx The Pilot : Stanislaw Lem
The Blue Guide To Indiana : Michael Martone

Davy Rothbart
Burn Collector : Al Burian
Independence Day : Richard Ford
The Cement Garden : Ian McEwan

Peter Rothbart
A Wizard Of Earthsea : Ursula K. Le Guin
The Tombs Of Atuan : Ursula K. Le Guin
The Farthest Shore : Ursula K. Le Guin

Kevin Sampsell
Tetherballs Of Bougainville : Mark Leyner
Home Land : Sam Lipsyte
A Complicated Kindness : Miriam Toews

Julie Shapiro
Cloud Atlas : David Mitchell
For The Time Being : Annie Dillard
Praying For Sheet Rock : Melissa Fay Greene

Hannah Tinti
If On A Winter's Night A Traveler : Italo Calvino
Les Miserables : Victor Hugo
The Complete Stories : Flannery O'Connor

Liz Woodbury
The Sweet Hereafter : Russell Banks
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter : Carson McCullers
Taking Care : Joy Williams

  ¶ 11:46 3 comments