One Hundred Books

Bonjour!

2006-12-22T00:06:00.000-05:00

The One Hundred Books project is over, but the fun has just begun. Stay tuned for statistics, superlatives, honorary diplomas, handshakes, and medals of valor.

One Hundredth Book

2006-12-21T23:49:00.000-05:00

Women As Lovers : Elfriede Jelinek
Serpent's Tail : 1995
Bought at Mercer Street Books for $6.50+

Started 12.12.06
Finished 12.20.06

The Line: "all that matters is that love has come at last, and that it hasn't come to an ugly, worn out, drunken, exhausted, vulgar, common woodcutter and her, but to a handsome, wornout, drunken, strong, vulgar, common woodcutter and her. that makes the whole thing special" (42).

Missed my goal date by
eight days. And I'm fine with that!
This book was worth it.

Ninety-Ninth Book

2006-12-21T18:20:00.000-05:00

Nothing Serious : Justine Lévy
Melville House : 2006
Bought at Housing Works Used Book Cafe for $7.00+

Started 12.10.06
Finished 12.11.06

The Line: "What counts is the race, that's what he always says: What poisons existence is thinking too much about the finish line, you'll have lots of time to think about it afterwards, when you've lost, or when you can't run anymore" (177).

She almost lost me
in the beginning, but then
came through in the clutch.

Ninety-Eighth Book

2006-12-09T21:44:00.000-05:00

A Complicated Kindness : Miriam Toews
Counterpoint : 2004
Bought at Dawn Treader Book Shop for $5.50+
Recommended by Kevin Sampsell

Started 12.03.06
Finished 12.09.06

The Line: "Main Street is as dead as ever. There's a blinding white light at the water-tower end of it and Jesus standing in the centre of it in a pale blue robe with his arms out, palms up, like he's saying how the hell would I know? I'm just a carpenter" (47).

If someone wrote my
biography, it would be
nothing like this. Phew!

Ninety-Seventh Book

2006-12-09T21:30:00.000-05:00

This Is About The Body, The Mind, The Soul, The World, Time, And Fate : Diane Williams
Grove : 1990
Bought at Book Traders for $4.50+

Started 12.02.06
Finished 12.02.06

The Line: "I have work to do which I love to do, but women are what I prefer to anything, to lie down with them, the turning to touch the woman and knowing I will be received for sex as soon as I wish to be welcome" (80).

Stuck on an island,
I would scan the horizon
wishing she'd save me.

Ninety-Sixth Book

2006-12-02T12:54:00.000-05:00

All The Anxious Girls On Earth : Zsuzsi Gartner
Anchor : 2000
Donated by London

Started 11.29.06
Finished 12.01.06

The Line: "I could smell his wet rot. Creosote flesh. Gave me flash headaches, like being trapped in abandoned cabins while shifting timbers sweated sap. Like pressing my nose to a telephone pole. I had to stand upwind of him just to have a conversation" (96).

A razor blade for
the thinking class. Weetzie Bat
with less forgiveness.

Ninety-Fifth Book

2006-12-02T12:45:00.000-05:00

Great Expectations : Kathy Acker
Grove : 1989
Bought at Dawn Treader Book Shop for $5.50+

Started 11.26.06
Finished 11.28.06

The Line: "As a result of his own barrenness, he develops a capacity to absorb the fertility of others. Of the real self. The only way you can get the real self is to rip someone off. The only way you can get love. Humans need love. You're a con man" (98).

It's no Tao Te Ching,
but I found strange comfort in
her plush pipebomb prose.

Ninety-Fourth Book

2006-12-02T12:33:00.000-05:00

Absence Makes The Heart : Lynne Tillman
Serpent's Tail : 1991
Bought at Dawn Treader Book Shop for $3.95+

Started 11.20.06
Finished 11.25.06

The Line: "When I was fourteen I discovered that boys would fall in love with me if I listened to everything they said. A strong sense of integrity prohibited me from continuing that form of seduction. And, in addition to integrity, there was the problem of having to continue to listen to them" (40).

Had I agency,
I'd have changed the title to
Awesome Makes The Heart.

Ninety-Third Book

2006-11-14T19:19:00.000-05:00

Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World : Haruki Murakami
Knopf : 1993
Bought from Symposia Books for $8.23

Started 11.9.06
Finished 11.14.06

The Line: "Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn't stop it. I was going to sleep" (126).

The guilt of liking
sci-fi is outweighed by the
joy of chubby girls.

Ninety-Second Book

2006-11-14T19:13:00.000-05:00

Believe Them : Mary Robison
Collier : 1998
Bought at Casco Bay Books for $4.00+

Started 11.6.06
Finished 11.8.06

The Line: "Wendy Vicker is just some poor thing from down the street. I moved a piece of furniture for her. She's as friendly as a retriever dog, and built like a goddam Turkish wrestler" (80).

A totally good
book, but I can't think of a
haiku today. Oops!

Ninety-First Book

2006-11-14T18:56:00.000-05:00

Another Birth : Forough Farrokhzad
Zabankadeh : 2002
Bought from Jacaranda Online for $8.44

Started 11.3.06
Finished 11.6.06

The Line: "When they blindfolded my love's childish eyes / With the black kerchief of law / And jets of blood spurted out / From the agitated temples of my desire / When my life was nothing / But the tic tacks of a clock / I realized that I must, I must, and I must / Love madly" (122).

Another badass
dead poet. Car wreck. At age
thirty-two. Bummer.

Ninetieth Book

2006-11-14T18:35:00.000-05:00

Insel : Mina Loy
Black Sparrow : 1991
Bought at 7th Avenue Books for $6.00+

Started 10.26.06
Finished 10.30.06

The Line: "This station, as he entered it, became the anteroom of dissolution, where the only constructions left of a real world were avalanches of newspapers, and even these aligned in a dusty perspective like ghosts of overgrown toys" (88).

How do you give thanks
to the dead? Turn on a light
(she was a lampshade).

Eighty-Ninth Book

2006-10-25T14:14:00.000-04:00

When The Emperor Was Divine : Julie Otsuka
Anchor : 2002
Borrowed from Lori Saginaw

Started 10.23.06
Finished 10.25.06

The Line: "I stole your last bag of sugar. I took a swig from your best bottle of brandy. I pulled out the nails from your white picket fence and sold them to the enemy to melt down and make into bullets" (141).

It's strange how foolish
we are. Maybe it's justice.
Maybe it's just us.

Eighty-Eighth Book

2006-10-23T20:32:00.000-04:00

Florida : Christine Schutt
Harcourt : 2004
Bought at Strand Book Store for $1.00+

Started 10.18.06
Finished 10.22.06

The Line: "I drove on through the spattered light of fall, the warm, monied promise of it, the light's saying, Yes, it is possible: Purpose might find me and success might follow. My father could have been a poet; it is not absurd" (76).

Another reason
why I miss New York City
(it's my Florida).

Eighty-Seventh Book

2006-10-22T00:42:00.000-04:00

Ticknor : Sheila Heti
FSG : 2005
Bought at 7th Ave Books for $6.00+

Started 10.15.06
Finished 10.17.06

The Line: "I often go to the mirror when crying, to se how I might look. I wonder whether I'd have any sympathy for a man such as myself. Sometimes I feel I would, and it makes me cry even harder; other times I do not and it fills me with despair--well, then I weep more pitifully than before" (61).

Watched The Machinist
tonight and thought how Ticknor
could have played that part.

Eighty-Sixth Book

2006-10-15T11:27:00.000-04:00

You're A Bad Man, Aren't You? : Susannah Breslin
Future Tense : 2003
Bought at Powell's for $4.95+

Started 10.13.06
Finished 10.14.06

The Line: "She had envisioned something more like a dark car's quiet glide across the black ice of a nighttime street, the slow fall of a supine body into a hospital bed, the poetic righteousness of a personal eclipse among concentric circles of family members" (48).

I wish I could say
"midget porn" in twenty-one
different languages.

Eighty-Fifth Book

2006-10-15T11:15:00.000-04:00

SCUM Manifesto : Valerie Solanas
AK Press : 1996
Bought at Mercer Books for $2.95+

Started 10.12.06
Finished 10.12.06

The Line: "Eliminate men and women will shape up. Women are improvable; men are not, although their behavior is. When SCUM gets hot on their asses it'll shape up fast" (44).

Dear Santa, All I
want this year is to not love
crazy dead women.

Welcome Back

2006-10-15T11:09:00.000-04:00

Thank you, it's good to be here. Two months, sixteen books, game on.

Book 33

2006-06-19T21:50:00.000-04:00

Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara
1934: Vintage Books
251 pages
Recommended by Jamie York
Began: 14 June 2006
Finished: 19 June 2006

At the start of the Depression, this takes a look at that state when it is put down to a little d. The actions take place in and out of cars with eventual devasting ends. I wasn't expecting this book to be so clever, so quick, so sexy, so thorough, so effectively affecting. Oh John O'Hara, what quiet heartbreaks.

Quote: "I feel like the devil..."

Book 32

2006-06-15T19:01:00.000-04:00

Teacher Man: A Memoir by Frank McCourt
2005: Scribner
272 pages
Recommended by Maggie Bright
Began: 7 June 2006
Finished: 13 June 2006

I guess it is fitting that on the last days of instruciton for this school year I have been reading a memoir on the act of teaching. McCourt kicks everything off with laughter as he writes about his first day of being in front of the classroom but things meander and linger just like anytime in class or in a school building does. It is an enjoyable read no matter how much I wished I was listening to it on tape so I could hear his voice reciting his tales. I know this is McCourt's way of thanking the profession, paying due to his past, and giving back to his students but I can't help but think it is also because he misses the job, and the captive audience.

Quote: "Mea culpa."

Book 31

2006-06-06T09:34:00.000-04:00

Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls
1983: Harvard Common Press
125 pages
Recommended by Maya Haynes
Began: 25 May 2006
Finished: 6 June 2006

I don't remember anything about the reptilian brain but this book did make me uncormfortable. Not the big green reptile from the ocean who was abused in the Institute. Not the layered metaphors and meanings thick and slathered. Not the Californian nights and the domestic un-bliss. Not the children as punks and ex-wives as alcoholics or seperate vacations. No, none of the parts on their own made me squirm but taken in whole under the flourescent subway lights in sleepy hazes did me in and made me itchy.

Quote: "It's somebody called Merce Cunningham."

Book 30

2006-06-06T07:51:00.000-04:00

Under A War-Torn Sky by L.M. Elliott
2001: Hyperion Paperbacks for Children
284 pages
Recommended by Matthew Hui
Began: 30 May 2006
Finished: 6 June 2006

My student, Matt, was not graceful in recommending this book. One morning, before classes, it was "Here. Read this." and a shove of a paperback into my hands. Having just finished teaching World War II, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go back into the air raids and bombings, let alone from an American viewpoint. I, in turn, shoved the book into my bag, scrounging it out the next morning while I waited for coffee and croissants to kick in. The book starts off in the middle of things and you find the main character ready to depart into the sky. Fighting and planes, my interest waned and I read without caring for the first 20 pages. Then the plane is shot out of the sky, all the characters you were just introduced to, save the protagonist, are gone and instantly with the narrator you are plunged into a world of spies and French maquis. I looked forward to reading this book and took the twists and turns as they came. Now I have to grumble "Thanks" to Matt.

Quote: "Eggs did fly."

Book 29

2006-05-18T08:30:00.000-04:00

We Came All The Way From Cuba So You Could Dress Like This? Stories by Achy Obejas
1994: Cleis Press
131 pages
Recommended by Maya Haynes
Began: 15 May 2006
Finished: 18 May 2006

Quick but not necessarily pleasant these are late 80s early 90s stories of Latina lesbian life in Chicago, homosexual men battling AIDS, Cuban counterrevolutioinaries, and junkies out of their minds. Read on the subway, I felt a layer of grime and fervant energy. While reading this book I also read a story of Lara Vapnyar's. I prefer Vapnyar but I am not sure what that means in the bigger scheme of it all. Obejas has a clear style and it is unrelenting. It is blunt and, while this book was not necessarily shocking, it is fearless and bold. I wonder what I would have felt reading this book ten years ago but right now it was just another taste of an approach to writing and getting worlds out onto paper for me to see if I like.

Quote: ""Besides, that you're American is an accident of geopgraphy," he said."

Book 28

2006-05-15T10:05:00.000-04:00

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
2006: Knopf
227 pages
Recommended by Lara Evangelista
Began: 10 May 2006
Finished: 15 May 2006

There is Joan Didion with her severe looks and California glam and there is her older now. Both of these versions of her are shown on the dust jacket that wraps around the devastatingly gorgeous writing inside. What moved me, more than the shock and grieving, was the love affair of Didion and Dunne and their nearly forty years of marriage. For all the beauty of this book, the elegance of the writing on death and loss, a complete love story is told of a marriage imperfectly perfect and whole. There is family and a world where being alive is connecting with others and life is about the people who inhabit the world with us. Didion in her looks, her persona, her writing, always seemed stark to me before but this is rich and giving to the reader, so personal without being exclusive, raw without being a mess. Even the cover shows a quiet way of remembering with John's name illuminated in blue.

Quote: "Time is the school in which we learn."

I put the bad in sabbatical.

2006-05-08T01:43:00.000-04:00

Dear Lixxx and Erin, who regularly attend to this project:

As I will be quite busy quite soon, I must once again default on my loans, entering into a two-month sabbatical. You can expect me back here on July 5th, when I will promptly devour my remaining sixteen books.

Thank you dearly for your attentions.