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.

Book 27

2006-05-06T17:47:00.000-04:00

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden State of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
2005: William Morrow
232 pages
Recommended by Joseph Luft
Began: 1 May 2006
Finished: 8 May 2006

Almost three summers ago I read a feature on an economist in the New York Times Magazine that had me calling friends and feel like I was playing a complicated game of logic. When last summer it seemed like everyone in New York City was reading Freakonomics, I spent my time asking "Is that the guy I read about in the New York times back when?" I wasn't aware that the co-author was the Times Magazine writer and that the book that became the phenomenon was an expansion of what started from the article. Economics fascinates me partly because it is as foreign as another language to meant Levitt makes this science an art of observing, data collecting, analysis and flipping things upside their heads. This book was a clever romp and while I still don't know if I am, or should be, offended by parts of this book but I do know I am jealous of the thought process and connections these authors were able to make. I feel like I should scramble what I know and come up with a new reality. Or else just ask Levitt to be my pen pal.

Quote: "(If you identify strongly with either person number one or person number two, the following exercise might strike you as offensive, and you may want to skip this paragraph and the next.)"

Book 26

2006-05-06T17:10:00.000-04:00

Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner
2001: Washington Square Press
376 pages
Recommended by Elisabeth Snell
Began: 2 May 2006
Finished: 6 May 2006

Chick lit is like eating Hostess Cupcakes. There really is no reason to do it but, yet, you really really want to. They go down quick, easy, sugary and then you wonder: what did I just do? I watched the movie "In Her Shoes" in the fall with 6 of my closest female friends. It is chick flik yet it has some brains to it. Good in Bed was addicting making me wonder what it is aobut these books and like "In Her Shoes" it had fleshed out characters even if I wanted to protest with so much of it. I joked that reading this type of book was negating brain cells but there is something so enjoyable about it. Like television. I won't feel bad about reading this. I will admit that I hid the cover each and every time I took it out of my bag on the subway and picked up Joan Didion's latest book which I am going to start tonight so as to look like I wasn't the typical "chick."

Quote: "He shook his head and walked away."

Eighty-Fourth Book

2006-05-02T16:43:00.000-04:00

What Begins With Bird : Noy Holland
FC2 : 2005
Bought at Park Slope Books for $6.00+

Started 4.30.06
Finished 5.2.06

The Line: "Papa, I am four almost. And after this I will be six and after that I will be ten and when I become fifteen I'll drive and I will drive so fast and then I will be twenty. Then I will have one leg. Old people only have one leg and then I will be dead, Papa, and you will come and save me. I will be in a pond" (69-70).

In one story, the
narrator gets covered in
horse blood. My fave, natch!

Eighty-Third Book

2006-05-01T21:08:00.000-04:00

The Bell Jar : Sylvia Plath
Faber and Faber : 1996
Bought from Mercer Books for $3.50+

Started 4.27.06
Finished 4.29.06

The Line: "I hadn't, at the last moment, felt like washing off the two diagonal lines of dried blood that marked my cheeks. They seemed touching, and rather spectacular, and I thought I would carry them around with me, like the relic of a dead lover, till they wore off of their own accord" (108).

Sylvia Plath is
officially the coolest
dead woman ever.

Book 25

2006-04-30T13:54:00.000-04:00

The Neon Bible by John Kennedy Toole
1989: Grove Weidenfeld
162 pages
Recommended by Noah Amos
Began: 28 April 2006
Finished: 30 April 2006

John Kennedy Toole wrote this when he was 16. I don't remember what I wrote when I was 16 but I know I smelled like always.

Quote: "It was hot in the show, and it smelled like always."

Book 24

2006-04-27T21:21:00.000-04:00

Third Girl from the Left by Martha by Martha Southgate
2005: Houghton Mifflin
272 pages
Recommended by Maya Haynes
Began: 23 April 2006
Finished: 27 April 2006

Three generations of women, their stories, and their connection both to each other, happiness, and pain through movies. There were clunky places, heavy-handed and repetitive but then there were little gems of language and acceptance that brought me back in. Angela, the daughter of Mildred, mother of Tam, centralizes the book and orbits the other two around her. She is the characater that is written about with words like "naked," "lesbian," and "honey-colored skin" that made the man smelling of alcohol reading over my shoulder late the other night in the subway stop ask me what I was reading afterall. Trying to get a rise out of me he asked if he reminded me of the hero of the book. As I told him the book was about women, three generatiosn of women, her seemed reluctant to let go of his original attempt and asked me, "What about the hero? What about the guy who saves the day?" He laughed a little when I told him, no, not here. The women can save themselves here.

Quote: "Keeping everything in wore her out."

Eighty-Second Book

2006-04-27T14:46:00.000-04:00

The Activist : Renee Gladman
Krupskaya : 2003
Bought from Small Press Distribution for $11.00+

Started 4.27.06
Finished 4.27.06

The Line: "Paranoia cousins you in every encounter, every look given. Your mail comes and you must receive it with an extraordinary nonchalance, almost tossing it back at the carrier from lack of concern. Strangers ask you for the time and you are compelled to express your patriotism" (94).

This is fabulous,
like a new gown, Calvino,
like a dreamtiger.

Eighty-First Book

2006-04-26T15:20:00.000-04:00

A Season In Hell & The Drunken Boat : Arthur Rimbaud
New Directions : 1961
Donated by someone a long time ago

Started 4.25.06
Finished 4.25.06

The Line: "I called to the executioners that I might gnaw their rifle-butts while dying. I called to the plagues to smother me in blood, in sand. Misfortune was my God. I laid myself down in the mud. I dried myself in the air of crime. I played sly tricks on madness" (3).

The introduction
states that Rimbaud dealt in arms.
And he lost a leg.

Eightieth Book

2006-04-26T15:03:00.000-04:00

Story Of O : Pauline Reage
Book-of-the-Month Club : 1993
Bought at Park Slope Books for $5.00+

Started 4.23.06
Finished 4.25.06

The Line: " ' . . . the fact is,' said the other voice, 'that if you do tie her up, or whip her a little, and if she begins to like it--then that's no good either. We've got to move beyond the pleasure stage. We must make the tears flow' " (10).

Caught a few strong looks
when I read this on the train.
No come-hithers though.

Seventy-Ninth Book

2006-04-23T13:51:00.000-04:00

The Cement Garden : Ian McEwan
Anchor : 2003
Donated by Davy Rothbart
Recommended by Davy Rothbart

Started 4.21.06
Finished 4.23.06

The Line: "I had climbed over the mattress and was balancing on a ridge of broken wall, thinking about this, when I saw the handle of the sledgehammer in the grass. I jumped down and siezed it. Gray wood lice had been living under the massive iron head and now they ran backward and forward in blind confusion across the little patch of earth. I swung the hammer down on them and felt the ground shake beneath my feet" (48).

I once baked cement
brownies. I wanted them to
never come apart.

Book 23

2006-04-22T13:35:00.000-04:00

Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett
2004: Perennial
257 pages
Recommended by Sheri Appel
Began: 21 April 2006
Finished: 22 April 2006

I walked onto the campus of Sarah Lawrence as a freshman and wanting to a be writer. So it seemed did half of the other entering freshman, not to mention the students who were already there. I enrolled in fiction writing classes while friends partitioned themselves off to the poets and it was there that I noticed the difference. The poetry teachers were the inescapably cool ones. There seemed to be a gang of them- Marie Howe, Michael Klein, Tom Lux, and Lucy Grealy- and they walked together across campus in leather jackets with an aura of their fame and talent like a halo encircling them. They were the superstars of campus with readings in the libraries or in New York City to attend and books lined neatly and prestigiously lined up in the bookstore. I tried to pound away pages in my fiction classes as I heard the stories from friends who were writing scathing lines for the poets teaching them. Lucy Grealy was one of those poets and as her memoir was still newly published at the time her story was fresh on everyone's lips. I never knew her but felt like I knew something since I knew her book and could see her face. I didn't know anything as I found out from reading Ann Patchett's book but could relate to it all since so many of the names in this book were ones known to me as well as the small bird-like shape that was Lucy Grealy as she hustled around the Bronxville campus hip and vibrant. Despite the sad downward turn to her life as shown in this memoir, it filled in the gaps and questions I had about Grealy's death by telling me the story of a beautiful friendship.

Quote: "People made an effort to find out the details of her life. They knew her story and mistook that for actually knowing her, exactly as I had done."

Seventy-Eighth Book

2006-04-21T19:44:00.000-04:00

Pornocracy : Catherine Breillat
Jovian : 2006
Bought from Half.com for $12.56

Started 4.12.06
Finished 4.12.06

The Line: "Didn't you understand that it was nothing, that we had to free ourselves from the arrogance of the erect member, even if we are to like its initial and dazzling necessity; that the act which gives you such great importance and self-esteem is nothing but the clash of corruptible flesh" (102).

A man, a woman,
an exploratory romp
inside the vagi-

Book 22

2006-04-21T10:35:00.000-04:00

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
2002: Penguin
302 pages
Recommended by Erika Tuttle
Began: 15 April 2006
Finished: 17 April 2006

I grabbed this book to read on an overnight train from New York to Ohio and it was one of those easy reads that goes down, well, like honey- and just as stickily sweet. The incredibly creepy man who temporarily sat down next to me for a time talked to me despite the earphones on my ears. "That's a woman's book, isn't it," he said. And yes, yes, I nodded it sure is. Women read this book and it has all the trappings of an Oprah Book Club novel or a Lifetime movie. Perhaps I am not giving it enough credit. It was addictive and the characters were easy all tied neatly up at the end. This is a book to give to Mom and she will love you for it. But I did like all the beehive bee stuff.

Quote: "She's the Black Madonna of Breznichar in Bohemia."

Seventy-Seventh Book

2006-04-19T16:04:00.000-04:00

Damned If I Do : Percival Everett
Graywolf : 2004
Bought at Park Slope Books for $5.00+

Started 4.18.06
Finished 4.19.06

The Line: "He will not tell anyone that a fish has spoken to him. He will keep it inside his head. He will keep it next to the fact that lately he has not enjoyed sex with his wife. He will keep it next to his fear of escalators. He will keep it next to the fact that he hated the way his uncle hugged him just a little too long" (154).

I almost passed out
on the train while reading this
book, it's just that good.

Seventy-Sixth Book

2006-04-18T15:24:00.000-04:00

Inside : Hélène Cixous
Schocken : 1986
Bought at Housing Works Used Book Cafe for $7.50+

Started 4.16.06
Finished 4.17.06

The Line: "Hurt? Nono, you know me, it doesn't hurt, here, you see my little finger all by itself on the sheet, swimming around in the blood like a tadpole, far away from my hand, well I think it's cute, look, you see, almost like a white tadpole in a red canal, hurt? it's far away, and yet my hand doesn't miss it" (125).

Add her to the list
of magical creatures, like
unicorns and dwarves.

Seventy-Fifth Book

2006-04-16T14:30:00.000-04:00

The Suitors : Ben Ehrenreich
Counterpoint : 2006
Bought at Strand Book Store for $11.50+

Started 4.12.06
Finished 4.15.06

The Line: "Everyone's got a hustle, and takes what they can get. His old girl keeps her cloudy claws afloat around his heart. She slips beneath his eyelids each time he blinks. She sings in his ear when he's not listening. She dances round his bed when he's asleep" (154).

I love the part with
Jesus on the cross and a
vulture on his dick.

Book 21

2006-04-14T18:42:00.000-04:00

Educating Esme by Esme Raji Codell
2001: Algonquin Books
205 pages
Recommended by Lynette Harper and Julie Kessler
Began: 14 April 2006
Finished: 14 April 2006

Before I came to New York to teach, Lynette gave me a copy of this book to read. I didn't read it. Burdened and besieged my first year of teaching in the Bronx, I don't remember reading much other than The New Yorker and LeBlanc's Random Family. I was trying to escape school and remember who I was outside of my new role in the classroom. I quickly forgot about this little yellow book in my possession. Last year, during our meetings over the course of opening a new school, Julie asked me if I had read Educating Esme. I brushed it off, said no, but dug it out and put it on my bookshelf to read at some point during Silent Reading time. I never got to it. The New Yorker again. On vacation in Chile, sitting around with Julie talking about education, our classrooms, school management, our students, Julie asked me again if I had read Educating Esme and again I had to admit that I hadn't. It seems fitting that it is today, the second day of spring break, that I devoted a few hours to read this book. In the two days since I have last seen my students I have been able to distance myself a little and reconstruct a day of how I would spend it if the hours were not dictated by bells and curriculum. It is dizzying since today's relaxation is in such extreme contrast to my usual 9-5, or I should say, 7-6. It was a good read and while I teach high school and cannot fathom the idea of teaching fifth grade, Esme's account of her first year teaching in Chicago was an accurate portrayal of the ins and outs, highs and lows or teaching that I have read in a while. It was an honest portrayal of a love for the profession of education but complete in how tiring it is, how frustrating, how ridiculous. There is so little exaggeration in her book but I wonder if I would have, could have, recognized that before I began teaching. I have another week before spring break ends and the final push before the year end begins. I will distance myself a little more this week before returning to the classroom hopefully renewed and ready to engage myself and others despite all the madness.

Quote: "They talk about the rewards and gratifications in teaching school, and there is a share of it, but they don't tell you it's like joining a monastery or going to hell or sleepwalking or being afraid, afraid as you were when you were a small child."

Book 20

2006-04-14T12:29:00.000-04:00

Demian by Herman Hesse
1965: Harper & Row
158 pages
Recommended by Janne Piehl
Began: 3 April 2006
Finished: 13 April 2006

My day to day obligations and life got in the way of reading this small little book cover to cover in any sort of normal fashion. I have never read any Hesse and as I am currently teaching World War II to my students, I was especially curious about him and his relation to Germany and the two world wars. This book, slim in pages but heavy with content of one man's coming-of-age and dissolution with societal norms, fit aptly with what I was trying to understand and teach but it was difficult. Hesse's style, or at this translation, was clunkier than what I have been reading otherwise, and I found myself taking it seriously but not sure when and where to read it. It was also hard because the character of Emil Sinclair's coming of age in no way related to my own that I felt even more foreign to the story and the events that were happening in it. I can say that I walk away from this book with the utmost respect for Hesse but also a fear for myself in completing this project in a timely manner. Now off to read...

Quote: "The end begins."

Seventy-Fourth Book

2006-04-13T16:51:00.000-04:00

Morvern Callar : Alan Warner
Anchor : 1997
Bought at Strand Book Store for $1.00+

Started 4.6.06
Finished 4.11.06

The Line: "Bare, sitting on a beach with bluey sea so lovely like in brochures, the horse heads came out of the water but fixed to men bodies. All the bare bodies had a hand missing. The menhorses walked up and surrounded me. Blood came from the missing hands when they turned me over to attack" (45).

Jealous the whole time.
I too want a lover to
hack into pieces.

Seventy-Third Book

2006-04-05T14:08:00.000-04:00

The Tombs Of Atuan : Ursula K. Le Guin
Simon Pulse : 2003
Bought at Housing Works Used Book Cafe for $2.00+
Recommended by Peter Rothbart

Started 4.2.06
Finished 4.5.06

The Line: "Full of vision, his eyes gazed through the black paintings on the walls, through the walls and the earth and the darkness, seeing the open sea stretch unbroken to the sunset, the golden dragons on the golden wind" (104).

I still get chills when
I read about dragons. What
can I say? They're hot.

Seventy-Second Book

2006-04-03T14:20:00.000-04:00

Lenny Bruce Is Dead : Jonathan Goldstein
Counterpoint : 2006
Bought at Mercer Books for $3.95

Started 3.29.06
Finished 3.31.06

The Line: "Sex at eighteen had been like eating saltines over the sink in the middle of the night, petting a dog to make someone happy, saying hello over and over, faster and faster, eating a sandwich with tiny bites until you reach a point where you think you're never going to finish" (127).

I can't think of a
haiku that doesn't mention
sex or yogurt. See?!

Book 19

2006-04-03T11:14:00.000-04:00

The Dogs of Bedlam Farm by Jon Katz
2004: Random House
265 pages
Recommended by Sara Newman
Began: 27 March 2006
Finished: 3 April 2006

I am not one to shy away from books about dogs except for my personal fear that I may be one of those obsessive people about dog fans. Fortunately, Jon Katz writes about those people here in this book and my love for dogs has not, and hopefully will never, reached that point of fanaticism. For as much as I love dogs, it is not the same reading about other dogs when there is not one curled at my feet. This book grew on me. At first I was reading to read, to get back on track with this project, to get more books under my belt. But somewhere in that reading I then began to actually become interested in what I was reading and cared about Katz and his unmanageable sheep farm and herding dogs. It was a quick read and one that I may not take with me across years (or even months) but if you approach reading like watching TV and want some entertainment on a sunny afternoon in the park, then here it is. I still wish I had a dog too.

Quote: "I also happily do my work amid almost indescribable chaos, and no matter what's happening outside, I'm always happy and engaged to be telling my story."

Book 18

2006-03-30T16:49:00.000-05:00

Edinburgh by Alexander Chee
2001: Welcome Rain
212 pages
Recommended by Maya Haynes
Began: 27 March 2006
Finished 30 March 2006

There is a beauty in the familiar and there is little of that in this book for me. Where that known andd comfort did come in was in the detailed and exacting placement of events and names of cities in Maine. There was much of this book I did not want to let in, did not want to let in to my mornings and afternoons, despite the ease and addictive power of the prose. Where I was happy to linger and dwell was in the Maine roads of Munjoy Hill and Two Lights. I waivered with this book from hating all that it brought to me in terms of difficult matters but then I got hooked and found beautiful writing and layering of English. But there was so much to make your head swim in a sinking way here. So much to not know whether you were being led astray or in a path to salvation from it all. I am glad to have read this, stayed up late in bed being sucked in by it all, but not without struggle and frustration.

Quote: "Besides, nothing would ever get started if we didn't first attach romance."

Seventy-First Book

2006-03-29T16:36:00.000-05:00

On Walking In Ice : Werner Herzog
Jonathan Cape : 1991
Bought from Rogue Books for $38.25

Started 3.28.06
Finished 3.29.06

The Line: "The soles burn from the red-hot core in the earth's interior. The loneliness is deeper than usual today. I'm developing a dialogical rapport with myself. Rain can leave a person blind" (65).

Werner just made my
list of people I'll mourn when
they die. If he dies.

Seventieth Book

2006-03-29T15:15:00.000-05:00

The Melancholy Of Anatomy : Shelley Jackson
Anchor : 2002
Bought at Strand Book Store for $6.00

Started 3.24.06
Finished 3.27.06

The Line: "When she got home, she started a letter to her girlfriend. An old-fashioned letter, on paper. She signed her name at the bottom. But when she lifted her pen, she pulled her signature straight. Then all her words unraveled. The letters lost their loops and slithered right off the page" (126).

New content added
to the image lexicon:
blood-filled skyscraper.

Sixty-Ninth Book

2006-03-27T13:31:00.000-05:00

As She Climbed Across The Table : Jonathan Lethem
Vintage : 1997
Bought at Strand Book Store for $6.00+
Recommended by Crystal Hernandez

Started 3.22.06
Finished 3.23.06

The Line: "Cynthia, can't you see I'm operating at a disadvantage? Everyone around has a theory or an obsession. I'm making it up as I go along" (116).

I empathized with
the blind pair: one black, one white,
but not knowing which.

Book 17

2006-03-23T21:55:00.000-05:00

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
1999: The Modern Library
231 pages
Recommended by Noah Amos
Began: 15 March 2006
Finished: 26 March 2006

If I were to send you a postcard from Winesburg, Ohio, it would go something along the lines of this: Greetings from a small town in the the Middle West! I have gone back in time and where quaint should be found, characters and eccentrics linger. The townfolk are raging with hormones and activities of a metropolitan sort seem to be happening behind close blinds and empty fields. The men are nervy, pervy and wry. The woman are wanton, bent, and dry. Everyone seemst o be racing to age of maturity or death. I am taking the train out of here. See you soon.

Quote: "With me it's different."

Sixty-Eighth Book

2006-03-22T10:21:00.000-05:00

Take The Cannoli : Sarah Vowell
Simon & Schuster : 2000
Bought at Strand Book Store for $4.95+
Recommended by Jackie O

Started 3.18.06
Finished 3.21.06

The Line: "Once a family member hits puberty, odds are that everybody is not going to have the same ideals. Unless everybody gets together and agrees that the new ideals involve turning the front yard into a skate ramp and officially changing Dad's name to Fuckhead" (120).

I want to see some
pictures of Sarah Vowell
at a goth nightclub.

Sixty-Seventh Book

2006-03-18T16:15:00.000-05:00

A Clockwork Orange : Anthony Burgess
Ballantine : 1980
Bought at 7th Avenue Books for $2.50+

Started 3.11.06
Finished 3.17.06

The Line: "And I was given a nice warm dressing-gown too and lovely toofles to put my bare nogas in, and I thought: 'Well, Alex boy, little 6655321 as was, you have copped it lucky and no mistake. You are really going to enjoy it here'" (97).

I first heard the term
"ultra-violence" from a
Canadian band.

Book 16

2006-03-16T13:40:00.000-05:00

The Giver by Lois Lowry
1993: Houghton Mifflin
192 pages
Recommended by Julie Kessler
Began: 13 March 2006
Finished: 15 March 2006

Last winter I spent a couple of weeks reading some short stories by Banana Yoshimoto about religious cults and fantasized alternative religions (if such things exist- remember it was a book of fiction). Now, with winter still lingering, I found myself amidst another surreal community, this time a utopian one devised by Lois Lowry. Both books, both themes, are a little creepy to me no matter what good intentions they hold. Also, like most Young Adult books, this one lists the age it is intended for. The publisher states that this book is for 12-14 year olds and while I am sure this book is written for 12-14 year olds, I wonder what they make of it. I also learned from the publisher/copywrite page that if you write about utopian communities then your book will be considered science fiction. What this book had was a warmth and a great way of unfolding not only the truth behind the community's secrets and origins, but also the discovery, maturity, and humanity of the main character. This book was greatly addicting for all of its uncomfortable and difficult moments.

Quote: "I accept your apology."

Book 15

2006-03-12T16:35:00.000-05:00

Flour Babies by Anne Fine
1992: Laurel Leaf Books
178 pages
Recommended by Sara Newman
Began: 10 March 2006
Finished: 12 March 2006

Sara found this book for me after I did the Flour Baby Project (or experiment to use a better term). If there is one thing I do not want to have happen this year, or next year, or last year, is dealing with the pregnancy of one of my students. That, and the fact that in the last five years, my friends have started having families of their own, I have seen the struggles, long hours, and demands that raising children has placed on them. I can barely imagine it in my own life, let alone having a baby as a teen (with a teacher like me yelling at them all day about the importance of things like Animal Farm). So in that spirit, my students embarked on the very project that the troublesome boys of this novel undertook. I can't quite tell, or remember, if my students were as funny and unwittingly charming, about the experiment as the boys of this book, but here and there I get little hints from them that the project did its trick and that they realize parenthood is more than just a cute little boy or girl (or bag of flour). As a teacher though, I am glad that my students didn't get the same idea as the protagonist as to what to do with the bags of flour at the end of the project. And little do my students know that their "babies" turned into delicious batches of chocolate chip cookies.

Quote: "The more you thought about it, the more extraordinary it was, this business of having babies. No doubt about it, it was dangerous."

Sixty-Sixth Book

2006-03-11T00:58:00.000-05:00

Nine Stories : J.D. Salinger
Little, Brown : 1991
Bought at Seventh Avenue Books for $2.50+
Recommended by Hillary Dickerson

Started 3.9.06
Finished 3.10.06

The Line: "All the same, though, I whereever I happen to be I don't think I'm the type that doesn't even lift a finger to prevent a wetting from flatting. Accordingly, I've gone ahead and jotted down a few revealing notes on the bride as I knew her almost six years ago. If my notes should cause the groom, whom I haven't met, an uneasy moment or two, so much the better" (87).

Oh Teddy. I can't
stop thinking about you. This
promise is for keeps.

Book 14

2006-03-10T09:27:00.000-05:00

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
1980: Vintage Inernational
135 pages
Recommended by Jamie York
Began: 7 March 2006
Finished: 10 March 2006

I finished this book not an hour ago, when the sun was still coming up, and nothing of the day had happened yet to affect what had happened while I slept. It took only a description, written so elegantly but the author, of a dog howling to fill my eyes with water. And it took only 135 pages to make me feel like I won't look at things quite the same way again. There will be shadows with me today of the characters of this book and the words written that matched them so well.

Quote: "We were both creatures of the period."

Book 13

2006-03-07T20:37:00.000-05:00

The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe
1964: Vintage International
241 pages
Recommended by Noah Amos
Began: 2 March 2006
Finished: 7 March 2006

I jumped into The Woman in the Dunes as eager as the amateur entomologist protagonist bounded through the seaside dunes in search of sand beetles. But as Niki Jumpei gets caught in the little sandtrap, I also was snagged in the nuances of the emotions and pressures of this book. As each day passes for the main character and his mood, perception, and circumstances shift minutely yet drastically as the sands, I also felt the grit and the struggle. I understood every word of this book and each sentence. However, I didn't always feel like the author and I were understanding one another or that I was everything being told to me. At least I wasn't always understanding why- why the events were happening, why everything was so maddening, why it was all written. And yet there I was, mimicking the emotions of the main character as if by nature. He was a man looking for a bug who became trapped just like one. And I was a reader looking for an adventure who became ensnared by Abe's words.

Quote: " But what could be so displeasing to them about "Hope?""

Sixty-Fifth Book

2006-03-07T14:56:00.000-05:00

The Story Of The Eye : Georges Bataille
Penguin : 1982
Bought at Seventh Avenue Books for $4.00+

Started 3.5.06
Finished 3.6.06

The Line: "But as of then, no doubt existed for me: I did not care for what is known as 'pleasures of the flesh' because they really are insipid; I cared only for what is classified as 'dirty'."

I'll never look at
a bull the same after this.
Or a church. Or eggs.

Sixty-Fourth Book

2006-03-04T21:54:00.000-05:00

The Rendezvous : Justine Lévy
Scribner : 1999
Bought at Strand Book Store for $5.50+

Started 3.3.06
Finished 3.4.06

The Line: "I've done some stupid things, but I've calmed down, I've thought a lot about it, you have to come back, you're my child, my little girl, I love you, come on, we'll play jokes on the telephone the way we used to. Come on, my dear, my little tiny child, come on. Let's try it. Give me a week, just one week. We'll make up for lost time, all those years of craziness. Come on, come on" (45).

Lydia Davis.
The translator of this was
Lydia Davis.

Sixty-Third Book

2006-03-02T14:37:00.000-05:00

Taking Care : Joy Williams
Vintage : 1985
Bought at Strand Book Store for $5.50+
Recommended by Liz Woodbury

Started 2.23.06
Finished 3.2.06

The Line: "There are three things that Kathering feels are very nice about the turkey. One is the way sunlight falls through his red wattles, making them almost transparent. Two are the sounds he makes which are a cross between an electronic game and a mourning dove. And the third is that Katherine likes his feet very much" (161).

Lizzie: which story
did you once tell me was loved
by your dear Scott Heim?

Book 12

2006-03-01T11:26:00.000-05:00

How To Be Good by Nick Hornby
2001: Riverhead Books
305 pages
Recommended by Erika Tuttle
Began: 25 February 2006
Finished: 1 March 2006

Written on the first page of this book in black pen were the words "facetious" and "parodic." Since the first page of this book is the one where reviews from newspapers are written I was left wondering if these handwritten words were the previous owners own comments, traits for me to watch for, or just quite notes. Either way, that is how I started my time with this book and it is also how I start this posting. I hated this book and I am trying to figure out why. Is it facetious and parodic or is it that I used to love Nick Hornby back when I was young and Hornby was young and he wrote books about boy things like football and fans but showed those boy things in boys that were sensitive and heartbroken. But now I am older. And so is Hornby and this book is narrated by someone older, with kids and an un-boy like husband, and I could not for the life of me like the main character. I wanted to like the main character, I really did, mainly because for the life of me I could not like the other characters either. I got tired reading this and while there were moments- shiny and bright- that made me laugh and snort and sigh, the rest made me read fast and yawn. Save me from talking about the title and making some quippy comment.

Quote: "I don't want David to be David anymore."

Book 11

2006-02-26T18:13:00.000-05:00

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
2000: Ecco
302 pages
Recommended by Indira Wiegand
Began: 19 February 2006
Finished: 25 February 2006

I work a job where I am nice. I am helpful, and patient, and kind. I refrain, or at least strongly try to, from saying bad words, getting hurt, enjoying anyone else's pain, or throwing things. I have however worked in kitchens. I have worked in kitchen that have ranged from school cafeteria to college pub and bistro to fancy-ass sit-downs. Reading Kitchen Confidential reminded me what it was like to be in jobs where decorum and civility is often thrown out the window by educated and talented people and that tempers and blood pressures are even hotter than the skillets on the oven. This book was also my companion while travelling, and eating, in another country, far far away from New York City, and I must admit it relieved some of the pressure. I didn't have to think twice about what I ate and what Bourdain (who I have seen on tv in all of his foul mouth, eating savagely glory) would say about the establishment. So I ate with relish, and humour, and passion, and remembered the good-not-so-good-old days.

Quote: "It was a plum job..."

Sixty-Second Book

2006-02-23T15:58:00.000-05:00

The Colossus Of New York : Colson Whitehead
Anchor : 2003
Borrowed from Sarra Alpert

Started 2.21.06
Finished 2.23.06

The Line: "Wow, this crappy performance art is really making me feel not so terrible about my various emotional issues. He has to duck out early to get back to his bad art. Three cheers for your rich interior life, may it serve you well come rent day" (128).

Is this a good book.
Do you need question marks when
you know the answer.

Sixty-First Book

2006-02-21T14:56:00.000-05:00

The Wavering Knife : Brian Evenson
FC2 : 2004
Bought at Seventh Street Books for $5.00+

Started 2.17.06
Finished 2.21.06

The Line: "She had not managed to cut the head all the way off but had gotten pretty far, and the oldest girl had gone to Church herself for enough years to know that nobody who wanted to cut their head off as bad as that was going anywhere near heaven" (22).

If Matthew Barney
makes Bjork's dreams, then Evenson
must make her nightmares.

Book 10

2006-02-18T09:35:00.000-05:00

Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
1994: Vintage International
393 pages
Recommended by Julie Kessler
Began: 13 February 2006
Finished: 17 February 2006

For some people it is crime and detective novels while other it is chick-lit. For me, when I am looking for comfort and the instant return to enjoyment, I seek out Murakami. There is no reason to find peace in these books but from page one of the first book of his I read, I implicitly trusted him as a writer and where he was taking me. I felt no questions and doubt even though I cannot say that there is anything in his books that necessarily put a person at ease. But yet, I returned to Murakami again to find the strange familiar in all of the municipal pools, women in blue dresses, rooms that lead to other worlds and the subconscious, psychics and prostitutes. From Tokyo to Hokkaido to Hawaii, I was taken on a ride that I was never too sure where it was going but never was bothered by feeling I was in the dark. There were moments in reading Dance Dance Dance where I felt honest fear, that kind of fear that makes you turn off the lights or pay special attention to the creaking wind, but now that I am finished I feel calm and while the novel did not wrap up neatly, it did end with the protagonist, and me, shedding inhibitions and settling down.

Quote: "What, you may ask, is an "act akin to dreaming"?"

Sixtieth Book

2006-02-17T00:34:00.000-05:00

A Small Place : Jamaica Kincaid
FSG : 2000
Borrowed from Sarra Alpert

Started 2.16.06
Finished 2.16.06

The Line: "Do you ever wonder why some people blow things up? I can imagine that if my life had taken a certain turn, there would be the Barclays Bank, and there I would be, both of us in ashes" (26).

And for my next trick
I will fail to relieve my
great white guilt. Stunning!

Fifty-Ninth Book

2006-02-16T15:55:00.000-05:00

Lust : Elfriede Jelinek
Serpent's Tail : 1992
Bought at Seventh Ave Books for $6.00+

Started 2.5.06
Finished 2.14.06

The Line: "The fist knocks the woman senseless against the railing. She has left the last of the cottages far behind now. The children's babble told clearly of how wonderful life is if you let circumstances pull the wool over your eyes" (72).

The end of this book
is nearly as frightening
as the rest of it.

Books 3-9

2006-02-12T12:36:00.000-05:00

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

Book One: The Magician's Nephew
1955: Scholastic
202 pages
Began: 14 January 2006
Finished: 16 January 2006

Book Two: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
1950: Scholastic
189 pages
Began: 16 January 2006
Finished: 18 January 2006

Book Three: The Horse and His Boy
1954: Scholastic
224 pages
Began: 18 January 2006
Finished: 26 January 2006

Book Four: Prince Caspian
1951: Scholastic
223 pages
Began: 26 January 2006
Finished: 30 January 2006

Book Five: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
1952: Scholastic
248 pages
Began: 30 January 2006
Finished: 5 February 2006

Book Six: The Silver Chair
1953: Scholastic
243 pages
Began: 5 February 2006
Finished: 8 February 2006

Book Seven: The Last Battle
1956: Scholastic
211 pages
Began: 9 February 2006
Finished: 12 February 2006

Recommended by Rachel and Sean Murphy

I never read these as a child. For whatever reason they never reached my hand by friend or gift and I was pleasantly occupied with Louisa May Alcott and Beverly Cleary. At some point it seemed to late to go back so when these were recommended I went for it as I had seen endless previews for the movie over the holiday and admittedly, because as they are children's books, I assumed I would fly through them in a flurry of a weekend knocking out seven books in my wake. A month later I am happily finished and while I entered Narnia with full force I feel as if I have spent a year of fourth-grade life in this one month. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is a great book and the folklore mixed with British charm made me love the children Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. The witch was scary, the humor was keen, Aslan was noble and there was a sense of right and wrong and justice. I felt great reading this book (volume two of the series) and I wondered often what it would have been like to read as a kid. Other stories found in The Dawn Treader and The Horse and His Boy kept my attention and made me feel like I was on a grand adventure and the lore worked its way with me. However, Narnia lost me here and there and I looked forward to finishing and whether it is because I grew up or the Christian over/undertones that I had heard so much about became apparent, I was happy to end the later volumes and hurriedly get through the next. Now I put Narnia behind me to move onto other fantasies and distant realities.

Quote: "A jolly good hoax..."

Fifty-Eighth Book

2006-02-05T17:55:00.000-05:00

The Middle Stories : Sheila Heti
McSweeney's : 2002
Bought at Strand Book Store for $1.00+

Started 2.3.06
Finished 2.4.06

The Line: "What right had he to kill himself when there were stars in the sky, twinkling all innocent and not noticing him and noticing nothing. They were suspended so far and so beautifully and here he was putting himself on the road to get run over when he didn't even mean it" (14).

You don't need to give
me another reason to
move to Toronto.

Fifty-Seventh Book

2006-02-04T12:33:00.000-05:00

A Room Of One's Own : Virginia Woolf
Harcourt : 1957
Bought at Housing Works Used Book Cafe for $1.00+

Started 2.1.06
Finished 2.3.06

The Line: "I need hardly multiply instances of the undeniable, if very unfortunate, fact that it is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others" (58).

I am three hundred
forty pounds shy of having
my own room. Hooray!

Fifty-Sixth Book

2006-01-31T17:48:00.000-05:00

Whatever : Michel Houellebecq
Serpent's Tail : 1998
Bought at Park Slope Books for $6.00+

Started 1.28.06
Finished 1.31.06

The Line: "The next morning I got up early, I arrived in good time for the first train; I bought a ticket, waited, and didn't get on it; and I can't for the life of me think why. It's all very unpleasant" (71).

I can't fit the word
"psychoanalysis" on
any other line.

Fifty-Fifth Book

2006-01-28T17:53:00.000-05:00

Murderers I Have Known : Marina Warner
Vintage UK : 2003
Bought at Strand Book Store for $3.50+

Started 1.26.05
Finished 1.28.05

The Line: "He has a kind of fresh briny smell as if he had been swiming in some sea before the motor car was invented, before the industrial revolution, when the word pollution merely meant ritual defilement, menstruating girls in temples, not soapy poisons frothing on the tideline and the river banks" (39).

A bowl of ice cubes
flipped upside down put the peace
in Medusa's laugh.

Fifty-Fourth Book

2006-01-26T14:21:00.000-05:00

Herzog : Saul Bellow
Penguin : 1976
Bought at Twelfth Street Books for $3.00+
Recommended by Michael Powell

Started 1.11.06
Finished 1.26.06

The Line: "The only truly interesting side of the matter was the intimate design of the injury, the fact that it was so penetrating, custom-made exactly to your measure. It's fascinating that hatred should be so personal as to be almost loving. The knife and the wound aching for each other" (189).

Should I feel guilty
for loving the ol' canon
as much as I do?

Book 2

2006-01-14T13:06:00.001-05:00

Waiting by Ha Jin
1999: Pantheon Books
308 pages
Recommended by Josh Tillinghast
Began: 8 January 2006
Finished: 14 January 2006

There seems to be a constant push to move forward, to go, to do, to make, to be, to become, and in that drive and unconscious stumble, there is the time unaccounted for that goes along with it. Waiting, even in it's title, addresses that time and centralizes it around the character of Lin Kong and his passing years. He ages and never stops, least of all to reflect on himself above and beyond everything else. Perhaps the act of waiting, (the minutes in line at the cafe, the long train ride to work, the quiet corner while waiting for a friend that I find the time to read, or the waiting for the actions and concrete decisions of lovers like in the book), is more than just that after all.

Quote: "His heart was full, and he was breathing heavily."

Fifty-Third Book

2006-01-12T13:18:00.000-05:00

Riddley Walker : Russell Hoban
Summit : 1980
Bought at Strand Book Store for $1.00+
Recommended by Ben Ehrenreich

Started 1.4.06
Finished 1.11.06

The Line: "Then thay dogs begun tu tel uv tym tu cum. Thay sed, The lan wil dy & thay peapl wil eat 1 a nuther. The water wil be poysen & the peapl wil drink blud" (32).

A world where trees write
dictionaries, where stone smiles.
Get the idea?

Book 1

2006-01-08T21:02:00.000-05:00

On Beauty by Zadie Smith
2005: The Penguin Press
446 pages
Christmas present from Mom
Began: 2 January 2006
Finished: 8 January 2006

The New Year brought with it the return to New York, the end of a week of vacation, the relentless work week and 50 books waiting to be read. And with the first week of 2006 past, so is my first book read. It feels like a dare within a dare to begin with a 400 and a half page book but The Belseys and the Kippses of On Beauty sucked me right in and hopefully set the pace of my next six months. Turning the last page of a book and closing the cover usually causes me to feel torn between two immediate actions. The first is sitting still with my eyes closed and taking in all that I just read and the end of the experience fully feeling the loss of characters who had become as intimate to me as any friend or family. The other is to run out to find another book that will keep momentum going of getting lost in a world that provides both escape and meaning. This project denies both of these as there really is none of the typical time to reflect as the calendar is shouting "Read, Read, Read" and my list of books is not that of my own trajectory but rather one of recommendations and hidden surpriese. As for On Beauty, I will recommend it to you as it is worth a world to find yourself in, both with all the Howard's End cleverness and without, as well as the modern day look at family, morals, ethics, and relationships.

Quote: "...which sounds bucolic, but boy oh boy is not bucolic in the least..."

Fifty-Second Book

2006-01-04T16:31:00.000-05:00

Child Of God : Cormac McCarthy
Vintage : 1993
Bought at Twelfth Street Books for $4.00+
Recommended by Scott Heim

Started 1.2.06
Finished 1.4.06

The Line: "A crazed gymnast laboring over a cold corpse. He poured into that waxen ear everything he'd ever thought of saying to a woman. Who could say she did not hear him?" (89).

Thank you for this, Scott:
The living loving the dead
(Might have warned me though).

Fifty-First Book

2006-01-03T11:44:00.000-05:00

Clumsy : Jeffrey Brown
2002
Bought at Strand Book Store for $1.00+
Recommended by Amanda Patten

Started 1.2.06
Finished 1.2.06

The Line:

It's a love story
told by an armadillo
who has lost its shell.

Chapter Two

2006-01-01T12:21:00.000-05:00

The second chapter of the One Hundred Books project begins today with a quote from Franz Kafka: "A book should be an axe to shatter the frozen sea inside us."

Joining the project is Erin Dowding, who has pledged to read fifty books by June 30th, 2006. Looking forward to the new year, new books, new haiku, new readers, and the new you.

Affectionately yours,

Sabbatical

2005-07-06T12:12:00.000-04:00

Due to foreseen circumstances, One Hundred Books now enters a six-month sabbatical, wherein I will participate in a few other relevant projects. Much gratitude to those who have participated in One Hundred Books through donations and support, and big love to the readers who recommended books for the project. Please leave comments, book suggestions, and the PINs to your debit cards. We will reconvene right here in January 2006.

Thank you for your attention.

Fiftieth Book

2005-07-06T09:42:00.000-04:00

My Date With Satan : Stacey Richter
Scribner : 1999
Donated by Elisa Albert

Started 7.1.05
Finished 7.1.05

The Line: "There's something oddly beautiful about the way he can't sit still and can't complete a thought and can't finish exhaling before he inhales, and even though it's likely he'll spend most of his life in jail, and fucking deserves it, at this point in his development it seems entirely obvious that he's a wonder of creation anyway -- graceful and predatory, like a shark" (93).

"Goal 666" made
me laugh so hard I forgot
how sad it made me.

Forty-Ninth Book

2005-07-05T09:26:00.000-04:00

Automated Alice : Jeff Noon
Corgi : 1997
Bought at Strand Book Store for $3.50+

Started 6.30.05
Finished 7.1.05

The Line: "The first victim was a young Spiderboy, name of Quentin Tarantula. He was a Chimera artiste, famous for his violent, celebratory portrayal of the criminal life. I must admit that I won't be shedding any tears at his demise. That kind of Chimera show shouldn't be allowed" (108).

On a scale from one
to ten, is "cyberpunk" a
dirty word? Check one.

Forty-Eighth Book

2005-07-05T09:13:00.000-04:00

A Wizard Of Earthsea : Ursula K. Le Guin
Bantam Spectra : 1984
Bought at Better World Books for $1.75+
Recommended by Peter Rothbart

Started 6.30.05
Finished 6.30.05

The Line: "He saw that in this dusty and fathomless matter of learning the true name of every place, thing, and being, the power he wanted lay like a jewel at the bottom of a dry well. For magic consists in this, the true naming of a thing" (46).

In my youth, I carved
many a wizard staff. Where
are they now? (Right here!)

Forty-Seventh Book

2005-07-05T08:52:00.000-04:00

A Voice Through A Cloud : Denton Welch
Dutton : 1966
Bought at Better World Books for $2.22+
Recommended by Travis Catsull

Started 6.29.05
Finished 6.30.05

The Line: "He had worn such a look when he showed me his black drawings. The drawings themselves were grim enough to have been done with a corpse's dirty finger-nail split down the middle and dipped in the excrement of cockroaches" (79).

Dude complains a bit,
but can't blame him, his being,
you know, dead and all.

Forty-Sixth Book

2005-06-30T09:15:00.000-04:00

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.

Forty-Fifth Book

2005-06-30T08:59:00.000-04:00

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.)

Forty-Fourth Book

2005-06-29T10:08:00.000-04:00

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.

Forty-Third Book

2005-06-29T09:39:00.000-04:00

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.

Forty-Second Book

2005-06-27T14:51:00.000-04:00

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.

Forty-First Book

2005-06-27T14:25:00.000-04:00

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.

Fortieth Book

2005-06-21T09:42:00.000-04:00

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.

Thirty-Ninth Book

2005-06-20T13:15:00.000-04:00

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?

Thirty-Eighth Book

2005-06-17T14:44:00.000-04:00

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.

Thirty-Seventh Book

2005-06-14T14:37:00.000-04:00

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.

Thirty-Sixth Book

2005-06-14T09:33:00.000-04:00

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.

Thirty-Fifth Book

2005-06-04T13:18:00.000-04:00

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!).

Thirty-Fourth Book

2005-05-31T12:30:00.000-04:00

The Society Of The Spectacle : Guy Debord
Zone : 2002
Borrowed from Daniel Pepice

Started 5.21.05
Finished 5.28.05

The Line: "...as we know, modern society's obsession with saving time, whether by means of faster transport or by means of powdered soup, has the positive result that the average American spends three to six hours daily watching television" (112).

Manifesto of
revolting or revolting
manifesto? Zing!

Thirty-Third Book

2005-05-24T09:25:00.000-04:00

Beautiful Blemish : Kevin Sampsell
Word Riot : 2005
Bought at Happy Ending Reading Series for $9.00

Started 5.21.05
Finished 5.21.05

The Line: "She is so skinny. Something about her skinniness made me want to stick her entirely in my mouth, like a shark swallowing a Barbie doll" (33).

It makes me believe
in truth, eager and afraid.
My mannequin smile.