Getting Taller

Lately, my memory has been lacking and a major part of me feels like I don't have time to do what's dear to my heart. I don't have the time to paint - I don't bike as much (although the 40 mile paradise loop kicked my behind) - I don't get to read as much, but I am trying to speed along in school and get out of this library program. In the mean time, I finally copped a temporary "boring" (yes-even the archivist I work for said it!) job at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and turned in my graduation candidacy form for December 2011. I WANT OUT.

On a book note, On a winter's night a traveler was one of the best books I've read everrrrrrr. Like I said, Calvino is a genius and the book is a mind f***. Well how can one book touch you the way 10 books would? yea it is literally an orgy of good literature. Yes, I said it. Next up is Revolutionary Road by R. Yates that I have been anxiously awaiting to start. In the mean time I had a nice time with


WANKY!

and


a fantastic breezy read in and out of East Bay history - bookstores galore. I can't express how proud I am to work for a library with a brand new zine collection. :)

I don't feel like writing into detail, cause its the one thing I am trying to get away from. Trying to get out of school in time won't let me.

A good morning = Coffee & Calvino

I was stuck in a whirlwind. DUI, endless school work, working 6 days during one week, and 4 birthdays (of my closest friends). I also somehow managed to make a piece for an little record art show and its hanging, but obviously needs some more work.


To maintain some sanity, I started a couple books and I will finish them. I owe it to myself.

Halfway and I will get back to it.

This one I couldn't put down!, except that I had to start on my next book in my "cute book" book club...


This is some really intense reading! A bit off and everywhere like Perec's A Life's Manual, but still engaging in its own way. Okay I have a thing for book where the author talks to his reader. I also books about books. The first couple pages are amazing!

In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres and acres The Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the out girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out:
the Books You've Been Planning To Read For Ages,
the Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without
Success,
the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On
At The Moment,
the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Hand Just
In Case,
the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This
Summer,
the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your
Shelves,
the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable
Curiosity, Not Easily Justified.
Mow that you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread and the Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.

Perfect for the morning, like a jog or bike ride before I start the day. (except with this I can fatten up with sourdough and butter with black coffee). MMMmmmm

I'm reading two f***ing fantastic books right now!! Amongst the ho-hum of a chaotic month (or chaotic in my mind maybe), this is making me happy. So happy.



My first Nabokov book and I can see how Lolita is such a classic. Yea, this is about another fella who leaves his wife for a young mistress, but this story just swallows you whole - more than halfway through and just started the book today! Okay it helps that its about 100 words per page. I also have grown a liking to writers who fill you in on what to expect right away...

"Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he love; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster."



This book is a book for book lovers... its essentially an inside story to the rare book trade, but focuses on the book trade's most notorious thief. So I was a little uncomfortable that I am no longer one of the only who know what "deckled pages" and "pictorial boards" are, as well as how many copies of Poe's first published poem exist in the world - 14!. Whatever I love it and it all takes place in San Francisco too.

It's hard to remain optimistic these days. I've been trying to get a job in Oakland in something related, but I've missed my opportunities or they just lack in general. I applied for something new, and I honestly refuse to be hopeful.

Despite the long commute, I decided to work at the bookstore an extra day a week. With a second job, school, and soon to be other legal matters, I decided that I can't f*** around anymore. Yea I submitted to growing up for a little bit. Letting go of the fun...


I've been waiting to read this one for awhile and it's okay. I love all the wine and crazy characters... Pilon is something else. I guess I wasn't in the right mood to laugh my head off.

Things that make me happy at this very moment

More than halfway through his short stories. Holy mother. This guy is brilliant! He made me miss my stop on the bus..


Early gift exchange.

A New Year

I think it takes a few weeks to get settled in. Today I started school and am realizing how f*cked up it is not being able to drive. The cat's have fleas... I haven't been able to finish a book in days. I stormed through Norwegian Wood and Just Kids, but only made it 2/3 of the way of Monkey Wrench Gang and halfway through Ghostwritten by David Mitchell. I wasn't even able to finish 86 pages of Kerouac's Tristessa , but that's somewhat forgiving. Richard Yates short stories have been amazing, but short stories aren't satisfying me at this moment.

Ever since the clusters show and spending time with my passionate friend/coworker/art meandering creature - I have been trying to make more things. One being a life size "Geeshie Wiley" that was accepted into this blues house show in San Jose.

Title of Art: Geeshie "Geechie" Wiley Medium: Mixed Media Creation Date: 01/09/11 Size: 70"x42"x2" Weight: For Sale?: for sale Price: $400 Original?: original Comments: The only remnants that are left of Geeshie Wiley are her handful of songs, which include one of my blues favorites "Last Kind Words". Her legal name is unknown, and there are no photos of her that exist.

An incomplete version....

---

The characters of this book were fantastic... on the cusp of being outsiders and clinically insane. All living in a type of surreal world. I think I would have adored this book in college...the protagonist just turned 20. Hypersexed, conversational, and without a f***ing climax.. Did I say sexual? casual sex written all over.



I have never listed to a Patti Smith album in my life, and am afraid to. Yes this is the cafe/ hip/ beatnik thing to read...but it did win the National Book Award. It is a sweet story of the relationship of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe..full of photos and elbow rubbing with famous folks - complete with a stay at the Chelsea Hotel and hanging at the same diner with the Factory kids. The starving artists, book hounding, blurbs of noteworthy times in history, and innocent relationship early in the book is beautiful. Patti's later rants are a bit dry - you can tell she likes to name drop Ginsberg, Burroughs, Hendrix, and Joplin - just to name a few. I did feel something was missing - like she held back her true emotions, but it is after all a book devoted mostly to Robert. Yea the cool girls that walk around Oakland have some resemblance.



Geez this is good and f***ing hilarious! And its all about fighting the man and saving the canyons. Yes...the Monkey Wrench Gang is out for the kill of nature's destroyers. I really only was able to make my way through 2/3 of the book, before I got distracted with the 2 titles above. I did have to cop an anniversary copy for myself w/ Crumbs illustrations. I will get back to this.



Drug addicted - Mexico City meanderings... its an attractive book, but its god dammn Kerouac. I know I'm jaded - and I would have loved this before - but it's so stylized I can't handle it.. one day when I'm drugged.




I'm reading this book right now.. over 200 pages in - on the fifth character -and I am soooo tempted to put this sh*t down. Well I want to know what happens and how all these 9 characters in different cities around the world are interlinked. I am starting to feel like I am becoming engrossed in some cryptic, secret society situation - and I hope and pray that this is NOT the case! sigh.


I have yet to read his novels, but just five stories in and already I can tell this is going to be amazing...timeless like Dorothy Parker but in a wider range of situations and with less cynicism.
Edit: This has been one of the best collections of short stories I've read yet. I fucking love this book. I LOVE THIS BOOK.

Purely - Strictly

Why being out of school rules

I completed my 2 reading blogs! -

Popular Materials

Young Adult Materials

I am definitely more proud of my YA one. One day I will try to consolidate them all..

But now -








....to be continued.

Why Library School Slaughters

The idea of humanity taking a next big evolutionary step is a fairly common element in sci-fi. What did you think of the collective-gestalt idea?

Even though it was hard to grasp, I did appreciate the collective gestalt idea and it was something I didn't expect in a sci-fi book. I usually enjoy books that say something about one's way of thinking and their behavior, Agree with Amy - I think Sturgeon presented the evolution of humanity in a style that is very much outside of the box - did not expect this in reading sci-fi. I liked the idea that even though each character individually had some strange incompetence, when they all came together, they complemented each other and sought to protect the entire homo-gestalt. In contrast, if the group was missing the strongest trait of one of the characters or killed off one another, it would be a kind of self-harm to the homo-gestalt.


The book included minority characters at a time when that was still probably a controversial notion. Does it still seem to be a progressive element of the book?

I understood this as a question of his use of language or terms... such as the use of "idiot", mongoloid, and negroes, which are not politically correct. I can see how at the time Sturgeon used characters with traits that were once considered 'inferior' (especially in the 50's ) to set the basis for the evolution of gestalt... It still is unfit by today's standards to degrade anyone for their abilities or race, but after the initial shock of seeing the terms being used, I still think if you can overlook the descriptions, he is still able to convey his ideas about how each character came together with what at the time was perceived as inferior to evolve into one thriving being..

Do the dissonant voices of sections one two and three contribute to the author's concept of a gestalt for you the reader?

I thought the voices were too disjointed to the point that I could not grasp the fact that each character was there to complement each other and be a part of the overall homo-gestalt. The three parts also seemed to have to far of a time span (which was not acknowledged in any part of the story), and I think the dissonant voices became more of an overall distraction. If each character was given more depth or a memorable personality that I could connect to, I could come to my own conclusion about the concept of 'gestalt' (which would have been more meaningful for me as a reader), than having to piece together the concept which is explicitly laid out in the last 40 pages.

Spoilage - Duane Michals - Love

2 more weeks...

I miss freely updating this with all the ramblings and nonsense of the last book I've read.... still I've been collecting, awaiting the day when I can read all the books I want. Recently a dear friend/ bookstor-ee spoiled an early xmas present...

A 1926...



What Burroughs says in the introduction to the edition I have...
I first read You Can’t Win in 1926, in an edition bound in red cardboard. Stultified and confined by middle class St. Louis mores, I was fascinated by this glimpse into an underworld of seedy rooming-houses, pool parlors, cat houses and opium dens, of bull pens and cat burglars and hobo jungles. I learned about the Johnson Family of good bums and thieves, with a code of conduct that made more sense to me than the arbitrary, hypocritical rules that were taken for granted as being “right” by my peers.

An erotic accident

I can hardly update this thing cause I'm busy updating and trying to fulfill my 379 book requirement for this semester... no not really. but 85 books for a YA class and 30 books for another, which puts me at a mid semester tally of 34 books for my databases and 10+ others for miscellaneous review assignments. Sh*t not even close. So on one of my book shopping binges for my classes I picked up this one, in addition to Weetzie Bat.. and it fulfills neither course.



It's fantasy erotica seemingly out of Penthouse letters? but still pretty fly. I'm a 27 year old grown ass woman. I can read this and be free to admit that it was pretty good! (except its neither YA (what the author is known as) or SF (what my work categorized it as). Porn baby in a cute little purple book.

If I looked in the mirror someday and saw no dark circles under my eyes, I would probably look better. I just wouldn't look like me. - Sarah Vowell

So I'm a week into school... I've been able to read things by choice, in a way, but its always with the underlining purpose that I have to write some review or compare and contrast or recommend similar titles, the write some sort of paper or make a database or blog in this case... yea library school. I've read some awesome YA books.. Ender's Game, Mockingjay!, The Real Life Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and now MAUS.. which have all been f***** amazing! I'm officially hooked. I guess my mood will change when I have to read romances for my other class.

Well fortunately I finished my YA book for the day, and found this at the library for the train ride home.

It's a the one and only commencement speech that he gave, and it was widely talked about after his suicide. Yea I know Infinite Jest is carried around like an accessory by cool kids and self conscious intellects, but this is amazing... you can afford to read this meager 137 page book with anywhere from 3 - 50 words per page. Amazing!

Last 'adult' leisure read..

School starts in one week... :(


The plot was laid out for me right on the jacket, and I knew exactly what was going to happen, and still - geddamn this book is so good! Even though it was written in 1899, it's still reeks of greed, detrimental relationships, abuse, murders, insanity, steam beer and whiskey... all in San Francisco!.

McTeague meets the only heartthrob in his life through pulling her teeth. When then get married, Trina wins $5,000 in the lottery, but becomes more and more stingy (a miser) in the process..to the point that she has to lie and compromise their living situation just to save the money for a rainy day. Without a degree, McTeague can no longer practice dentistry..then he gets tired of the job hunts and all of Trina's penny pinching, so he steals her money and flees the first time with just the money she saved, then returns to murder her and flees to the desert with the $5,000. .... then as tragic and beautiful, lays to his fate in death valley handcuffed to the dead soul that found him. Well it's written more humorously than that.

yeeee

Yea so I read the damn thing.. I mean I liked it enough to finish. I really didn't give a shit about the millions of kroner laundering or how corrupt the big businesses were. Pretty typical. The investigative reporting was modern, smart and engrossing. The methods of sexual assault and murder of the women and animals according to literal translations of bible verses were damn shocking and graphic. Salander (the girl with the dragon tattoo) was ambiguously attractive, rebellious, and intelligent... she's an advocate against the abuse of women. Her part was the epitome of exercising revenge.

Dude... how typical is the ending... I'm going to spoil this shit...
yea of course the girl who fucking disappeared and is presumed dead, is still alive and has some prime time reunion with the rich fuck who was trying to find her. Of course the girl with the dragon tattoo who doesn't trust a male soul and is all for women empowerment, falls in love with Blomkvist (the journalist) and the same guy who is the lustful, nice guy with a couple other female companions.

Happy bestseller schmeller book day... I was suckered again.

Hi I'm tired.

If you haven't read him already then poo on you.

Of course Bandini is just getting by and on the brink of becoming famous as a writer, without selling out to Hollywood by writing gaudy screen plays. Still broke, his love here is an elderly widowed woman who makes him food and sleeps by his side in her bed. Then there's the Filipinos, etc. Same ol' good stuff.

Panda for Amanda

Panda for Amanda, originally uploaded by ter -ri -fic!.

"It was the voice of a woman who is glad to be alive, who indulges herself, who is careless and indigent, and who will do any-thing to preserve the modicum of freedom which she possesses." - Henry Miller Quiet Days in Clichy

"...if you want to know how to enjoy life, you also have to know what sadness is. Otherwise it isn't worth a damn."

Thanks Celine for scattering my brain, thank Keret for balancing it with your 1 - 4 pages short stories about every persona imaginable with a touch of cynicism, erotica, morbidity, and humor. This author, who is apparently a household name in Tel Aviv, is genius. Well loosely. But really how many people can establish a plot, characters, with some depth, surprise, and relativity in less than 5 pages? well less than 5 short, spacey pages. He made me laugh about decapitated rabbits and children left to fend for themselves on top of refrigerators. You can find/read most of it on Google books. Thanks library.