Crystal Jackson

Archive for the ‘books’ Category

book giveaway

In books, cabin in the woods on February 19, 2012 at 11:27 am

It’s time for another book giveaway. As with the last giveaway–Travels with Charley–this book is one that I have an emotional connection to. A book that transports me away from where I’m sitting each time I open it up. The book = Tiny Homes – Simple Shelter by Lloyd Kahn.

I’ve often mentioned Lloyd Kahn, a writer/builder/creator/small house movement leader/badass dude. He posts in his blog every day, often more than once, sharing stories about life in N. California. He has a zest for living that I find inspiring, and I aspire to be a little bit like Lloyd in my daily life – noticing beauty, enjoying other people’s talents, paying attention to the details, dreaming, taking risks, making shit happen.

Tiny Homes – Simple Shelter was released last month and is already in its second printing. One reason the book is so popular is it embodies the housing/lifestyle movement of the moment, as people look to get out from under suffocating mortgages and simplify their lives. Another reason for its popularity is that it’s a beautiful book–gorgeous, glowing and green. Even if small houses aren’t your thing, you can enjoy it from a purely artistic standpoint. And I think by the end of the book, you’d find that maybe you are sort of interested in small dwellings.

Here’s a video featuring Lloyd discussing the making of the book.

If you want to see what it is I keep prattling on about and would like your own copy of Tiny Homes, leave a comment on this post about a dream that you have for the future. Big, little, crazy or sane. Whatever you feel like sharing. I’ll pick a person at random next Sunday to receive the book. Make sure to give your real email address when you leave your comment (only I will be able to see it), but feel free to leave a fake name if you’re shy.

I’ll start. Some day, I want to live in a place with no mortgage. Where the area outside my home is as much a part of my house as the inside is. A clutter-free space with room to breathe, lovely views, a fireplace, a bed in a cozy nook, lots of books and music, dogs and James. And wifi. The air is crisp and green. There’s water nearby. Ideally, this place will have been built with my two hands and my back, and the hands and backs of people close to me. It’s located within an hour of a major city, but far enough out that the sheer volume of stars is overwhelming and humbling. A place where the zombie apocalypse probably won’t reach.

Your turn.

2011 year in review: books

In books, holidays, lists on December 31, 2011 at 2:06 pm

This is the first year I tried to write down the title of each book I read. Probably missed a few but this is the bulk of them, in the order in which they were read. (A note on the links – I rarely linked to a place to just purchase the book but instead included something interesting about the writer or the work itself. What I’m saying is, check out some of the links. They won’t take you to Amazon.com.)

  • Travels With Charley: In Search of America – John Steinbeck. I was so excited about this book, I offered a couple of copies to readers of this blog. Then I found out about the controversy.
  • The Braindead Megaphone – George Saunders. I have read every Saunders book I could get my hands on, and, with the exception of one, loved all of them. He’s wonderfully absurd, touching, sarcastic, pessimistic and hopeful.
  • Trout Fishing in America – Richard Brautigan. I don’t remember much about this book except I kept expecting to like it more.
  • Full Dark, No Stars – Stephen King. A collection of four novellas. I think the thing I was left with after reading it was, “Man, that sure was dark.”
  • Robinson Jeffers, Poet of California – James Karman. After vising Jeffers’ beautiful homestead, which he built in Carmel, I was excited to learn more about the man. Much of his writing is nature-wild and sad, and when you realize the property that is now surrounded by fancy million dollar (and then some) homes was once all by itself, you get a better feel for the place he was (literally and figuratively) as he wrote. Craggy, foggy coast. Few trees. A sign on the fence that said, “Back at 4PM” or something like that to keep people away during the day while he worked. Lots of booze. Obsession with building by hand with large stones. Love of hawks and other big birds. Deep love for his wife coupled with a fondness for his formerly philandering days. He was an interesting cat, and his house/work directly reflect that.
  • Dress Your Family in Courdoroy and Denim – David Sedaris. A reread of an enjoyable book. Literary version of comfort food.
  • Brave New World – Aldous Huxley. After rereading 1984 a few years back, I decided to revisit a number of the books I read (and didn’t really GET) in high school. This book was another stop on that journey, and Animal Farm is next. Reproductive technology? Intentionally dumbing people down? An overly intrusive government? A doped up society? We’re there, people. And getting more there each day.
  • Post Office – Charles Bukowski. This book may have been the last straw that pushed me to finally leave non-profit development–after a ten-year run–and change careers. If you want to feel suffocated by someone else’s job, read this. You’ll either feel much better about what you’re doing or see it as a cautionary tale and make some changes in your life. (Or, I guess, just feel worse than you already did.)
  • Outrageous Fortune – Todd London and Ben Pesner. Just a little something to remind me of how tough it is out there for a new play. I get it, I get it.
  • Black is the New White – Paul Mooney. Mooney’s commitment to stirring the pot is inspiring. And necessary. His autobiography was enlightening about the scene for black comics coming up through the ’70s to today. It was as much about Mooney as it was about his best friend and collaborator Richard Pryor.
  • Dead Man’s Cellphone – Sarah Ruhl. A play by a favorite playwright. An interesting take on life after death. Ruhl’s play Eurydice (specifically the Alley Theatre’s production) was an inspiration as I wrote The Singularity this year – my first full length play.
  • Bluebeard – Kurt Vonnegut. I didn’t start reading Vonnegut’s work until James and I moved in together and I found myself living with four or five of Vonnegut’s works. This was a grievous oversight on my part as I now count him as one of my favorite writers. This book is a great take on modern art. And his repeated usage of the descriptive term “babyshit brown” made me laugh. (The narrator talks about having just bought a suit that he thought looked pretty sharp. As he’s walking down the street, a couple of cops grab him, thinking he is  the guy who just robbed a bank, about whom they know very little. “All that anybody could tell us about him,” one of them said to me, “was that his suit was babyshit brown.”)
  • Last Days of Judas Iscariot – Stephen Adly Guirgis. The first play I’ve read by Guirgis. Loved it and will read more. He recently found out about some shitty casting of his play The Motherfucker with the Hat and let ‘er rip on the theater, which put a couple of white folks into lead roles that were specifically Latino. Granted, there may not be a shitload of Puerto Rican actors in Connecticut, but the theatre didn’t audition even one Latino actor. Bad form.
  • Franny and Zooey – JD Salinger. My friend Lisa has “Shine your shoes” tattooed on her wrist, and I’ve always wondered at the meaning of the quote (which is from this book). Now I understand.
  • Chalk Line – Paula LaRocque. LaRocque is a friend of a friend (who turned me on to Paula’s blog about writing a couple of years ago). I was lucky to be able to read an advance copy of LaRocque’s murder mystery, which is a genre I haven’t read in a long time. The book, mostly set in Dallas, was a fast, fun read. Like all good murder mysteries, the tale was full of surprises. I love it when I can’t predict what’s coming.
  • Builders of the Pacific Coast – Lloyd Kahn. Kahn is one of the most inspiring people I know of. I’ve written about him here before. I want to be like him when I grow up. As for the book, it’s delicious eye candy of handbuilt shelters in a lovely part of the country.
  • Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell lets you know that some of the most successful people in the world got that way through dogged determination and hard work, sure, but also because they were in the right place at the right time. Success, according to this book, is often the result of serendipity as much as anything else.
  • Death By Black Hole – Neil DeGrasse Tyson. My favorite astrophysicist. See: the time I met Tyson for a funny story about Tyson and titties. He writes about the cosmos in an accessible, yet not dumbed down, way.
  • The Metamorphosis and Other Stories – Franz Kafka. Trying to catch up on shit I should have read a long time ago or did read a long time ago in a caffeine-induced frenzy before class and didn’t retain. This book was very Kafkaesque. Ha.
  • Hey Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads – Luke Sullivan. Given to me by one of my coworkers, this book is a great introduction to advertising.
  • Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas – Rebecca Solnit. A unique way to view the social history of The City, one of my favorite places.

Books are my favorite possession. I love the way they look, the way they feel in my hand, the fact that so many feature interesting little personal bits between the pages (like a receipt from City Lights or a note that was used as a bookmark). I’m excited that there are currently seven books on my desk waiting to be read. In fact… Happy New Year.

Travels with Charley, redux (the conflicted edition)

In books, question, running away, travel on April 12, 2011 at 1:42 pm

I woke up on the roadside, daydreamin’ ’bout the way things sometimes are. - Dylan

I’ve been caught up in thoughts about honesty and writing, specifically honesty in writing, after my father alerted me to the new-ish controversy surrounding my favorite read of late, Travels with Charley.  A writer set off to follow Steinbeck’s route across the country to document how America had changed over the past 50 years since Steinbeck’s trip. And what he found was that Steinbeck’s timeline didn’t match up (he couldn’t have had the conversations he claimed because certain historical events that were referenced had not yet happened when the conversation supposedly did), he didn’t sleep in the back of his truck, Rocinante, all that much (because he was mostly staying in inns and resorts along the way) and, perhaps most egregious of all, he wasn’t alone with his dog on the majority of the trip (because his wife was sitting next to him in the cab of the truck more than half the time).

Steinbeck says in the beginning of the book that he didn’t take notes on his journey, so I expected that the conversations he printed were a writer’s creative recreations. Unless you have a court reporter or a tape recorder, you can’t accurately write down exactly what you and the other person(s) said five minutes after the conversation, much less days, weeks or months later. So I forgive him any artistic flourishes as long as the sentiment of the thing was accurate. Getting your dates screwed up on a three month trip – also not a big deal. But omitting the part about your wife being along much of the time and staying at inns rather than in your home on wheels, which you had built to your specifications just for this trip? Uncool. And blatantly dishonest, because Steinbeck makes a display of talking about the loneliness of being out on the open road with no one to share the journey or talk to other than the dog. Making up people (characters) encountered along the way when the stated purpose of the book was to get in touch with America?  That’s not an omission of information or a flourish of creativity – that’s plain bullshit.

See, the power of the story is that it was a true tale of a man and his dog, seeing the country and meeting the people, checking in on humanity and the self. It’s a romantic image and an archetype that obviously resonates with a lot of us who’ve read the book. You can see Rocinante in your mind, and you wonder if maybe you could build something like that in the back of your Mazda. Doesn’t have to be fancy because you’ll mostly use it for sleeping. The rest of the time, you’ll be driving the back roads, talking to folks along the way as you stop off for coffee or Cheetos, breathing different air than that to which you are accustomed, letting your mind wander the way it can only when you’re alone and the open road is stretched out before you, beckoning…

The book stoked my extant desire to take my own trip across America while also scratching that itch to get out (just a little bit) because I felt like I was along for Steinbeck’s journey. Travel by proxy. Travels with Charley and Mrs. Steinbeck Across America, Staying at the Finest Inns Along the Way wouldn’t have been the same book. And it most likely wouldn’t have impacted me and so many others to the great degree it did, encouraging each of us to take our own journeys some day. So as a piece of art, it was very effective. And that matters. It counts. Steinbeck and/or his editor knew this, so the parts that didn’t work toward the purpose of the art were dropped. But then, so was the honesty.

I think the book could have been almost as effective if there had been a disclaimer at the front. “This book is mostly true.” You would go into it knowing that maybe he didn’t really meet a Shakespearean actor in the middle of nowhere, and maybe he bathed more than he claimed. And that would be okay. This wasn’t a travelogue or journalism. So the blurring of lines would have been acceptable had it been acknowledged up front instead of exposed half a century later.

This is what I said at the end of my initial post about the book:

After reading Travels with Charley, I’m left with this. Travel. See the countryside. Interact with the people. Take their temperature and, by extension, yours. Note the similarities and differences of place. Enjoy the beauty that the land has to offer. Spend time communing with your dog and with the earth. Take the old highways (not the interstate or the toll road) so you can actually see the countryside. Know when it’s time to go home. And return there gladly.

Those sentiments are still valid. I’m grateful for having read the book. This bit of knowledge doesn’t change the emotional journey I experienced, and it doesn’t change my desire to get out on the open road and see America. But I will make you this promise – when that day comes and I write about my experiences, I will be as honest with you as I can be. I may write myself as thinner and more witty than I am, but I will not lie to you about who else is with me, where I slept, whom I met or what I saw.

Links:

want a copy of Travels with Charley?

In books, running away, travel on January 3, 2011 at 8:59 pm

I so enjoyed John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America that I just purchased two copies to give away on this blog (see end of post for more information). Steinbeck not only identifies something similar to my deep down desire to just Forrest Gump it out of town, but he also gently suggests that being “away” only satisfies for a bit before you find yourself longing for your own bed and your people.

The first few sentences:

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job.

Instead of waiting on senility, Steinbeck decided to go on a 10,000 mile road trip around the country with his dog Charley, starting and ending his journey at his home in Sag Harbor. He knew he’d need a special vehicle for this trip, so he had a truck manufacturer build a home on wheels (not wanting the hassle of pulling a trailer). Having a compact unit made it easier for him to just pull over in a pretty area or when he was too weary to keep driving and camp for the night.

this is Rocinante, the truck and camper that served as Steinbeck's home on the road - he special ordered the camper, asking that its builder create something like the cabin on a small boat - Charley the dog generally rode in the passenger seat of the cab

Steinbeck describing himself:

For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.

Awesome. He says similarly righteous things about his dog Charley, a standard poodle that was blue in color. That man loved his dog. I, of course, kept envisioning my own Travels with Stella: Seeing America with a Ratdog. Coming soon.

Steinbeck and Charley

After reading Travels with Charley, I’m left with this. Travel. See the countryside. Interact with the people. Take their temperature and, by extension, yours. Note the similarities and differences of place. Enjoy the beauty that the land has to offer. Spend time communing with your dog and with the earth. Take the old highways (not the interstate or the toll road) so you can actually see the countryside. Know when it’s time to go home. And return there gladly.

the interior of Rocinante, now stationed at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas (if I'd read this book just a few weeks ago, I would have taken the time to visit Rocinante when we were in California - the museum is just 20 or so miles from Carmel) - love the dog-themed curtains and great use of space

Links:

  • National Steinbeck Center
  • Not even in the same universe as Rocinante, but you can get a tent for your pickup (so you don’t have to sleep on the ground) for amazingly little money. If you don’t have a pickup, you can get a tent that sets up on the ground but attaches to the ass end of your SUV (the back doors of which would open directly into the tent).
  • I’ve shared a link to this site before – it’s a place to buy a small pop up camper trailer that can be pulled by a motorcycle or small car. Even my Mazda!

BOOK GIVEAWAY: If you’d like a copy of Travels with Charley, please leave a comment on this post about your wanderlust – tell me where you want to go and why or share a story about where you’ve been and what you found. If, by the grace of something, more than two of you share a story, I’ll find some way to randomly choose two of you and will email you for your mailing address.

a quiet week off (and that’s just fine)

In books, holidays, travel on December 30, 2010 at 8:01 pm

This has been a quiet week off. James is under the weather, so things in the house are abnormally quiet. No music playing, no TV in the background, very little talking.  I’ve spent my time reading, relaxing and not being online. When I have been at my computer, I’ve been working on my new play and not doing much in the way of blogging or emailing. And I’ve gotten together with friends for lunch every day this week – some are in town from points elsewhere and others are, like me, using the holidays as an excuse to get together. It’s been fun. Laid back and fun, just as a vacation at home should be.

Today I finished reading Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth. I picked it up at the Henry Miller Library on vacation a couple of weeks ago. The girl who checked me out said it was her favorite book, which I took as a compliment to my good taste at the time,  but I’ve since realized that my father might have stopped by before I got there and told her to say that. (see: this blog post – next to last photo caption – for that comment to make sense). What a delightful read. Well, “delightful” probably isn’t the right word. It was a scathing read. An uncomfortable read. A painfully funny read. I haven’t read something with that much masturbation in it in my life. My eye is still stinging…(inside joke).

The book was published in 1969, and I have to assume it raised more than a few eyebrows at the time. It’s full of sex, but it’s not sexy. Especially because of Portnoy’s ever-present, mood-killing parents. [Larry David had to have at least partially based George Costanza's parents on Seinfeld on Portnoy's parents. As I read I kept thinking of this scene from Seinfeld, which I still quote.] If this book hasn’t been done as a stage play yet, it should be. It’s basically a really terrific, hours-long monologue. The narrator is a great character. He’s a self-involved asshole who’s fairly honest with himself about his self-involvement and assholeness. And he wants to change. He just needs to meet the right girl…or…maybe not. I’m pretty sure I dated a 1990′s version of Portnoy. At least one.

Next vacation-purchased book in the hopper: Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck. Dude, he traveled the country with his DOG. I love it already.

A final note about the holidays: I have a highly honed ability to be annoyed by stupid commercials, so it was nice when James found one that bugged the shit out of him. If you don’t feel like clicking, it’s the Hyundai commercial with the hipsters singing monotone Christmas carols, the singer chick having vacant eyes/bangs and the drummer guy wearing skinny jeans/beard. They’re stupid singing hipsters, sure, but the commercial didn’t register on my annoy-a-meter until James said something. The duo is actually a band and not just actors – I just tried watching a video on their website but couldn’t deal with the twee song and the singer chick’s soulless eyes. (Get off my lawn!)

Happy end of 2010. I hope 2011 is a happy and healthy year for you and yours.

wine and Bukowski on a Saturday night

In books, hermit, michael mcdonald on November 20, 2010 at 8:28 pm

You know how the things you do when no one’s watching are often more illuminating of your character than what you do when people are around? Well, James is out of town this weekend, and I poured my first glass of wine today at 4:30PM. So I guess I need to think about what that means. I’m pretty sure it means that I’m awesome.

Speaking of drinking, I added a couple of Charles Bukowski CDs (recordings of him reading his work) to my iPod, and that addition has made my commute to work much more interesting. I’ll listen to three or four (random) minutes of his usually funny, always dark stuff, and then the next thing will be something ridiculous like a Michael McDonald song. One time, Big Poppa came on, and it occurred to me that Bukowski was definitely an Ol’ G.

I was looking around for a poem or two to link to here, but it’s hard finding full works online. Then I ended up on YouTube. There are lots of Bukowski-related videos. There’s even one of Tom Waits reading Bukowski. I guess that was a natural pairing. Check this out – it’s Bukowski bullshitting for a moment, and then he reads The Last Days of the Suicide Kid. (If I had to guess, I’d say that’s a bottle of Schlitz he’s drinking there at the end.) Oh yeah. Yeah.

A friend posted one of those facebook queries the other day – you know, where, in fewer than 15 minutes, you’re supposed to name 15 writers that you dig. The time limit is there so you don’t start googling a list of writers you don’t actually read in an attempt to make yourself seem more well read than you really are. Here was my list: Charles Bukowski, Edward Albee, George Saunders, Stephen King, Lloyd Kahn, David Sedaris, Amy Sedaris, Kurt Vonnegut, Li Po, Sarah Ruhl, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Lewis Black, George Orwell, Jon Stewart, Margaret Cho.

Out of fifteen writers, there are only three women. And Margaret Cho just randomly ended up on the list as writer number 15 – I’ve only read one book of hers. Probably the only book of hers. I think I got stuck after Jon Stewart and thought that I better add another chick. Sometimes I think that I should read more female writers, but I don’t really do affirmative action when it comes to whom I read. I like what I like, you know?

And that’s okay.

cabin in the woods

In books, cabin in the woods, hermit, running away, spooky on July 15, 2010 at 12:38 pm

When I talk about my little writing cabin in the woods, I picture a place sort of like this (except smaller):

cabin in the woods

It has lots of windows, is surrounded by trees and is a beacon in the night. In the case of the cabin above, though, it is also in my living room and is the bottom of a lamp.

cabin in the woods in my living room

My parents gave me this awesome lamp a few months ago. I put it in our living room, which features a large stone fireplace and old school knotty pine paneling. The living room itself is like a fake cabin in the woods in my house, and the lamp is like a little cabin in the woods in my fake cabin in the woods in my house. Trippy. The only catch is, if the bottom of the lamp is the only thing on at night in our dark living room, it takes on an eerie feel and I half-expect a little person to come out the front door in a plaid shirt carrying an axe over his should in search of firewood. Or someone’s head to chop off. Though with an axe that tiny, it would take a lot of chopping. And I’m not even sure how he’d get down from the chest that the lamp sits on, scurry over to me, James or one of the dogs, then manage to climb up to head chopping level and start swinging. Ahhh, now when I hear something in the middle of the night that sounds like tiny, scurrying feet, I’ll be able to roll over and go back to sleep. Lucky me.

Tohner recently alerted me to the fact that Lloyd Kahn has a blog. He’s the guy who did the book Shelter back in the ’70s and since then has published two beautiful books (here and here) that feature homes built by the people who live within them. Many of the dwellings are small or extra-small, and they are the closest thing I have to pornography. (Kahn also wrote The Septic System Owner’s Manual, which I have not read yet and hope never to have a need to read.)

For further small dwelling porn, check out Tiny House Blog, Little House on a Small Planet, Yurts: Living in the Round and, for balance, Unhappy Hipsters.

a vampire at Half-Price Books

In books, douchebags, shopping on September 7, 2008 at 4:04 pm

There’s a vampire working at Half-Price Books on Westheimer in the Montrose. At least, I’m pretty sure HE thinks he’s a vampire. And maybe he is, what the hell do I know. As he rang my purchases, we made small talk. I said that it was amazingly beautiful outside, and I was sorry he was stuck inside. He said, “That’s okay. I can’t be out in the sun. I’m very sensitive to it.” Then I noticed the fangs. Full on, big ass fangs. Was this a lack of braces in his youth? Did he have them implanted? Maybe they just grew that way and he decided that the best way to live with them was to embrace the whole vampire thing? Like fat high school girls who go goth because, really, what are their other options. He then went on to tell me that he views sunny days the way most people view cloudy ones. OKAY, I get it.

If I’m on my yuppie/recycling game when I go book shopping, I bring my own bag. If not, I usually opt to just carry my purchases naked. Partially in an attempt to not be wasteful and partially because I don’t like the dirty looks I get from the help. Yesterday I bought six books, some of which were little old school paperbacks (Henry Miller‘s soft-core Tropic of Cancer, Ionesco’s Rhinoceros and Huxley‘s Brave New World). Decided I needed a bag, so the vampire grabbed one for me. It wasn’t until I got home that I smelled the cat pee. I was bummed, assuming one of my new (old) books had been sprayed by a cat (one of the many, many reasons I have no use for cats). So I smelled each book. No cat pee. Then I wadded up the plastic Half-Price bag and realized THAT is what smelled. The fuck? Are they so against their customers using bags that they are using cat pee plastic? Are they recycling their bags? If so, how did no one notice the overwhelming acrid smell of cat piss? Thankfully it was a short trip home, so my books don’t smell like anthing other than old books.

In a continuation of this Dilettante column, I saw a new commercial using a 60s tune. A hair coloring product for men is using the intro to Sunshine of Your Love. Here’s the ad copy:

The generation that swore it would never get old … didn’t. Welcome to the summer of life. And now there’s an official hair treatment of the summer of your life. New Touch of Gray from Just for Men. Lets you keep a little gray. Works gradually. Just comb in, rinse.

My God. It’s like a Saturday Night Live sketch (only funny).

books books books

In books, Houston, shopping on August 15, 2008 at 7:29 pm

I just popped over to Bookstop at lunch. It’s dangerous for me to go to a bookstore because I always spend too much money and bring home books that I don’t have room for – or, I should say, books that I don’t have shelves for. I can always find a place to stash them. There’s a lot of bitching in this blog about the demise of old Houston. Or what I consider to be “old” Houston – everything’s relative. Every time I go to Bookstop, it pains me to think that it will be at the least closed down and at the most torn down in the not-too-distant future. I wandered around today, trying to figure out what it is that I like about that store, what makes it so much better than a big, bright shiny Barnes and Noble. Was I just following an inner-looper angsty script?

NO. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to bemoan its doom. Beyond the fact that they almost always have in stock whatever I went in there to buy (plus a bunch of other stuff I wasn’t planning on buying), they’re in a recycled building, something that rarely happens in Houston. And because they’re in an old movie theater, there are lots of nooks and crannies, a must for any good bookstore.

[City Lights in San Francisco elevates this to an art form. There are rickety little stairs you go down to get to one of the rooms, and when you get to the bottom stair you feel like you're..somewhere. Not in a generic sense. In an "arrived" sense.]

To buy plays, for instance, you have to go to the upper level, take another short flight up and then go down a short flight to a little room. (Maybe I like stairs to be included in the book buying experience.) You like to have a moment with your books before you buy them, and it’s much better if you have some privacy to do so. You can take your time skimming the book or sniffing the cover or whatever your ritual is without having to worry about the people sitting at Starbucks watching you over the tops of their lattes. Yes, Bookstop has a coffee shop. But the tables are on an aisle, they aren’t pointed at people shopping for books, and it doesn’t seem like an integral part of the operation. Starbucks at a B&N takes up 1/8 of the space. (And yes, I realize B&N owns Bookstop.)

Today I was somewhat restrained. I bought a book for my dad (ignore that, Dad – act surprised when I see you tomorrow), a book for myself and a blank journal. Even though there are probably three or four blank ones at home, if a journal catches my eye I buy it. Sometimes I like to write in a well-worn notebook, and sometimes I need a fresh start. The journal I bought is pretty big and is bound like a book. Its hard cover has a chicken on it. How could I not get it? There will come a day when I need to write something, and that something will only be happy being written in a large chicken journal.

So it goes.

In books on April 12, 2007 at 1:05 pm

This is sad news.

I’ve been thinking about Mr. Vonnegut a lot since reading George Saunders’ book last week. Saunders’ writing really reminds of Vonnegut, more by feel rather than form.

Here’s Vonnegut on the Daily Show.

reading is fundamental

In books on April 6, 2007 at 1:27 am

Lisa gave me George Saunders’ short story collection In Persuasion Nation for my birthday. Wow. The stories are a wonderful amalgam of beautiful moments and frightful visions of the present/future/only-slightly-alternative reality. Saunders shows us the dystopia that’s just under our noses (or on its way here), but even at the book’s scariest moments there still is hope. Mostly. I felt an odd sense of connection to the collection. I recommend it.

Lewis Black kicks ass

In books, theatre, things that make me happy, writing on January 10, 2007 at 2:08 pm

This Christmas, as with all gift-giving holidays, I received a shitload of books. I’m in the wonderful situation of reading three books at a time. I don’t do this with novels, but everything else I read in pieces. In addition to the great Amy Sedaris book I mentioned yesterday, I’m also reading Lewis Black’s Nothing’s Sacred. I’ve enjoyed his stand up and appearances on my boyfriend’s show for years, but I had no idea he used to be a playwright. Here’s what he had to say about the performance of his first play.

It made me sick. I would tell you what it was about, but it would make you sick too. I stood at the back of the room, facing the wall. Each line of dialogue was like a knife in my back. I spent the whole play quivering as if I had malaria. It’s amazing that I ever wrote another. It was not fun.

Fabulous. In another segment, he talks about his first regular stand-up gig, at a bar in DC.

There was a place called the Brickskeller downtown, where folk singers would perform, playing guitar with little amplification. Sounds prehistoric, I know…I would tell the story of “The Ascent of the Left Breast to the Nipple” or “Sexual Education as Taught by My Gym Teacher Through Sex Ed Films” or “Trying to Lose My Virginity to the Girl Who Didn’t Know Where It Was Supposed to Go”… You shouldn’t wing it when you aren’t very good. The audience gets mad when you are neither comfortable onstage nor that funny…Learning to be a comic is like learning to be a boxer with your hands tied to your sides.

He talks about feeling ill and being shaky during his entire set. Since I have a slight desire to do stand-up (but am petrified by the thought of doing it in front of people a) because I’m not a performer and b) what if they don’t think I’m funny) and am currently a playwright, I can relate to his stories. Also, though his segments on Daily Show tend to be a bit gruff, you can tell from reading his book that he’s actually a kind and thoughtful person. The gruffness comes from a) performance and b) complete disbelief at how stupid some people are. Can you dig it?

man, lighten UP

In books on January 9, 2007 at 12:45 am

Good lord, my past couple of blog entries are a bit, uh, bitchy. Justifiably bitchy, I think, but still. It’s a shame, too, because I have a bitchy story to share about my time at Onion Creek yesterday. I’ll save it for another day.

I’m reading Amy Sedaris’ book on “entertaining” called I Like You. The recipes in the book are real, and technically so are the crafty ideas, but the surrounding copy includes such tips as:

- Guys don’t like skimpy meals, salads, lamb chops with handles, hot fruit.
- Guys do like meat, extra portions, pies, gravy, toothpicks and pussy.

Fabulous. Wonder if my parties will get any better after reading all her useful advice?

I was interviewed for UH’s alumni mag Alumline. If you’re interested in reading it, I scanned a copy and put links on my website. Go here. Not like you don’t get enough of my bullshit by reading this site…

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