Forty-Sixth Book A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer : Christine Schutt
TriQuarterly / Northwestern : 2005
Bought at Seventh Avenue Books for $22.95+

Started 6.29.05
Finished 6.29.05

The Line: "He imagines her reading his letters. He imagines she yawns. He is not original, handsome, or young. Years are passing. Soon there will be snow underfoot by noon turned to slush. A wavy salt stain will abstract his shoes. Ice then, and weather soon" (46).

"The Blood Jet" crushed me,
lucid and wretched, made me
walk hours to find peace.  ¶ 09:15 0 comments

  Forty-Fifth Book Extravaganza : Gordon Lish
Four Walls Eight Windows : 1997
Bought at Mercer Street Books for $3.95+

Started 6.28.05
Finished 6.29.05

The Line: "Dr. Dale, Dr. Dale, do I or do I not reinterpret you right when I say to you that you are saying to me that it is better to swim headfirst into a whole school of pickled herring than for you to set foot inside of a single non-referential sentence?" (125).

It behooves you to
perambulate thatta way.
(Oh, I don't know, yo.)  ¶ 08:59 1 comments

  Forty-Fourth Book Slaughterhouse-Five : Kurt Vonnegut
Dell : 1991
Donated by Liz Woodbury

Started 6.27.05
Finished 6.28.05

The Line: "Every so often, for no apparent reason, Billy Pilgrim would find himself weeping. Nobody had ever caught Billy doing it. Only the doctor knew. It was an extremely quiet thing Billy did, and not very moist" (61).

Having not read this,
the shame incurred made me want
to die. So it goes.  ¶ 10:08 0 comments

  Forty-Third Book Invisible Cities : Italo Calvino
Harcourt : 1974
Bought at Twelfth Street Books for $4.50+
Recommended by Shelley Jackson

Started 6.26.05
Finished 6.27.05

The Line: "You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions; on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask" (95).

Once, for a week, I
was invisisble. Not that
you'd have noticed though.  ¶ 09:39 0 comments

  Forty-Second Book The Tetherballs Of Bougainville : Mark Leyner
Harmony : 1997
Bought at Seventh Avenue Books for $5.00+
Recommended by Kevin Sampsell

Started 6.26.05
Finished 6.26.05

The Line: "If you have an ingrown hair on your ass, I want to see flags at half-mast, I want to see endless streams of grief-stricken workers and school-children converging on the Presidential Palace, singing dirges, laying wreaths, weeping, throwing themselves onto their knees, beating their brows against the ground until they're bloody and unconscious" (213).

This reminds me of
this and this and this and this
and this and this too.  ¶ 14:51 2 comments

  Forty-First Book Straight Man : Richard Russo
Random House : 1997
Bought at Symposia Bookstore for $4.50+
Recommended by Erin Dowding

Started 6.21.05
Finished 6.25.05

The Line: "Enjoy this. Brag about it. Call up that jerk you were married to. Say I told you so. They're the four most satisfying words in the English language. You could rupture something trying to keep them inside you" (235).

What came first, the goose
or the Michael Chabon book?
Hey, I'm just saying.  ¶ 14:25 0 comments

  Fortieth Book Stories In The Worst Way : Gary Lutz
3rdbed : 2003
Donated by Hannah Tinti

Started 6.19.05
Finished 6.20.05

The Line: "My father never came home sick in the afternoon to find me on my knees in the living room with my mouth full of somebody's grave, helpless perpedicularity. I never got to see my father eye to eye like that, the only way I wanted to" (101).

I bet he looks like
Charles Bronson, a thug-addled,
adverb-slung cowboy.  ¶ 09:42 0 comments

  Thirty-Ninth Book
Nightwork : Christine Schutt
Dalkey Archive : 2000
Bought at Community Bookstore and Cafe for $10.95+

Started 6.17.05
Finished 6.20.05

The Line: "My sleeve catches fire on the burner, and all I do is watch its crinkling into nothing. Fast as paper, it burns, filling the kitchen with a stink of burnt hair, my hair, and that is what finally makes me run for the salt, the smell of me catching fire" (85).

Should I be nervous
that I gravitate toward
incest narratives?
  ¶ 13:15 0 comments

  Thirty-Eighth Book
Desperate Characters : Paula Fox
Norton : 1999
Bought at Seventh Avenue Books for $6.00+
Recommended by Jessica Anthony

Started 6.14.05
Finished 6.17.05

The Line: "I reluctantly took Benny to the children's zoo when he was small--it was supposed to be the thing to do--and a dirty demented llama reached over the fence and clamped its jaws on my hand. It was like being bitten by dirty laundry" (86).

Strip the pathos from
pathetic and you've got one
bitter kitty. Mew.
  ¶ 14:44 0 comments

  Thirty-Seventh Book
Juice : Renee Gladman
Kelsey Street : 2000
Bought at St. Mark's Bookshop for $11.00+

Started 6.13.05
Finished 6.14.05

The Line: "It seemed appropriate to think the person's attempt at wholeness was a series of missteps, which if drawn across an afternoon might prove interesting to other people. I had a way of reminding my friends that we were all in pain, but a fruit tart kind of pain strangers can't help but enjoy" (23).

Cover aside, this
one slayed me, blood-ribboned like
a birthday panther.
  ¶ 14:37 0 comments

  Thirty-Sixth Book
Motherless Brooklyn : Jonathan Lethem
Vintage : 2000
Donated by Liz Woodbury

Started 6.5.05
Finished 6.13.05

The Line: "His imprecision and laziness maddened my compulsive instincts -- his patchiness, the way even his speech was riddled with drop-outs and glitches like a worn cassette, the way his leaden senses refused the world, his attention like a pinball rolling past unlit blinkers and frozen flipppers into the hole again and again: game over" (121-22).

Reminds me of soft
facts, language undecked, the way
skin gleams through fire.
  ¶ 09:33 4 comments

  Thirty-Fifth Book
Portnoy's Complaint : Philip Roth
Random House : 1969
Bought at Symposia Bookstore for $4.00

Started 5.29.05
Finished 6.4.05

The Line: "And to top this modest outfit off, over her real head of hair she wears a wig inspired by Little Orphan Annie, an oversized aureole of black corkscrew curls, out of whose center pokes this dumb painted face. What a mean little mouth it gives her! She really is from West Virginia!" (209).

Too tired to think
of a clever haiku (up
late shtupping shikses!).
  ¶ 13:18 0 comments