Staying Sane: A Year in Reading by Emre Peker (Part 5)

The unexpected pleasure and wonder of my book year is Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, which was a birthday present from dear friend Judith Schneider. I started the novel because Judith was egging me on and realized immediately that I was in for a treat. The story of the Stephanides family begins in Uludag, now Turkey's premier skiing resort, in the city of Bursa, during the Turkish Independence War. Brother and sister Stephanides leave Bursa as the Greeks are pulling out and travel to Izmir (Smyrna) to take a ferry to France, during which the siblings get married. In the epic story that follows, Eugenides takes the reader through the struggles of this first generation Greek couple in Detroit during extraordinary times: first prohibition, then the Great Depression, and finally World War II. In the meantime, the Stephanides family grows and Eugenides moves on to the baby boomers, the hippies, and the seventies as he describes the life of the narrator and third generation granddaughter Calliope Stephanides. Calliope, or Cal for short, discovers during her teens that she is a hermaphrodite and develops an affection for a girl she names "Object of Desire." Middlesex is a very unusual novel, and as weird as the protagonist is, it is really easy to connect with Cal and travel through the extraordinary events of the twentieth century and the psyche of a teenager, who is more at odds with her/his being than most others. Euginedes' writing is very fluid and Middlesex is an amazing piece of work that leaves one wondering how autobiographical it is. I suggest that you find out for yourself.
Previously: Part 1, 2, 3, 4

- C. Max Magee @ 4:40 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Generations of Winter by Vassily Aksyonov

Generations of Winter was originally conceived as a mini-series for PBS, but when the project was shelved, Vassily Aksynov's publisher convinced him to make a novel out of the project. The novel was published in the US in 1994, and 10 years later, in late 2004, a mini-series based on the novel made it to Russian television where it was a resounding success. Considering the subject matter, the success of Generations of Winter in Russia must represent a difficult acknowledgement of the horrors of Soviet history which remain unmarked by monuments and for which the government has never officially apologized. Aksyonov is writing from firsthand knowledge when his characters are hauled off in the middle of the night by NKVD agents. Aksyonov's mother, Evgenia Ginzburg, was sent to the camps when he was five, and he joined her in exile in Siberia when he was 16. He followed in his mother's footsteps as a writer as well. Ginzburg is well-known for her memoirs of the gulag and exile, Journey into the Whirlwind and Within the Whirlwind. Many reviewers have described Generations of Winter as a War and Peace for the 20th century. Aksyonov's book is a sprawling, multi-generational tale set between the years 1925 and 1945. It centers on the Gradov family, lively members of the Moscow elite whose lives are shattered by purges, torture and war. Generations of Winter is a historical novel at heart. It's pages are populated by real historical figures, most notably Stalin, who mingle with the fictional Gradovs. Though the book's subject matter is difficult, the Gradov's shine, and the narrative is breathtaking in its scope.

- C. Max Magee @ 2:45 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Marketing books like movies

This Reuters article describes how the British publishing house, Jonathan Cape, was forced to release Ian McEwan's new novel, Saturday, early because the Evening Standard broke a publicity embargo and ran an interview two weeks to soon. Naturally, other newspapers, not wanting to be scooped by the Standard, also ran stories about McEwan's book too early. Suddenly, Saturday was getting tons of press, but the books weren't in stores, and now Bertelsmann's Random House, which owns Jonathan Cape, wants the Standard to pay for the lost revenue that resulted from the runaway publicity chain reaction. The subtext to all of this, especially if you consider the story in light of the creation of the new made-for-tv Quill Awards, is that publishing companies, most of which are now owned by media conglomerates, are trying to market and sell books in the same way they might market and sell movies or music. In Hollywood, the financial success of many a film is determined by the opening weekend, or even the opening night, and all the marketing resources go towards getting people into the movie theatre on the opening weekend. The primary - though unstated - purpose of awards shows is to convince people to see the movies or buy the music that is being honored, not simply to honor it. My experience as a bookseller tells me that books don't work this way. The book is the ultimate "word of mouth" product. The desire to read a good book is many times more likely to be initiated by a recommendation from a trusted fellow reader (or bookseller) than by a piece of clever marketing or even a prominent review. It's my opinion that publishers shouldn't be pushing for the huge first week numbers - forcing a book to boom or bust - but they should give books a chance to survive and thrive on their own merits... the way McEwan's last book, Atonement, did.

- C. Max Magee @ 10:20 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Coming to a Theatre Near You

EW has a story today that Robert Zemeckis will direct the film version of The Corrections. Tom Hanks is always in Zemeckis movies. Does this mean that Hanks will be in the movie? Would he play Gary? (shudder) Jonathan Franzen, who is highly unlikely to be in charge of casting, nonetheless has some ideas: "If they told me Gene Hackman was going to do Alfred, I would be delighted. If they told me they had cast Cate Blanchett as Denise, I would be jumping up and down, even though officially I really don't care what they do with the movie."

While I am rather skeptical of The Corrections: the Movie, it does give me the opportunity to play The Corrections parlor game, wherein you pick which of the five members of the book's Lambert family you identify with the most. The game stems from the idea that these five characters - Alfred, Enid, Gary, Denise, and Chip - represent five distinct and mutually exclusive personality types. I identify with Gary. Mrs. Millions identifies with Alfred. What about you?

- C. Max Magee @ 8:12 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Great book list at TEV

To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Mark has posted a really good list of books about the Holocaust. I highly recommend it.

- C. Max Magee @ 8:07 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

TV book club goes farther afield

As TV book clubs fall by the wayside in terms of the public's interest, the "Today Show" club appears willing to make some more off-beat, interesting selections. The most recent pick, chosen for the club by Walter Mosley, is Graceland by the Nigerian Chris Abani. The book, about a Nigerian Elvis impersonator trying to survive in the urban desolation of Lagos, has been out nearly a year - it was well-reviewed but not a big seller - yet it will get a second life thanks to this selection. Here's an excerpt.

- C. Max Magee @ 9:18 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Some Links

• "I've never actually read the books that I've blurbed." - Nick Tosches in Bookforum
• That terrific Kenneth Tynan piece on Johnny Carson that Tingle was looking for.
• Want to bone up on philosophy, but can't quite find the time? Try Squashed Philosophers.
• The CS Monitor gives capsule reviews of the NBCC fiction finalists, in case you didn't get to any of them.
• O, Brother, Where Art Thou? Oh Right, Everywhere: Discarded titles for George Orwell's 1984 at McSweeney's (via Kottke).
• David Sedaris' recommended reading list

- C. Max Magee @ 9:29 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Staying Sane: A Year in Reading by Emre Peker (Part 4)

I could not stop. I became a Calvino junkie and read The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount, two separate stories collected in one volume as suggested by the titles, and a book along the same lines as The Baron in the Trees. The stories are about an exemplar non-existent knight that the king's army despises because he lacks human vice, and a generous and noble viscount who is split in half during battle, hence losing his good side and becoming evil. Both are great fairy tales with a grain of cynicism, a touch of distrust bred by 20th century politics (Calvino was also a linguist and deeply involved with leftist politics, which at times caused him discomfort), and the humanist wishes of an idealist.

As with Kapuscinski, I had to take a break from Calvino, and picked up Arthur Nersesian's Chinese Takeout. I picked Chinese Takeout because the picture on the book cover was of 7B, a one time favorite dive of mine that was four blocks away form our East Village apartment. It was one of those books that I kept seeing and telling myself that I would get it the next time I saw it, just because of its cover. As luck would have it, I really enjoyed the story of Orloff, the book's protagonist. He walks through streets most familiar and beloved, sells books on West 4th street (in front of the NYU library and Stern School of Business), struggles to make it as a painter, lives in the back of his van, deals with junkies, and longs for the days when the lower east side was a cheap haven for artists. A romantic and nostalgic look at the areas currently being overridden by hipsters and $150 torn diesel jeans (my personal favorites). Or (short for Orloff) still exists in Manhattan, and walks those streets and probably does sleep in the back of his van or at the rent controlled apartment of his friend from time to time. Chinese Takeout is a good New York story that one should read on the beach during a vacation or in the subway.
Previously: Part 1, 2, 3

- C. Max Magee @ 7:52 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Beatrice Multi-tasking

Book blog fans: you may want to point your browsers to Beatrix, a new blog at ArtsJournal by Ron Hogan, the proprietor of the well-know blog Beatrice. With this impressive bit of branding, Ron has really locked down the "women's names that begin with Beatri-" market.

- C. Max Magee @ 1:21 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Critics' Finalists Announced

Much as The 9/11 Commission Report made big headlines for its non-fiction National Book Award nomination, the nomination of Bob Dylan's Chronicles, Vol. 1 for best biography by the National Book Critics Circle (though I'm told the book is deserving of this honor) will likely steal the spotlight in terms of news coverage of the prize. There seems to be a subtext to those fiction finalists, though. In contrast to the NBA brouhaha, the critics' finalists for fiction aren't likely to cause much of a stir. In fact, the list of nominees, topped by Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, looks very much like the set of books that most "critics" were hoping for when they decried the NBA finalists and their obscurity. The AP's book guy Hillel Italie also notes the switch that the NBA and the NBCC have made this year: "Critics are known for championing the obscure, but this year's list was filled with prominent names and titles, especially compared with last fall's National Book Awards, a supposedly more glamorous affair." I'm wondering if the NBCC is trying to prove a point here. Here are all the finalists:

Fiction:

• The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
• The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat
• The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Non-fiction:

• Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle
• Blue Blood by Edward Conlon
• The Reformation: A History by Diarmaid MacCulloch
• The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler
• Blood Done Sign My Name by Timothy B. Tyson

Biography:

• Chronicles, Vol. 1 by Bob Dylan
• Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
• Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt
• Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart by John Guy
• De Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan

Poetry:

• The School Among the Ruins: Poems 2000-2004 by Adrienne Rich
• Danger on Peaks by Gary Snyder
• Cocktails by D.A. Powell
• The Orchard by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
• Interglacial by James Richardson

Criticism:

• Paper Trail: Selected Prose, 1965-2003 by Richard Howard
• The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel by James Wood
• Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me by Craig Seligman
• Where You're at: Notes from the Frontline of a Hip Hop Planet by Patrick Neate
• Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb

A lifetime achievement award will be given to Louis D. Rubin, Jr., the founder of Algonquin Books. The winners will be announced March 18.

- C. Max Magee @ 1:36 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Murakami movie and more

A Japanese movie based on the Haruki Murakami story "Tony Takitani" will get a US release this summer, according to this report. The film will have its North American debut at Sundance this Sunday. Meanwhile the Village Voice says Murakami's new book Kafka on the Shore "is so strange that even its chestnuts take on an air of mystery."

An excerpt from Campo Santo, a travelogue of Corsica by the late WG Sebald, is up at the Guardian. The book will be out in the US in March.

I'm still curious about the two novels coming out this year that will have illustrated or photographic components: Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana and Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. How will these illustrative elements be presented? Will they add to or take away from the reading experience? A blogger reading the German translation of Queen Loana describes the book as "over 500 densely printed pages sprinkled through with images, reproductions of art, old magazine covers, pictures of everyday household objects from the 30s and 40s, etc., etc. Basically, a sort of menagerie of Eco's childhood." For what it's worth, 137 pages in, she isn't very impressed with the book. I know that review copies of Extremely Loud are circulating, so maybe we'll hear more about that one soon.

- C. Max Magee @ 3:39 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Pardon my indulgence...

but I hope you don't mind if I post about a couple of things that pertain to, well, me. The first is a fantastic and fantastic looking publication called Two Letters, which contains some very worthwhile writing and art, and for which I was the literary editor. I worked on this when I lived in Los Angeles. The selection process for the art and writing ended just before I moved to Chicago, so I wasn't involved in the production of the book. I had no idea what it would look like until it showed up at my doorstep a couple of weeks ago. It looks terrific - great art and a very distinctive layout. All the writing is illustrated with subtle but expressive line drawings. I am also very happy with the writers I helped select (two of them, Cem and Alexa happen to be bloggers). If you want to pick up a copy visit the website, or, if you are in LA, please consider attending the release party at the venerable Book Soup in West Hollywood. It's on Wednesday, January 26th at 7pm. It will be fun, and I would attend if I could.

In other news about me: You may have noticed from my bio on the right that I'm currently a graduate student in the Medill school of Journalism at Northwestern, and today I reached a milestone that I felt I should share (because what else is a blog for, if not for moments like this.) Today, I got my very first byline in a daily newspaper, the Daily Herald. It's a 100,000+ circulation paper that serves the suburbs of Chicago. The story isn't about books. Since I'm studying business writing this quarter, it's a business story. You'll be happy to hear that I was able, if only just barely, to keep myself from nudging the news stand guy and saying, "I'm in this," when I bought the paper today.

- C. Max Magee @ 10:55 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Links for Literary Aspirations

If you have aspirations of the literary sort, I strongly recommend Dan Wickett's interview with "founders, editors and managing editors of 8 Literary Journals of varying age and size." And you should also look at the latest posts at Mad Max Perkins' Book Angst in which hears from editors and publishing industry types about "the true meaning of midlist."

- C. Max Magee @ 10:42 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Help Rodger Jacobs commemorate Fitzgerald in the City of Angels

Here is his press release:

It's been done for such entertainment luminaries as Bob Hope and George Burns, and now author and journalist Rodger Jacobs hopes to convince the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to change the name of a street corner to honor F. Scott Fitzgerald on the 65th anniversary of the author's death.

"F. Scott Fitzgerald is an American icon." says Jacobs. "Some would even argue that he's one of the greatest authors this country produced in the 20th Century."

When the author of The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night succumbed to a fatal heart attack on December 21, 1940 he was living with gossip columnist Shelia Graham at her luxury apartment on North Hayworth Avenue in Hollywood.

"Fitzgerald spent his last years here in Los Angeles," Jacobs explains. "I don't think a lot of Angelenos know or appreciate that fact. He wrote extensively about L.A. in his unfinished novel The Last Tycoon and in the Pat Hobby stories he wrote for Esquire."

Renaming the intersection of Hayworth Avenue and Sunset Boulevard, Jacobs hopes, will encourage locals to explore the literary world of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

"I would be happy if this attempt to keep Scott's name in the public eye would bring just one curious person to pick up a book of his that they might otherwise not have read. According to census data, the number of literate Americans who are no longer reading books at all is growing in leaps and bounds ever year."

The entire petition can be viewed and electronically signed here.

- C. Max Magee @ 10:07 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Salinger on the Web

I know this is the sort of thing that threatens to erode our moral fabric and turn us all into communists, but I thought you might like to know that much of J.D. Salinger's published work, including many hard-to-find uncollected stories, is available for free here. So hurry and take a look before this website is shut down by a blizzard of threatening letters from angry intellectual property lawyers. Also of note: I posted this link at Metafilter a few days back and it generated a rather lively discussion.

- C. Max Magee @ 9:49 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Man Down

Ed Rants and his Return of the Reluctant blog - a favorite of mine - is down because, in his efforts to publicize the wrongdoings of some racist local DJs, his site was bombarded by visitors looking for the attendant mp3s of the offending DJs. It appears as though some uncharitable linking by the India Times used up all his bandwidth and then some. Here's hoping that Ed can get things up and running some time soon.

- C. Max Magee @ 6:48 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Staying Sane: A Year in Reading by Emre Peker (Part 3)

I switched gears with Henry Miller's The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, which describes the author's travels through the South upon his return to the United States. Miller was very disgruntled when he returned to New York from Paris. He thought the outlook of the community was narrow, the morals corrupt, and the industrial greed an instrument of spiritual death. Hence, he embarked on a drive that took him down south and west to California, a trip during which he marvels at how the rural, farming South kept its soul and culture and did not succumb to the machines and skyscrapers of the North. It is an interesting account, a praise for the warm, hospitable South, and a big outburst at, and a rejection of, what the North offers. An Air Conditioned Nightmare is entertaining and deep, filled with interesting characters and encounters along the way, and depressing with regards to the industrial monster of a picture Miller paints regarding the United States.

At this time, I felt the urge for a break and picked up J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories. The genius of Salinger is probably unparalleled and Nine Stories is a good testimony to it. The bizarre stories and intricate web of characters leaves the reader dazzled at the end of the 6 hours in which you fly through the pages. Nine Stories is a great collection that you can keep in your bathroom, on your coffee table or on the bedside table, and pick at any random moment for instant joy.

Nine Stories put me in such a good mood that I decided to give Italo Calvino, whose Invisible Cities I read under undesirable circumstances and did not enjoy much, a second try. The novel was The Baron in the Trees. The book is one of Calvino's earlier novels and is heavily influenced by his studies of Italian folk literature. The rebellion of the heir baron to his family's strict rules places him on top of a tree, which he refuses to leave. From these circumstances a character is born who is at first considered a lunatic and then a hero, who fights fires and supports Napoleon's troops, lectures the town on citizenship, falls in love with a duchess, and meets other people who are exiled to tree tops by the Spanish church. A marvelous story, with great wit and imagination, and all the characteristics of love, chivalry, betrayal, family ties, dilemmas and unreal circumstances found in the favorite tales of childhood. A very happy book indeed.

- C. Max Magee @ 5:47 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Ask a Book Question: The 34th in a Series (Literary Science)

Brian sent me an email asking if we could recommend some books:

I've been wanting to read some science books lately, anything from pop-science Oliver Sacks type stuff, to the more esoteric... from astronomy to geology to bird-watching to physics, etc... I just don't know where to start. You have any suggestions?

Oliver Sacks is a good author to start with, but there are a lot of other readable science books out there. One of my favorites is Jared Diamond's Pulitzer-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel, which shows how the earth's geography can explain why civilizations arose where they did. Diamond's brand new book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is getting good reviews, too. John McPhee also has some books that might work for you. Annals of the Former World is a 700 page layman's guide to the geology of the United States and The Control of Nature is a collection of essays about man's attempts to tame and make use of natural resources. Brian Greene's bestseller about string theory, The Elegant Universe rather painlessly delivers complex physics, and Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire explains how plants have evolved to use us as much as we use them creating a counter-intuitive symbiotic relationship. Beyond those you can't go wrong with Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking, and Edward O. Wilson. If please anyone else has suggestions, leave a comment.

- C. Max Magee @ 6:12 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Ask a Book Question: The 33nd in a Series (Presidential Reading)

Harry writes in with this question about Kennedy's reading habits.

I have read that one of JFK's favorite books was about the social mores of the English Royalty and their attitudes toward the commoners. Would you be able tell me anything about that?

Americans like to get to know their presidents. We hear about their stature (Lincoln tall, Madison short), their culinary preferences (Reagan liked jellybeans, Bush the first hated broccoli), and their reading habits. In 2003 Bill Clinton gave reporters this list of his favorite books. Reagan was reported to have liked That Printer of Udell's by Harold Bell Wright and Witness by Whittaker Chambers. Growing up, Ford loved Horatio Alger. JFK was known to have a predilection for books, and many of his biographers have reported that his favorite book was Pilgrim's Way the autobiography of John Buchan, which I think might be the book you were looking for. The book wasn't about British royalty, though, so I'm not sure it's the book you were referring to. It was about the British aristocracy. Buchan was a Scottish spy novelist, one of the early ones, penning thrillers during the WWI era. But Pilgrim's Way was a more personal departure from his typical work. Thomas Maier's The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings includes this passage: "While Kathleen Kennedy partied and enjoyed the company of young British squires, her brother John devoured lessons about the aristocracy from his English friends and from such books as Pilgrim's Way." Apparently, Kennedy was a big fan of Buchan's books and he quoted them often in speeches. For more on Buchan have a look at this essay from New Criterion and there's the John Buchan Society. While most sources say that Pilgrim's Way was JFK's favorite book, this list at Amazon, which is supposedly drawn from a 1961 issue of Life, puts another Buchan book, Montrose as his favorite. Still, I'm not convinced that I found the book that Harry was looking for, so if anyone has a better answer to this question, please let us know.

- C. Max Magee @ 5:28 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

An Evening with Douglas Coupland by Andrew Saikali

Last night I went to a reading given by Douglas Coupland during which he read passages from his new novel, Eleanor Rigby, and also previewed a lengthy passage from a work-in-progress. Flying on codeine (Coupland, not me), he shot off on various random tangents that, in the end, were twice as entertaining as the readings themselves.

Instructed in piano at a young age, Coupland recently decided to give himself a refresher so that he could impress and astound his family with a note-perfect rendition of that Charlie Brown Christmas Piano Thing (which probably has a simpler title than that). Unfortunately the task proved to be more physically traumatic than expected and his left hand went into painful spasms. Hence the codeine, which incidentally Coupland now swears by and highly recommends for recreational use.

I should mention up front that I'm not actually an ardent Coupland reader. In fact, I've only read one of his novels (Miss Wyoming). I recall enjoying it thoroughly, but I must also confess that I don't remember a thing about it. Other than the pleasurable experience of reading it. Otherwise, sorry - complete mental block. However I will say that he's a tremendously engaging speaker - quick-witted, completely engaged with his audience, and with a dry, understated, almost deadpan delivery.

Eleanor Rigby is indeed the story of one of the lonely people - Liz Dunn. Coupland spoke of the manner in which he describes his characters and his settings. How, in some works, he deliberately avoids over-describing things, leaving the reader to project his own image of a certain protagonist, or of a certain room. Other times, as Liz Dunn herself states, there should be no confusion as to the detail. So, here, the facts are laid out: her age, her overweight awkwardness. These details are necessary in setting the character. They affect her frame of mind. They affect her loneliness.

As for Coupland's work-in-progress, it will be a sequel to Microserfs entitled jPod. Allusions to the ubiquitous iPod aside, jPod is actually the name of a corner of an office housing 6 employees whose last names begin with a J. Coupland says that this novel will essentially be about "corporate intrusion into private memory." Heady stuff. But the passage he read came off a bit light-weight and a bit forced. It was a scene in which the 6 employees discuss McDonald's, and in particular Ronald McDonald, and in particular Ronald McDonald's sex-life. They decide that they should each compose and read to the group a "love letter" to Ronald. Then we hear the letters, and they were amusing to a point, and I suppose they do reveal a bit about the individual characters, and the passage seemed to go off well with the audience. But the whole thing came off a bit jokey. And once the whole unusual premise was set, even a bit obvious.

His random tangents, however, were truly memorable, as much for their delivery as for their content. How, for instance he suffers from what he calls "executive dysfunction" rendering him inexplicably yet completely incapable of performing such simple tasks as opening an envelope. Until, that is, a doctor-friend suggested doing these impossible tasks at half-speed. Which apparently works. And also how he and his 78-year old father, with whom he has nothing in common, have recently and surprisingly bonded over their mutual affinity for a reality show called The Swan.

Whether or not I pick up the new or the next Douglas Coupland book remains a bit of a question mark. What is certain is that if he does another reading in town, codeine or no codeine, I'll be there. And I'll be the one listening intently for the random tangents.

- C. Max Magee @ 7:19 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Two More for Today

I saw this a while back on another blog, and I should have posted it here then, but I forgot, and now all this recent talk of Ryszard Kapuscinski has reminded me of it again. It's Kapuscinski's recent essay about World War II in Granta, and I would link to the blog where I found it originally but I can't remember which one it was.

And for those who, like me, enjoy learning about food, spend some time with the Food Timeline.

- C. Max Magee @ 11:11 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Around the Horn

I've been noticing some of the fantastic pages that libraries and museums have put up for their book exhibits. Here's Czech book covers of the 1920s and 1930s and Civil War maps from the Library of Congress, for example.

Fans of audiobooks will enjoy this essay by the pseudonymous Thomas H. Benton at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Link via OPTR.

Thinking about getting rid of some books? This Ask Metafilter thread has lots of suggestions on where to donate your books.

For a year, I was a bookstore employee who blogged, so the story of this book clerk in the UK who got fired for blogging hit pretty close to home.

- C. Max Magee @ 7:13 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Interviews with Writers and Where to Find Them by Patrick Brown

I am a loyal subscriber to The Paris Review, which, for my money, is still the best literary journal on the market. With the most recent issue came a bookmark noting the launch of a new Paris Review online feature. It seems that founder and long-time editor George Plimpton had always wanted to make the hundreds of interviews the journal had published as part of its series "The Art of Fiction" available to anybody, anywhere, anytime. Now, thanks to the miracle of the interweb, that dream is a reality. "The DNA of Literature" is a complete catalogue of every interview The Paris Review has ever published. The series is being posted by decade every few weeks. The 1950s are up there right now, available as easily printable PDFs. The best of the excerpts shown on the page: William Saroyan on when he writes: "I like to stay up late at night and get drunk and sleep late.... The afternoon is the only time I have left..."

Also, the DNA of Literature was paid for by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. I encourage anyone and everyone to check it out, if only so they may one day say to their grandkids, "There once was this thing called the National Endowment for the Arts..."

And for anyone who is more into the whole aural side of interviews, I recommend the very strange yet wonderful "Live from Prairie Lights" series. This is a live interview show taped right here in Iowa City featuring interviews with writers like Marilynne Robinson, Max Allan Collins, Jeff Shaara, and many more. The interviewer is a rather eccentric woman who has become a local celebrity around this town. You can listen to the events live or hear clips from previous interviews via Real Player. It's a hoot!

- C. Max Magee @ 6:33 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Staying Sane: A Year in Reading by Emre Peker (Part 2)

The depth of Ignatius' wisdom gave me an urge to read history, and I started with Napoleon: A Political Life, by Steven Englund. Englund is a notable scholar and the book was released to wide acclaim. Napoleon is a personal, political and military approach to one of the most influential leaders of history. I picked the book especially because I did not know much about Napoleon and sought enlightenment, which I got thanks to the book's thorough historical content, the presentation of Napoleon's personal background, and a very scholarly - yet novelistic - narrative. It is for certain that Englund is extremely passionate regarding Napoleonic studies and the controversies that surround it. His determination to relate to the reader both the specifics of Napoleon himself (character quirks, political ideas, practical implementations, the myth) and the historical evolution of the time (the French Revolution, Continental power struggles, trade issues) without any high opinions leads the reader to ask questions and wonder about different interpretations of the Napoleon’s life and actions.

I was so moved by the joy of reading on historical matters that I picked up on Ryszard Kapuscinski - a foreign correspondent for the Polish press during the communist era – who was recommended to me by the very C. Max Magee of The Millions and Cem Ozturk, great friend and emissary to Japan. I started with The Shadow of the Sun and realized once again how ignorant I was with regards to Africa. Since reading The Shadow of the Sun I feel ashamed to refer generally to Africa, as if it were one country, and it's inhabitants as strictly African. Kapuscinski's accounts are a mix of personal adventures that make James Bond stunts lame, coup d'etats surrounding the liberation of African colonies, and detailed descriptions of various cultures and peoples of Africa. Of course, immediately after finishing The Shadow of the Sun I picked up Imperium, Kapuscinski's account of his visits to the USSR. Kapuscinki's visit to the world behind the iron curtain, the different cultures that the USSR housed and worked diligently to eradicate and replace with communism, and the succinct description of the big brother situation is full of wonders. Imperium is a great read that is thrilling and unnerving at the same time. I still long to read The Soccer War, Kapuscinki's accounts of the revolutions he witnessed in Latin America but rein myself not to finish all his works in one breath.

See also: Part 1

- C. Max Magee @ 7:25 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Strange Intersections by Rodger Jacobs

Film and literature are two vastly different mediums of communication, an argument best captured in the sentiments a friend wrote to me recently:

"I identify books with age and place. It's a nasty habit as it carries with it a certain sentiment that is not in the book itself, rather the impressions of habitat where and when I was reading a particular book, not to mention my desires at the time."

I replied to my friend that he had defined and distilled the reading experience. It's those precise differences in approach that make the reading experience so monumental. No two people can read a book the same way, particularly people with different life histories.

But film is a visual medium. Movies give us iconic images that last a lifetime. Or so I believed until recently.

In early 2004 I wrote a series of 28 blithely interconnected short stories for L.A. Stories. One of the tales, "Bill's Bottle," is a first-person narrative that provides a voyeuristic look at the tragic death of film icon William Holden from the point of view of the fatal bottle of vodka that contributed to his passing.

Immediately after "Bill's Bottle" appeared on the fiction page at the L.A. Stories website I received perplexed e-mails from my readers, all asking the same question: "Who the hell is William Holden?"

"I just looked up his movies on the Internet Movie Database," one reader wrote, "and I have to say that I am not familiar with the man or his work."

Not familiar with the star who appeared in a bevy of classic motion pictures? Consider just a small handful of Holden's iconic roles: The struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard. Major Shears in David Lean's epic The Bridge on the River Kwai. Max Schumacker in Paddy Chayefsky’'s clairvoyant Network. Pike Bishop in Sam Peckinpah's blood-soaked western The Wild Bunch.

There was a time when Billy Wilder's 1953 classic Stalag 17 - set in an Allied POW camp in World War II during one memorable Christmas, starring Holden as rough-hewn Sergeant Sefton - was a holiday perennial on television. Not anymore. This year I was compelled to rent the movie on video in order to add it to my plate of favorite Christmas movies.

I purchased a previously viewed VHS of Stalag 17 at my local Blockbuster just a few days before Christmas. Pawing through the bin of discarded videotapes I discovered a virtual treasure trove of William Holden films being chased out the door for a mere $4.99 apiece: Picnic, Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, the original Sabrina. (A further irony is that every title mentioned possesses either a theatrical or literary pedigree but that's another matter entirely.)

William Holden was an alcoholic for much of his adult life. Biographer Bob Thomas points out in his book Golden Boy that the ruggedly handsome actor was embarrassed to make a living as an actor, believing the profession to be not only unmanly but downright humiliating. Holden began having a snort or two before scenes, a shyness killer that would eventually kill the man himself in a most gruesome and embarrassing manner.

Holden was no Olivier but he was one of the greatest stars who ever graced the silver screen. In 1995 - fourteen years after his death - Empire Magazine selected Holden as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in Film History.

Securing Holden's lofty place in the often-strange intersection between literature and film is this interesting factoid: J.D. Salinger got the name for protagonist Holden Caulfield in the classic book The Catcher in the Rye from the movie Dear Ruth, which starred William Holden and Joan Caulfield.

Today, though, William Holden, sadly, is largely unknown. I moved "Bill's Bottle" to my website earlier this year and reading the site meter for that page provides an excuse to ponder where our culture is going and has gone. "Bill's Bottle" receives less than two page views per month. On the other hand, "Dead Porn Stars," a trade magazine piece I wrote for X Biz World exploring those in cyberspace who are cashing in on late, great porn stars, receives over 1,000 page views per week.

One thousand page views for dead porn stars per week. Two page views for Bill Holden.

You do the math.

- C. Max Magee @ 9:10 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Ask a Book Question: The 32nd in a Series (To Jest or Not to Jest)

Millions contributor and all-around great guy, Emre, wrote in with this question:

Have you read or heard anything on Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace? I am debating whether or not to wrestle with it after Don Quixote and cannot decide if it will exhaust or enthrall me...

I have never read Infinite Jest, though it has been recommended to me many times by many people. From what I know of the book, you should probably expect it to both exhaust and enthrall you. I also think you are right to compare it with Don Quixote in terms of the reading experience. I find reading the bigger, more challenging books to be rewarding, but I like to throw some less weighty tomes into the mix as well. As far as Infinite Jest goes, if you want some deeper insight into what reading this book will be like, I suggest you read a series of posts that Scott Esposito wrote when he tackled Infinite Jest a few months ago. Here they are in order: Infinite Jest Initiate, The Jest and I, Infinite Jest Continued, Infinite Jest -- So What the Hell is It About?, Infinite Jest, and finally Top 10 Books of 2004: #1. So, Emre, let us know what you decide to do. And anyone out there who has read the book, please leave a comment with your thoughts.

- C. Max Magee @ 2:14 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Quick Notes: Zadie Smith and Jonathan Safran Foer

In the comments of the last post, Laura asked about a new novel by Zadie Smith called On Beauty. There's no release date yet for the US, but I suspect it will be close to the UK date, which has been set for September. The Guardian has described it as "a transatlantic comic saga," but I haven't seen anything else regarding the subject matter. Smith is also writing a musical about based on the life of Kafka with her husband Nick Laird as well as a non-fiction book called Fail Better that will come out in 2006.

Of all the books mentioned in my preview post, Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close seems to be generating the most excitement. Among those excited is my mom, who was inspired to dig up some links to some old interviews with and articles about Foer. These may help you pass the time until his new book comes out: an interview with Robert Birnbaum at identitytheory.com, an interview with Decode Magazine and a profile in The Jewish Journal.

UPDATE: Found this story when reading back through the archives at Conversational Reading. It asks when America's fiction writers will take on the subject of 9/11. While I think it's an odd request -- I've never been under the assumption that fiction writers are expected to pen novels ripped from the headlines -- we will soon have such a book: Foer's new novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. From Houghton Mifflin's description of the book: "Oskar Schell is an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center."

- C. Max Magee @ 1:47 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

The Most Anticipated Books of 2005

Now that all the 2004 best of lists are behind us, I thought folks might be interested in what we have to look forward to. I have no doubt that in 2005 we will be introduced to many new literary faces, but there are also a number of well-known authors whose books will hit shelves this year: Murakami, McEwan, Foer, and more. So, I've compiled a list of books that you may find yourself reading this year. The list goes through July; some of the release dates are rough estimates, and a few of the dates will probably change. Also, I'm sure there are books I've missed, so please leave a comment with any other books you might be looking forward to this year.

There's a passel of intriguing books coming out in January. Hitting stores any day now is William Boyd's latest collection of stories, Fascination. This one has been out in the UK for a couple of months, and the Gaurdian described Boyd's stories this way: "They would seem a little too perfect if they weren't also suffused with an understanding of love, desire and emotional incompetence." You can read an excerpt here. Next week sees the arrival of Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland. The New York Times isn't impressed, calling it "a high-art twist on chick lit," but the Boston Globe says the book "remains as thoughtful and melancholy as the Beatles song its title evokes." You can read an excerpt here (pdf). Then, on or around January 18th, comes a book that many readers have been looking forward to: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. This one's been out for a while in the UK, too. Kafka is not a departure from Murakami's surreal oeuvre. The book follows the parallel paths of 15-year-old runaway named Kafka and Nakata, an elderly bumpkin who can communicate with cats. According to initial reviews, the book doesn't seem likely to be considered his finest work, but it should please Murakami fans. I encourage you to take a look at the Kafka page at the Complete Review for all the review coverage, and if you would like to read the first five chapters of the book, go here, click on the contest link, fill out your info, and use the password "kafka."

February: In 1990 Charles Johnson won a National Book Award for his book Middle Passage. Since then he has written a novel and a collection of short stories, and on February 8, a new collection, Dr. King's Refrigerator, will be released. A Publishers Weekly review says that some of the stories are too didactic, but "Johnson's longer, more carefully fleshed out stories are most effective."

March: Francine Prose's A Changed Man, which will be out March 1, looks very intriguing. An early review by Publishers Weekly describes this story of a young neo-Nazi who walks into a human rights organization office wanting to change his ways as "a good-natured satire of liberal pieties, the radical right and the fund-raising world." It will be interesting to see if this book proves to be, as HarperCollins declares, "Prose's most accomplished yet." Given the astonishing success of Ian McEwan's Atonement in 2002, his follow-up effort, a novel called Saturday, may be the most anticipated work of fiction in 2005. A recent piece in the New Yorker which was taken from the new novel shows promise. The central character of the novel, Harry Perowne, is a confident but unconventional neurosurgeon whose altercation with a thug following a car accident is the catalyst that sets the plot inexorably in motion. You can read the excerpt here. Look for the book on March 22. After writing a book as massive as Rising Up and Rising Down (that's 3352 pages, by the way), you'd think William T. Vollmann would take a break. Apparently not. On March 24, Viking will release Vollmann's latest collection of short stories, Europe Central, which take place in Russia and Germany during World War II. The breadth of Vollmann's work is truly astounding.

April: Buoyed by the success of his Boston Red Sox book (co-written by fellow fan Stephen King), Stewart O'Nan is probably hoping that some of those baseball fans will become fans of his fiction. His new novel, The Good Wife, comes out on April 1. O'Nan also considered calling this novel Upstate, a reference to the incarcerated husband of the book's protagonist. Everything I read about Jonathan Safran Foer's new book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, makes me more and more curious. Among young, bright writers who have emerged in the last couple of years, Foer is probably the youngest and may be the brightest as well. His first novel, Everything Is Illuminated included narration in broken English, and his short story "A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease" did things with typography that I haven't seen done in fiction before. The new book - set to arrive on April 4 - will continue with this sort of experimentation, including the use of photography to illustrate the novel. There's an interesting interview available at this website where Foer goes into detail about the new book (You have to click on the Foer link and then on Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close to get to it, but it's worth the trouble). After a five year hiatus, Kazuo Ishiguro has a new book coming out on April 5. The new book, called Never Let Me Go, is about an English boarding school with a troubled, but until now forgotten, past. You can read an excerpt here.

May: All the dedicated (some might say rabid) Chuck Palahniuk fans out there will be pleased to hear that he has a new book coming out this year (his official fan site is known as "The Cult," by the way). Haunted is a novel in 23 stories. Each story centers on a visitor to a writers' retreat where things, inexorably, go awry. I say it sounds like an update on the classic summer camp horror flick, but Doubleday describes it as "The Real World meets Alive." Look for it May 17.

June: Paul Theroux's latest work of fiction is about "the ultimate one-book wonder." For such a prolific writer, with a new novel or travelogue out nearly every year it seems, I wonder if creating this character was a struggle for Theroux, if he was able to get into the mind of a man with writer's block, something I suspect Theroux is not often afflicted with. The book is called Blinding Light. It will be released on June 1. Apparently Jonathan Safran Foer isn't the only literary stylist coming out with an illustrated novel in 2005. Umbarto Eco's new novel The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana will be of the illustrated variety as well. According to the Harcourt publicity, the memories "racing before the eyes [of the book's amnesiac protagonist] take the form of a graphic novel." No word on who supplied the artwork -- or if it was Eco himself, but the book has been out in Europe since last year so I suppose someone knows the answer. Here are some thoughts on the book from a blogger who read the German translation. The book comes out on June 3. George Singleton's forthcoming novel -- titled Novel -- is the only debut novel on this list, but Singleton is already well-known by readers who enjoy his comic stories and Southern charm. You can read one of his short stories here. The new book, which is set to come out on June 6, is about a snake handler from the town of Gruel, South Carolina.

July: John Irving isn't quite the superstar novelist he once was. Irving's novels -- The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Hotel New Hampshire -- were my introduction to contemporary literary fiction, and he was my first real "favorite author." But the middling quality of his recent novels, each one more mediocre than the last, ill-timed remarks about who should or should not pay taxes, and his dalliances with Hollywood have lost him some of his fans. Still, he keeps writing novels, and maybe this next one, Until I Find You (about a son's search through the tattoo underworld for his ink-addicted father), will be a return to form. The book comes out on July 12.

And if these aren't enough for you check out preview articles from The Herald, The Age (reg. req.), the Boston Globe, and the Guardian. Happy reading in 2k5.

- C. Max Magee @ 10:44 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Doyle's Chicago Bent

Interesting article in the Chicago Tribune (reg. req.) that answers the question, "How did Roddy Doyle write a novel -- well, half a novel -- about Chicago from 3,700 miles away?" The novel in question is Oh, Play That Thing. Here's part of the answer:

Originally, when he prepared to write the novel, Doyle considered moving to Chicago for a year with his family, but that didn't work out. (For one thing, his three children, ages 6 to 13, didn't want to leave their friends.) So he relied on key Chicagoans and several shelf-loads of books for insights into the city.

I'm always impressed when a novelist can present a place and time as though he or she had been there.

- C. Max Magee @ 10:48 AM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Forthcoming Foer

I found an interesting interview with Jonathan Safran Foer today. I'll be including this in an upcoming post about books to look forward to this year, but I wanted to post it separately first because I think it's pretty interesting, and I can't recall seeing it posted anywhere else. In the interview he talks about his forthcoming novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which will include photography along with the text, and which seems to be a continuation of the rule-breaking, avant-garde style he has been cultivating. The rest of the interview provides an interesting picture of this young author. The only annoying thing is that the interview is kind of hard to get to. First go to this link, click on Foer and then click on "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close."

- C. Max Magee @ 9:44 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Leonard Cohen, Master of Prose by Andrew Saikali

Leonard Cohen turned 70 a few months ago and, amid the celebration, was the subject of countless pieces of reflection. Most of them concentrated on the music career that has consumed the last half of his life, and on the poetry which runs as a current through everything. But this is not a music blog, and I've never felt particularly confident writing about poetry. (Though I implore each of you to get your hands on his various volumes of poetry and at least his first three LPs. No record collection is complete without Songs from a Room.)

So this, then, is about Leonard Cohen, master of prose, and in particular, his first novel - The Favorite Game. By 1963 a 29-year old Leonard Cohen had already given the world two volumes of poetry and was living in London, reflecting on his youth in Montreal. And so we meet Lawrence Breavman, poet-adventurer. The Favorite Game weaves past with present, with an acute comic eye for Breavman's childhood -- his years of discovery of his place within and without his family, of friendships and girls. These scenes cut in and out of a later narrative which finds Breavman in his college days, still prowling for adventure, now adding words to his arsenal of weapons to conquer the hearts of women.

Poetry is "a verdict," Breavman tells us, a judgment passed, and quite distinct from the creation of the words themselves. When he writes them, when he utters them, they are "propaganda," Breavman confides to us. They are spoken for their luring powers. In his childhood, Breavman experimented on unsuspecting girls with hypnosis with much the same intent. The boy becomes the man.

Through it all, childhood and youth, there was Krantz -- Breavman's best friend, partner-in-crime. Devil in his ear. Their friendship was an ongoing dialogue played for comic effect, a running commentary on the world around them. It gave them an awareness, a self-awareness. A detachment.

And then Krantz leaves. His next chapter will happen, unwritten, in England. "We've got to stop interpreting the world for one another." And so the dialogue is suspended, but not immediately. The early post-Krantz days find Breavman still the prowler, still soaking up experiences, and still invoking Krantz's name as if he were still there. Still devil in his ear.

Enter Shell. We'd met her before. Snippets of dialogue and confidences popping up in the early narrative. But we'd never been properly introduced. Now the narrative catches up with their meeting. In New York now -- grad school. Breavman and Shell. Shell and Breavman. They become a closed world to themselves. The tone becomes more serious. More adult. Krantz is no longer in his ear. We don't know yet whether Shell will wind up as merely another conquest, another shadow, another scar. We do know that this seems different. She not only enters Breavman's life, she anchors it.

When Krantz's name is mentioned late in the narrative, it's jarring. A name from the past, from a different Breavman. We realize how different his world has become. And then Krantz is back -- but he's changed. Or maybe Breavman's changed. Either way, the suspended dialogue is released, and it crashes.

There's more. Old voices call Breavman back. They mix with the new voices. Pretty soon the new ones become the old ones, and Breavman's life continues, unwritten, beyond the pages of the book.

Three years later, Leonard Cohen would give us Beautiful Losers, his only other novel. Its a stunning work, stylistically rich and daring. It deserves its own discussion, but not now.

There's a common and rather irritating perception of Leonard Cohen as a harbinger of doom. The song "The Future" and a few other cautionary tales aside, I've never really bought into this. Maybe for some its the deep voice of the later records. But then they can't be really listening to the words. So maybe it's the depth of the words. He digs deeper into life than most writers, but he doesn't just reveal foreboding. He reveals absurdities with wit. He reveals longing with passion. And he reveals loss with sadness.

This is not the stuff of dread and gloom. It's the stuff of life. And we're all the richer for his passion.

- C. Max Magee @ 5:00 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Will Eisner RIP

Over at Beatrice, I saw the posting that Will Eisner has died. Eisner is credited by many with inventing the graphic novel -- or at least turning it into the form we recognize today (A Contract with God is his landmark work). Many of today's most prominent graphic novelists cite Eisner as a major influence. At the moment, none of the major news sites have posted an obit (aside from this brief piece at E&P), but you can expect to see some soon.

UPDATE: Here come the obits: DenisKitchen.com, WaPo, NYT

- C. Max Magee @ 2:15 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Quality over Quantity by Patrick Brown

Here in Iowa City, the only town in America whose economy is fueled entirely by football, alcohol and literature, we get more than our share of readings to attend. While I don't make it to all of them, I did manage to hear Marilynne Robinson read a few weeks ago. Ms. Robinson is an enchanting reader, and her new book Gilead was atop many "best of" lists for 2004. As anyone who has read a review of Gilead knows, it is Robinson's first novel since Housekeeping was published 24 years ago, and the way many in the media talk about it, it might as well have been 224 years ago. While Robinson has written two non-fiction books about such varied topics as John Calvin and Great Britain's nuclear policy, Gilead is indeed her first new work of fiction in many years. But so what? I for one would like to see more authors take their time between novels. One of my favorite writers, J.F. Powers, wrote only two novels and wrote them nearly 30 years apart. They're both nearly perfect, and I don't find myself wishing he wrote more. In fact, the scarcity makes it that much more likely that I'll actually read one of his books a second or third time, something I rarely do. I don't think I'll find myself diving into Kingsley Amis' very fine Old Devils as I've been poisoned by the vast sea of mediocrity that separates that book from his masterpiece Lucky Jim. So hats off to the Marilynne Robinsons, the J.F. Powers, and the Donna Tarts of the world. I sometimes wish we had a few more of them and a few less mediocre novels.

- C. Max Magee @ 6:13 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

The Welcome Wagon

I'd like to welcome another new contributor to The Millions. I worked with Patrick Brown at the book store in Los Angeles for a couple of years, and when I moved to Chicago, he moved to Iowa. Above this post, please enjoy the first of what I hope will be many contributions from Patrick.

- C. Max Magee @ 6:09 PM ~ comments: 0 ~ Links to this post

 

Staying Sane: A Year in Reading by Emre Peker (Part 1)

I started 2004 with Henry Miller's