People are always saying "I don't read books." Too often, the problem is reading too many of the wrong books, thus turning a potentially great experience into something they'd rather avoid. This is where _DictionaryGirl_ and PointBlank come in and let you borrow something awesome. Let's go to town and make some recommendations, shall we?


Most of the time, I try to give these columns some sort of theme. You know, “books to read during the 7th inning stretch” or “books that my mother told me I must never open.” Well, due to laziness, brain freeze, or some combination of the two, I’m fresh out of themes here, people. Maybe next week. For this Suicide Bookshelf, I’m just going to give you a trio of books that I’ve liked for a long time. These are a few of the books that I’ve read at least twice. Hopefully, you’ll be inspired to pick one or two of them up for the first or twenty-first time.


A Feast of Snakes, Harry Crews

A Feast of Snakes could only be written by Harry Crews. Filled with the most loathsome group of characters not currently in the White House; centered around a story that involves dog-fighting, high school football, and liquor running; and laced with more violence than your average video game, Crews manages to pull it all together in a story that isn’t only hard to put down, but one that also makes the reader care about the characters beyond wanting to find out what happens to them next. The main character, Joe Lon Mackey, is a washed up former high school football star who lives an empty life running whiskey for his father while trying not to go mad with regret. The action takes place in the small town of Mystic, Georgia during its annual “Rattlesnake Roundup.”

A Feast of Snakes reads like a Flannery O’Connor crossed with Bukowski, and if that description doesn’t interest you, then I don’t know what will. Crews writes from a place that is obviously dark and angry, but a place that also manages to be funny as hell. His own life is the stuff of southern gothic fiction: raised in utter poverty by itinerant farmers in Georgia and Florida, he wound up fighting in Korea and went to college on the GI Bill. Fortunately, Crews also told that story in the amazingly poignant autobiography, Childhood: The Biography of a Place , which is featured in the Classic Crews Collection, certainly a must-buy for anyone who likes southern gothic fiction.


Riddley Walker , Russell Hoban

After someone mentioned it in the comments to a previous column, I needed to pick up this book again. I’m really glad that I did, since I had almost forgotten just how good and original it is. Set in England after a nuclear war, Riddley Walker is a sort of Mad Max meets A Clockwork Orange; a post-apocalyptic story written in an entirely invented dialect.

Of course, it’s the sort of writing that’s hard to put in a block quote (In fact, I'm pretty sure that my Microsoft Word is about to explode), and say, “hey, isn’t that great!?” Believe me, though, the awkwardness of the style fades after only a short time, and what you’re left with is the beauty and uniqueness of the story. The world, destroyed in 1997, is going through a second Iron Age, with only a few hints of the past. On his 12th birthday, Riddley Walker must slay a wild boar. Soon after, he replaces his father as the local prophet, interpreting the Punch and Judy puppet shows that travel the country, telling the allegorical story of the “1 Big 1.” After making a discovery at an excavation, Riddley is forced on the run with man’s mortal enemy—a pack of wild dogs.

This is the sort of book that you will immediately force your friends to read. A one-of-a-kind novel.


The War of the End of the World, Mario Vargas Llosa

In The War of the End of the World,Vargas Llosa tells the story of Canudos, Brazil, the site of one of the bloodiest and strangest rebellions in world history. It all started with Antonio Conselheiro (Anthony the Counselor), a preacher who traveled throughout Bahia Brazil during the late 19th Century. After many run-ins with the government and official church, Conselheiro set up, with his many followers, the town of Canudos. Quickly, the town grew to 30,000 inhabitants, mostly recently freed slaves, indigenous people, and the poorest of Brazil’s farmers, who had recently suffered through a drought which killed up to 300,000. The newly formed Brazilian republic sent several small expeditions to crush the community, but each was repulsed by the citizens of Canudos. In 1897, at the insistence of the British government, a final assault was carried out on the citizens of Canudos, the entire town was wiped out, and is almost totally forgotten today.

Vargas Llosa tells the story in a quietly restrained style, letting the events speak for themselves. We follow the men and women of Canudos, as well as the soldiers who are sent to destroy them. Even though the outcome is preordained, the reader is still drawn into the lives of these characters that are, more than living through history, becoming the stuff of history itself. Although conscious of the weight of the story he’s telling, Llosa is never overwhelmed by it, and the writing strikes a perfect blend between the factual and the fictional. Beautiful and heartbreaking.


So, there it is: misanthropy in the Deep South, a doomed quasi-rebellion in Brazil, and the beginnings of story telling in a Britain devastated by nuclear war. I guess you could find a theme in there somewhere, but I’m not sure I’m up to it.

People are always saying "I don't read books." Too often, the problem is reading too many of the wrong books, thus turning a potentially great experience into something they'd rather avoid. This is where _DictionaryGirl_ and PointBlank come in and let you borrow something awesome. Let's go to town and make some recommendations, shall we?

Who doesn't enjoy a good story of triumph? Those stories where the fallen and dejected hero, much like Odysseus, must fight insurmountable odds to come back and win the day, kicking ass and taking names--we live through them vicarously, pumping our fists for the hero and reveling in their crushing victories.

But what about the almost-triumphs? That is to say, where the lesson learned is that everything can't be spectacular, but sometimes semi-okay is enough? Sometimes I think I like them better.

1. The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno

I fell in love with Joe Meno's writing after picking up Hairstyles of the Damned with my Christmas book store gift card this past December, so there was no debate about picking this one up next. Not to mention that it's the only book I have yet come across with a decoder ring in the back.

The Boy Detective Fails chronicles the life and times of Billy Argo, a meddling kid of the highest calibre. His previous chapters, had they been written, may have had titles like The Mystery At The Old Mill or The Secret of Pirate Island, but this book starts at Chapter 33. It is here that we learn what becomes of a boy detective, once he is no longer a boy. His sister has committed suicide, and his sidekick has become a morbidly obese agoraphobic; the boy himself has been institutionalized for the past ten years, unable to cope with the changing world around him, until now when New Jersey state budget cuts have forced him out of the safety of the mental hospital and into the relatively big world of Shady Glens assisted living apartments.

Now Billy must cope with a graveyard shift telemarketing job, a dependence on Ativan, and the prospect of making new friends and falling in love. It's enough to make even the most average person nervous, but when buildings start vanishing, villains hold an all-day convention with lunch at the Gotham Hotel, and an Alzheimer's-ridden arch-nemesis turns up just down the hall with half-remembered malicious intent--not to mention the mystery of what truly caused his sister's death--it's only a matter of time before Billy must answer to his calling, picking up the trusty magnifying glass once again.

The cool thing about this book is how Meno plays on really classic mystery archetypes--the detective falling in love with a thief, the "dear reader" phrasings, the word search in the back--while creating something entirely fresh and experimental. The fact that it's interactive book (decoder ring and a secret story-within-a-story!) only serves to make it more engaging. Meno also constructs an entire working world within the book, soft and strange with somewhat antiquated speech, an alternate-reality New Jersey.

It is made clear that BIlly Argo's world, though similar, is not the very same world as the one we live in, and as such he is free to create a reality in which fantastic child heroes and ghosts and pirates and villains are as much a part of everyday life as bullies or rabbits. Child detectives, we find here, suffer much the same pressured fate as child actors in our own world, as Billy encounters a few on his adventures, all of whom you will probably know all too well as you find them. The whole thing is funny and sad all at once.

The Boy Detective Fails is one of those books that makes you want to speak so highly of it that the words themselves are just out of reach. You'll smile and well up with tears, and you may even write in the margins. I can't recommend it enough.

You can pick this one up at Punk Planet Books.

2. The Fuck-Up by Arthur Nersesian

I found this book a few years ago, total luck on my part. Someone had left it behind on the counter at the art store where I was working at the time. When no one ever came back to claim it, I ended up taking it home. There was a Counterfit sticker jammed between some pages, a really brilliant local band that's broken up now, and I felt like it was a good omen. It must have been, because the book itself is pretty brilliant as well.

Our unnamed hero The Fuck-Up doesn't start out from nearly as lofty a place as young Billy Argo--just a slacker post-grad living with his girlfriend in New York City and harboring a crush on the concession stand girl while scraping by on a movie theater paycheck, complacent in an okay place. Not for long, however, as in quickfire succession he loses the concession stand girl, gets dumped by the college girlfriend and kicked out of the apartment, and is canned from the usher job for simply asking for a raise.

This is all in Chapter One, by the way, and marks only the catalyst in the almost insane downward spiral that is our young hero's life. Overqualified but underexperienced, he finds his way to sketchier and still sketchier employment; meanwhile, he crashes at his friend Helmsley's pad in Brooklyn (because it's always good to have a friend with even weirder problems than yourself, provided of course that neither end in tragedy), and tries gamely to tolerate the successively strange cast of characters that make their way throughout his life.

It's a pretty funny book in its own absurd and dark way, though it does take turns for the realist as well as the poignant when it's needed. Nersesian has a good eye for keeping the story's tone light despite his poor character's circumstances, as he could have easily dipped it all in melodrama pretty fast. Perhaps the only thing he does better than this is the way he describes the city. He also creates a world here (albeit a familiar one rather than fantastic), often and at great length, and in ways that are integral to the story itself:

I've never, I regret to tell you, been to New York, so I can't much vouch for the veracity of his descriptions; I would hope, however, that such a place really exists, dark yet beautiful, expansive yet ultimately familiar and like home. Someday perhaps I'll be able to tell you.

I was seventeen the first time I read this, and to tell you the truth, it kind of terrified me: the world of our narrator (aged twenty-two years) seemed unspeakably dark and all sorts of what could only be fiction. That was then, however, and I'm not sure if the fact that what I recognize most now, in addition to the amount of heart in the story, is the degree to which it is not entirely implausible with just the right amount of blind misfortune, makes it less terrifying or somehow even more. Nevertheless, any book that begs coming back to despite any implicit terror of the near future is a book that warrants reading. Go check it out.

Anything you've read lately fall along the same lines? Not quite a triumph, not quite a tragedy? Let me know. I love those kind of in-betweens. In the meantime, stay tuned for a word from PointBlank, who will surely be more prompt in his columnizings.

People are always saying "I don't read books." Too often, the problem is reading too many of the wrong books, thus turning a potentially great experience into something they'd rather avoid. This is where _DictionaryGirl_ and PointBlank come in and let you borrow something awesome. Let's go to town and make some recommendations, shall we?

To me, there’s almost nothing better than a good private eye or detective story. In fact, it’d be hard to find a genre this side of science fiction that’s more influential in literature, film, and television that the hard boiled detective novel. As a child, I used to love trying to figure out how Encyclopedia Brown was going to beat Bugs Meaney. As I grew older, I loved watching Jim Rockford, The Equalizer and even Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote (don’t laugh). You can even see the influences of the detective novel in books like Junky and Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. So where did these stories come from and why have they held such a grip on our imaginations for so long?

Beginnings

Everyone knows Sherlock Holmes, even those who have never read any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels or short stories. Personally, I’ve never been that interested the pipe-smoking know-it-all. He’s always seemed like a bit of a pompous ass, as in the quote above where he basically mocks his biggest fan, Dr Watson. No detective library would be complete, however, without a copy of The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, which contains most of the great detective’s shorter stories, including his famous battle with Professor Moriarty over Reichenbach Falls.

Before Sherlock, however, there were other detectives. Like a lot of good things, the genre could be said to have begun with Edgar Allen Poe and his Auguste Duipin series of three stories, especially Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter, which were published in the 1840s and are available in a single volume. Dickens’ fans point to inspector Bucket, the brilliant detective from Bleak House as the first of the great British detectives, but my favorite of the early detective novel is far and away The Moonstone written by Wilkie Collins in 1868. This is a book that has it all: International intrigue; a mysterious, cursed diamond; opium addiction; and, of course, a great detective, Sergeant Cuff. In addition to the usual trappings of a suspense novel, Collins also uses multiple narrators to push the intricate plot forward as well as entertain the reader, none more humorously than Mr. Betteridge, the butler who doesn’t make a move without consulting a well-worn copy of Robinson Crusoe. It is easily in my top-three “sick day” books.

The Golden Age of American Detective Fiction

Chandler and Hammett are synonymous with the golden age of detective fiction that came out of America in the 1930s through the 1950s. These hardboiled novels differed from their more staid predecessors in that the detectives were often as damaged as the criminals they chased and the criminals were often as interesting as the “good guys,” if not more so. Most importantly, Hammett’s novels from 1929-1934 (Red Harvest, The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon, and The Glass Key) are the building blocks of almost all American detective stories that would follow. Red Harvest, the first of Hammett’s books to feature the “Continental Op,” a nameless and nearly faceless detective, has inspired the films Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars, but the book more than stands on its own. Likewise, though it is hard to divorce Humphrey Bogart’s performance as Sam Spade from the source material, The Maltese Falcon is one of the finest plotted works of American fiction of the time and should be picked up by everyone.

A decade after Hammett, Raymond Chandler’s series of Philip Marlowe novels once again breathed new life into the genre. Marlowe didn’t just use the characters or the crimes to tell his stories. In his novels, especially the classics The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely Chandler makes the city of Los Angeles another character, one even more compelling than the decaying families and down-and-outs who trust in Marlowe to solve their problems.

The third of the great American Detective novelists of the Golden Age is the least familiar to most people, but Ross MacDonald’s novels featuring the detective Lew Archer have long been revered as maybe the best of the trio by many readers. Like Chandler, MacDonald sets his novels in California during the fifties. This is a California populated by the usual con men, gun molls and thugs, but also by fake gurus and new age hucksters. The first of the books, The Moving Target, might also be the best. Not only must Archer search for the missing oil magnate of the title, but the closer he gets, the more the crimes and cons stack up, and Archer is not the sort of man who can let an injustice pass, no matter the risk to himself or his original case.

Two Other Voices

Now, you’ve probably heard of most of the authors I’ve mentioned above, and you’ve probably even read a couple of their books, so I had to give you two more writers that I just love, but are, unfortunately, relatively unknown. First up is James Crumley, who wrote two great detective stories in the seventies, The Wrong Case, and my favorite, The Last Good Kiss.

The Last Good Kiss moves the detective setting away from the big cities and out into the empty plains and never-ending highways of the North- and Mid-West. Sent to look for an alcoholic poet on a binge, the detective C.W. Sughrue winds up teaming up with his quarry (as well as an alcoholic dog) on a doomed mission to find a girl missing for ten years. It’s really one of the most surprising and enjoyable novels I’ve read recently.

Lastly, Chester Himes. Himes is (much like Jerry Lewis and snails) revered in France, but shamefully neglected in his native country. Himes’ crime novels feature the police detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. Through nine novels, all set in Harlem in the 50s, Himes follows the criminals, pimps, hustlers, and preachers who live in a world almost surreal in its intensity. Sometimes the two detectives are the main characters, but mostly they lurk in the periphery, their macabre names a key to their function as both boogey men as well as judge, jury and executioners. Neither good police (they regularly beat suspects in violent crimes, while ignoring petty criminals) nor evildoers, they exist as almost mythic forces, implacable in their resolve to solve cases. One of the best of the Digger and Coffin-centric novels is The Real Cool Killers.

Well, I hope that’s enough crime and revenge and sex and murder to keep you all up until next time, kiddos! Have a favorite detective story? Let me know!

People are always saying "I don't read books." Too often, the problem is reading too many of the wrong books, thus turning a potentially great experience into something they'd rather avoid. This is where _DictionaryGirl_ and PointBlank come in and let you borrow something awesome. Let's go to town and make some recommendations, shall we?

Yes, Memorial Day weekend has once again come and gone, and the time is now officially upon us for the beach and snappy white sneakers and summer reading. The best time of the year ever, if you ask me. Last week, Professor PointBlank assigned you all his summer reading list; this week, I shall hand out mine.

Now it's more or less summer and all where it counts, but even in Southern California (where everyone likes to pretend it's summer year-round) we're not quite out of the metaphorical woods of overcast coastal gloom. Still, it's nice to pretend until the climate catches up, and one of the best ways is with a book taking place as far away from Thomas Hardy's dismal gray puddles and shires as possible. One of my personal favorites for this purpose is Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary. (I'm kind of a big fan of his; not sure if you could tell.) The protagonist here is familiar: Jack Kemp is a skulking alcoholic journalist for a paper on the brink of disaster, into his early thirties and a wrinkled suit, putting up with strange people in some stranger-still warm weather place for the sake of adventure. The book itself, however, is Thompson's first, the better part of a decade before he really grew into his character. This one is fiction, you see, taking place in the far-off heat and political turmoil of 1950s Puerto Rico. Still, somehow—perhaps because he was younger when he wrote it—the characters are real, much less caricature at this point. Even then, however, it's unmistakably Thompson from start to finish, and that's never, ever a bad thing.

One other thing unique to a Thompson novel here is that the fiction angle allows him to really work up a story arc, less stream-of-consciousness and more build-up; it's a side of Thompson rarely seen, and for a first novel it's remarkably well done. The book was rejected everywhere on his first attempt at publication (written in 1959, it didn't see printing for forty years), and it boggles my mind to this day. It's got knock-out fights and political tension, a comical dead-end job with idiot coworkers, gorgeously run-down tropical landscapes, an endless supply of iced rum and cheeseburgers, and (for the ladies) some romance in the form of a desperately sad love triangle and a smash-it-up holiday weekend yacht party that has little hope of ending well. It's also fairly short and a quick read, so you'll have time for some rum and cheeseburgers yourself.

Speaking of something being fairly short, I'm also a pretty big fan of short stories over the summer. This is mostly because I like to bring books to the beach, and the last time I got caught up in a regular novel, I forgot to move for a good couple hours and ended up with a back not altogether unlike a boiled lobster. You don't necessarily want something heavy, however—I leafed through a Raymond Carver collection the other day and almost got depressed on contact—so, in my opinion, you can either go the irreverent pop-culture route or the fun campy retro route.

If you take the first route, you'll probably want to take Chuck Klosterman IV along with you. It's his latest, and it combines a pretty great cross-section of what the man can do. The first section, "Things That Are True," should appeal to you celebrity worship types, with uncut versions of profiles and trend stories he's done for magazines like Esquire, Spin, and The New York Times. From Britney Spears to Billy Joel, no one is safe from his criticizing bespectacled hipster eye. The second section, called "Things That Might Be True," poses rhetorical questions and answers them by editorializing the low-culture staples of Klosterman's daily diet. Here, alone with his own thoughts, he's at times subject to wild tangents that on occasion never make it home, but when he's on, he's really on, dryly hilarious as he explores everything from pirates and robots and 24-hour VH1 to X-Men in real life and a list of the top ten most-accurately-rated artists in rock history:

The third section of the book is called "Something That Isn't True At All," and it's a work of fiction (which seems to be going around with journalists lately in this article). I'll admit: I haven't read that section yet. But it's on my list for the summer, that's for sure. The only real problem with Chuck IV is that it's still only out in hardcover, which can be kind of a bummer for lugging to the beach and such; if you still want to check out Klosterman but don't want the added weight, get Sex, Drugs, and Cocoapuffs: A Low-Culture Manifesto. It's pretty much an entire book full of "Things That Might Be True," put together in mix-tape form, and I have a hard time deciding which book I like better.

Now, if you want to bypass the irreverent pop-culture and go straight to Route Two, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to go all traditional 9th grade reading list on you and assign the interconnected short stories of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, a classic allegory about the sadness of colonization and war in the context of super awesome and adventurous space travel. Of course, by "afraid" I mean "totally thrilled," because it's one of the best books I was ever assigned, and, if certain college courses were any indication, people are probably going to yell at me now that Ray Bradbury isn't real science fiction because there are no dragons and sexy cyborgs or something, but then I would just have to argue that if Bradbury's doing it wrong, then I don't want to be right. It's a fun book to read again now that we're a good deal past the grand future of 1999 and beyond, just because it's interesting to see what he got wrong and what he got right. Bradbury also intersects futuristic science with homey summer scenes complete with hot dog stands and lemonade, enough to almost forgive even the themes of impending apocalypse (a possible downer and source of heaviness in the midst of summer fun).

Wait, almost forgive? What am I talking about? The language alone forgives all. If somehow you weren't assigned this book for school ages ago, this needs to be first on your list. Get on it.

From science fiction, it's really only a short jump to comic books, one of the best summer mediums ever. They read through like lightning, the pictures give your imagination some rest, and they are almost always tons of fun. The most immediate one I have to get behind right now is Jaime Hernandez's Maggie the Mechanic, the first of three Locas-centric Love and Rockets compilations due out over the present to near future. It starts at the very, very beginning of the series, which is lucky for you, because at what better point to jump in than at the beginning? Especially with a storyline like Love and Rockets, which gets complicated pretty fast. The characters are endless, and thankfully there's a legend in the back.

Nowadays the comic is slightly more straightforward slice-of-life, but back in the day it got pretty crazy, mixing goofy-gorgeous Mexican punk-rock girls up with space rocket mechanics, aliens, dinosaurs, and lucha libre. That's the Love and Rockets you get in this compilation: for our not-always-so-fearless heroine Maggie Chascarillo, flying a hover-scooter to fix a spaceship, fighting a dinosaur, contracting a voodoo jungle illness, getting kidnapped by a mysterious secret agent lover man, and dancing drunk on a table, are all in a day's work. What a woman!



No but seriously, it's all a mash-up of short unbelievable stories that veer into wild fun fantasy (and just a little bit of cheesecake, for the... ladies?) while still centering around some of the coolest and most real kids you'll ever meet in a book, comic or otherwise. Enid Coleslaw only wishes she could hang with Maggie and Hopey.

Love and Rockets does cater to a certain kind of pop culture, but if the Klosterman type was more your speed, then the fun summer comic for you is Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim series. The basic story can be summed up thusly: what if life was like an old Nintendo game? This is what Scott Pilgrim, our intrepid Canadian slacker bass-player hero, is faced with when he falls for the love of his dreams, feisty American Ramona Flowers. At first it's all awkward romance and vegan cooking, but the action doesn't stop once the first of Ramona's Seven Evil Ex-Boyfriend Bosses descends upon Scott with his zombie army for an all-out battle. Meanwhile, there's Scott's crazy underaged Chinese ex-girlfriend Knives to deal with, and will his band Sex Bob-Omb ever be more successful than The Clash at Demonhead, the Blood Brothers-esque art trio of the girl who stomped all over his heart like a Koopa Troopa? The odds are stacked against them all, but with a little faith and some extra power-ups, they just might make it.



Suffice it to say, it's a really dorky story, but the sheer amount of scenester parody and video game culture packed into each page keep it pretty hilarious and fun, and the illustrations are adorable. There are three pocket-manga-sized books out so far, and I believe three more on the way. I can't wait.

Wow. Between the two of us, you all are going to be kept busy well into September. Anything sound good? Or, better yet, anything already on your list sound better? I've already read all these ones, after all, and am scrambling for a reading list of my own! At any rate, happy incoming summer, and happy reading! And don't forget to wear sunscreen! Nobody likes a boiled lobster.

People are always saying "I don't read books." Too often, the problem is reading too many of the wrong books, thus turning a potentially great experience into something they'd rather avoid. This is where _DictionaryGirl_ and PointBlank come in and let you borrow something awesome. Let's go to town and make some recommendations, shall we?

Memorial Day is the official unofficial start of summer. That means it’s also the beginning of hot dog season and the start of Summer Reading time. It seems, however, that we apologize too much for what we read during these hot months. “Oh, this Danielle Steel? No, it’s not great. It’s just a summer read.” Why do we do this? Is winter the only time you can curl up with Dostoevsky? Is summer exclusively the realm of Clancy, King, and Hiassen?

Probably not. But I do think there are a few qualities that a book should have to be considered a Great Summer Read.

First of all, it has to be exciting and gripping enough for you to want to read it instead of taking a dip, or eating another burger. If action is what you seek, check out Neil Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon if you haven’t already. The story manages to combine code-breaking during World War II, treasure hunting in the Philippines, the invention of the digital computer, international finance and half a dozen other things, but the plot moves at at such a breakneck pace that you never feel weighed down with all that information. You just want to find out what happens next .

At over 1,100 pages, you might just have a read that will take you until Labor Day, but don’t be surprised if you’re finished after the first rainy day.

If you’re done early, why not try another tale of international intrigue, revenge and deception? Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo has been a perfect summer book for over a century. The basic story of Edmund Dantes: the innocent man arrested and thrown in prison, his love stolen from him, and his subsequent escape and revenge is familiar to everyone, but the book has so much more. Like Cryptonomicon, it is long, but also exciting enough to keep you hooked.

Another rule that a summer book should follow is that you should be able to put it down once in a while. Despite what all the cool kids say, life’s not all about reading your summer away. I like to pick up a collection of short stories every summer. I don’t read them very fast, but there are few things better than spending the summer with a great story teller. The Stories of John Cheever should be required reading for anyone interested in what the modern short story can do. Winner of both the Pulitzer and the National Book award when it was published in 1979, this collection contains all the stories that Cheever published during his life. Mostly set during the post-war years in the tonier parts of the Northeast, it is essential summer reading if only for The Swimmer, the story of a man who decides to swim home, pool by pool, from one end of his suburban town to the other.

But maybe you like your stories a little less blue-blooded and WASP-y? How about the world of down-and-out Scotland? James Kelman is famous in America for, if anything, his Booker Prize-winning novel How Late it Was, How Late and the controversy that surrounded its selection. He is also a fantastic short story writer, and his collection Busted Scotch is one of the best of the last dozen years. Some of it might seem too grim for summer, but it’ll definitely make you appreciate the warmth a bit more.

My last requirement for summer reading is a bit less concrete, but maybe just as important. I like to find something new in summer. Whether that means finding a new writer, like Kelman, or discovering the fun in 19th Century French potboilers, like Cristo, I don’t really care. I just think the summer is time for discovery. What better way than picking up some non-fiction and learning something new? Nick Tosches’ Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock ‘N’ Roll has everything: drinking, drugging, and some of the weirdest and wildest musicians of all time. Rescuing the music from the likes of Billy Ray Cyrus and Shania Twain, this is the real story of real country music. Oh, and Tosches is one hell of a badass writer. Imagine a history-loving Hunter S. Thompson and you might get an idea of what his writing is like.

Ok, so maybe Country music isn’t your thing. Maybe chess is more your bag (nerd!)? JC Hallman’s The Chess Artist is both a history of the great game, as well as a gripping story of the author’s immersion into some of the fringes of the chess world, including a trip autocratic Soviet republic ruled by a dictator who is also the head of FIDE, games played by death-row inmates, and the chess hustlers in New York’s Washington Square park.

So, there are a few books to keep you reading all summer long. Of course it’s a small list, and you can’t go wrong by picking up something by Elmore Leonard, one of John D. Macdonald’ Travis McGee novels, or a good Heinlein space opera. Why not tell me what you’re excited to pick up this summer? Oh, and don’t forget a good pair of sunglasses. Your eyes are important!

RIP, Lloyd Alexander
On a less summery note, I’d like to say a big thank-you to Lloyd Alexander, who died almost two weeks ago. Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain was one of those discoveries I made as a child that made me want to read and write for the rest of my life. He was 83.

People are always saying "I don't read books." Too often, the problem is reading too many of the wrong books, thus turning a potentially great experience into something they'd rather avoid. This is where _DictionaryGirl_ and PointBlank come in and let you borrow something awesome. Let's go to town and make some recommendations, shall we?

Last week, my internship at the West Coast branch of Writers House literary agency came to a close. I’ve spent every Tuesday and Thursday there for the past ten months, reading manuscripts, arranging postcard art, debating the importance of Ted Leo vs. Colin Meloy in the pretense-rock arena, and packing down delicious holiday food. It was the ten best work-related months I’ve had to date. So, in honor of the passing of such an era, I’m dedicating today’s Suicide Bookshelf to one of Writers House's biggest recent successes; it also happens to be my number-one, desert-island, top favorite book, as written by my number-one, desert-island, top favorite writer. Hell, you wouldn't believe the kind of unprecedented self-restraint it's taken to hold back from featuring this as long as I have. I should get a medal.

King Dork by Frank Portman

This is a book about a song.

See, much like the two in my last spotlight, this book has a very specific tie-in to music; only this time, instead of songs taken from books, this one goes the other way around. The song in question is the A-side to this little seven-inch split single by a little band called The Mr. T Experience. (The other side is by Gigantor, FYI, but they can get their own book spotlight.) The title of the song, shockingly enough, is also “King Dork.” Clocking in at a semi-brief two minutes and forty-two seconds, it’s a sweet and funny little song about a hopelessly nerdy guy trying to win a girl’s affection with comparisons to Monty Python and promises to keep their relationship a secret—so much the less embarrassment for her. I could argue that the book bleeds over in reference to several other earlier songs, but it would all be hearsay. The “King Dork” split-single is what counts.

So the legend goes like this: the power and impressionability of a band like Mr. T Experience (pop-punk, not entirely dissimilar to super-early Green Day) seems to strike best during one’s tender teenage years; that's when they got me, anyway. But fans grow up as they are wont to do, and one fan had, by the time he met Frank Portman (still more well-known as Dr. Frank at that point), grown up to become a children-and-young-adult lit agent. So he was like, “Frank, you should really think about writing a book,” and Frank was like “ehhhhh…” and Steve (which is the super-agent in question's name, by the way) was like “no, really, I think your songs would translate really awesomely,” and in this fashion, neatly summarized for your consumption, the 344-page book version of a less-than-three-minute song was born.

And here’s the thing: it translates beautifully.

To summarize as much as possible, which is no small feat because this book is impossibly dense, the book revolves around one Thomas Charles Henderson, or Tom—also known as King Dork, Tom-Tom, Chi-Mo, Hender-fag, Sheepie, and any number of other nicknames of varying denigration—and his travails in the matters of rock and roll, weird family, and semi-hot girls within the scope of the small-time hell that is high school in late-1990s suburban California. As if that’s not enough, his entire life turns upside down when he uncovers a copy of The Catcher in the Rye that once belonged to his father, and imagines them to be clues to unlocking the mystery that shrouds his father’s death—and maybe unlocking the secrets of this one girl while we’re at it, because some otherworldly dad-advice never hurt. And then there’s the devil-head, and the Dud Chart, and the Festival of Lights, and his genius alphabetical-order best friend Sam Hellerman, and the most disturbing bumbling associate principal you could ever hope not to meet, and…

See, it’s actually extremely difficult to give a straight-up synopsis of King Dork, because there is so much going on (sometimes bordering precariously on the edge of too much, but never spilling over), story arcs all twisting and unraveling around each other simultaneously, involving wild subplots and 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary (which is the greatest way to help you ace the SAT- or GRE-verbal since slipping words like “conflagration” and “surreptitious” into song lyrics). Also, one of the best parts about the book is its element of surprise, and it’s hard to really, really get into it without ruining something crucial. So instead, here are some things you need to know.

Probably the first thing you need to know is that there’s a very strong literary tradition of the geeky somewhat-loner misfit high school protagonist – the kind of shy kid who spends a lot of time thinking, perhaps too much for his own good, and yet somehow ends up winning the day at the end – and this one fits the mold. It’s a familiar theme because, well, who hasn’t felt like that at some point? The most obvious prototype of such a character is Holden Caulfield, everyone’s favorite catcher in the rye. This is about the moment when Tom would look up from whatever book he’s reading to give you the kind of weary and withering look that might say “....really?!” Our King Dork faces the inevitable comparisons head on, and lets the reader know at every possible juncture in the book that he is really, truly over Young Master Caulfield. Which is cute, in a dramatic irony sort of way, because he’s pretty Holden-y in spite of himself. Which, in the end, makes him an intensely likable narrator, because even through his cynicality he's one lost and confused kid who just wants to rock a little. Still, the matter of being forced to read it in nearly every class since the dawn of high school time is enough to drive anyone crazy, and the explanation he gives toward the end of the book – directed more at the phonies who revere the book than the book itself – is almost thoughtful to the point of some sort of transcendence.

That’s probably the second thing you need to know – the thoughtful parts. Portman’s transition from songs that speak deeply to high school kids into a book that speaks deeply of the high school experience is seamless, and one of the most important parts of that is the weaving in of somber reality. The high school trauma is all there to wild exaggerations, but more importantly, so is the tedium to balance it out. The ludicrous and mystifying world of Advanced Placement is explored with equal bewildered wonder and reverence (because it still beats the hell out of the “normal” classes).

But the comedy is interspersed with parental breakdowns, trips to a surprisingly understanding shrink, and awkward but noble and ultimately kind of tragic attempts to bring a family a little closer together. The book also makes no Revenge of the Nerds pretenses about every dork in the school banding together to overthrow the jocks – we are made aware of the daily humiliations faced by the other untouchables like Bobby Duboyce the Helmet Boy and the unfortunately-named Pierre Butterfly Cameroon, but as anyone in real life should know, even amongst the misfits there are cliques, there are factions, and there are limits.

One of the best passages not-already-on-the-internet I could think of as an example that doesn’t also give away too much is in the first chapter, and it belies the fact that when you live in the suburbs, tedium doesn’t just attack your school life, but kind of punctuates everything, because there is absolutely nothing else to do. It’s where we are first introduced to obsessive fantasy-band documentation: an activity to which, to say Tom and his best friend Sam Hellerman (always Sam Hellerman, never just Sam, which somehow says something about them both) are both partial, would be an understatement. There is a certain amount of exhaustive meticulousness, but if you’ve ever rocked the suburbs high school style (especially before you actually own instruments), then you’ve had this conversation before. Or at least something similar.

At the back of the book, there is a comprehensive list of band names, members (real and imagined), and first album titles spanning the August to December over which the book takes place. The transformations are really kind of magical, especially when they place an important plot point at the crux of the whole shebang. There are also scattered song lyrics, as written by Tom and Sam Hellerman, which are all pretty fantastic.

The only real point of contention with King Dork, I have to say, is the ending. It’s much more open-ended than one would expect for what is at least partly a mystery story – frustratingly so. Especially for a mystery story that even sarcastically references two different Agatha Christie detectives. Tom spends a lot of time trying to wind every mystery in his young life together into one perfect spool of conclusion, as though the answer to one might unlock the answer to all; when it inevitably doesn’t, it breaks your heart a little because you knew that it wouldn’t, but still, you find yourself invested all the same. But hey, not everything has a tidy ending. Even in books. The way I like to think of it is, it definitely leaves you wanting more, and there is always room for a sequel.

For me, the fact that the book takes place in the late 1990s is one of the most interesting points, because I actually didn’t catch the part where it’s said explicitly until my second read-through, even though it might have been obvious just from the fact that that’s when the single was released. There’s this way in which Portman avoids specific technologies, the kind that can date a book faster than an iPod model goes obsolete, which gives the book a certain degree of timelessness without turning it into a period piece. No one really needs a cell phone, and Tom and Sam listen to music on vinyl because it’s cooler in that special pretentious sort of way. Still, in spite of being a girl and having two parents both alive, I felt so close to Tom that I couldn’t have imagined the story taking place at any other point in time than when I was in tenth grade myself, and when it turned out to be the actual case, I wondered if the effect of the book was somehow less strong for anyone from a different era. Then, the other day, I got a text message from my 16-year-old cousin. I had gotten him the book for Christmas, even though I was a little worried because he’s your standard emo-goth and goths are certainly not above Tom’s critical eye. The text message inquired as to whether or not I was aware that the movie rights to King Dork had been purchased, and I said you bet your sweet Elvis Costello glasses I did, and then he wrote back, exclaiming:

So I’m not entirely sure, but I think, in his own mid-2000s way, he’s trying to tell me that the effect is not diminished at all. Which makes me happy. Barring war and the threat thereof (the contrast of which, as it happens, does not go undiscussed), high school is easily the most terrifying and confusing place a product of suburban America will ever have to face, and that’s real no matter when you grew up. For maybe 5% of the population, it’s an unmarred haze of halcyon days, and if that’s your deal – if you call high school “the best days of your life,” for example – then this book might not be for you. But for everyone else, even you playful quasi-hip drama club dolphins, it was pretty much abject hell, punctuated by those golden moments of triumph that make life worth living, be it your first electric guitar or your first third-base experience. (Whichever one’s the more special, I’ll leave up to you. Both are covered here.) And it's you -- well, us, I guess -- that King Dork aims to salute. And salute, it does. A better one on the topic, I've yet to see.

King Dork (in case you forgot the title because I maybe haven't said it enough) is available through Little Type, and is coming out in paperback and in UK stores real soon. Get on it!

Recommended Viewing: Here is Frank reading an Advanced French segment from King Dork -- sounds a lot like AP Spanish 7/8, where Señora Woods-Petties laughed at me when I inquired as to whether I should spend my money on attempting the actual AP test. Yet, I still got a B+. Ah, high school!




The "King Dork" split-7" is the only Mr. T Experience recording on vinyl that _DictionaryGirl_ does not own. Isn't that sad?! Oh, irony! She is also very sorry that this is being posted a little late; it took twice as long to write as anticipated, is twice as long as she expected it to be, and even now she's going crazy-paranoid that she left things out. Stay tuned next week for something MUCH less angsty from PointBlank! It'll be a blast!

People are always saying "I don't read books." Too often, the problem is reading too many of the wrong books, thus turning a potentially great experience into something they'd rather avoid. This is where _DictionaryGirl_ and PointBlank come in and let you borrow something awesome. Let's go to town and make some recommendations, shall we?

Jim Thompson, the suspense and crime novelist who died a little over thirty years ago on April 7, 1977, told his wife on his deathbed that she should hold on to his papers because, “I’ll become famous after I’m dead about ten years.” A more unlikely success story would be hard to predict. At the time of his death, none of his books were in print and his funeral was only attended by 25 mourners, so how could he know that thirteen years later, his novels would be some of the most admired genre fiction in English? Even better, how would he react to the news that Hollywood was turning three of his novels into movies? 1990 saw a Jim Thompson revival in film with the release of The Kill-Off, After Dark My Sweet, and most importantly, The Grifters.

Jim Thompson was born on September 27, 1906 in Oklahoma, and when his father, a local sheriff, was implicated in an embezzlement scandal, his family relocated to Texas. As a young man, Thompson worked as a bellhop in a local hotel. As this was Prohibition, Thompson made 20 times his regular salary by selling booze to guests. During this time, Thompson would attend school during the day, and work and drink his way through the night. He had his first nervous breakdown when he was nineteen. Thompson’s first novel, Now and on Earth, published in 1942 details these early experiences trying to keep his life together. His battle with alcoholism would be constant in both his life and his fiction.

Jim Thompson came to novel writing late in life, and before that lived on the outskirts of 1930’s America. After a stint (detailed in the autobiographical tall tale, Rough Neck) working in oil-fields in Nebraska and Oklahoma, Thompson returned to Texas where he briefly attended college and where he met his future wife, Alberta. They eloped in 1931, and a few years later he began publishing small crime stories in magazines like True Detective. Thompson was also working, along with Western author Louis Lamour, for the local WPA and was briefly a member of the Communist party in the late thirties. Only after Thompson moved to Los Angeles did his real writing begin. Now and on Earth was published to decent reviews, but sold very little. The same went for his next book, another Steinbeck influenced non-crime story called Heed The Thunder. Disappointed by the setbacks, Thompson returned to the crime story and to new themes: Failure, Rage, and Murder.

1952 saw the publication of The Killer Inside Me, Thompson’s most famous, and perhaps best, novel. Written in the first person, Killer is the story of Sheriff Lou Ford, a man (based on Thompson’s own father) who pretends to be slow-witted and amiable, but who is secretly a brilliant sociopath who can’t stop killing people. The novel does the neat trick of involving the reader in the suspense surrounding a completely loathsome character. We’re both repulsed and thrilled as Lou avoids detection. This novel also began Thompson’s most fruitful time as a writer. Over the next few years, he wrote over a dozen novels, including some of his greatest: Savage Night, A Hell of a Woman, The Nothing Man, and After Dark, My Sweet. This was also the start of his most successful collaboration, with the pulp publishing company Lion Books. Savage Night, especially, is worth noting. Another story of a man at war with his own psychoses, it tells the story of Carl Bigger, a hit man whose mental and physical collapse is mirrored by the surreal tone that the novel takes on as it progresses. The New York Times Anthony Boucher said of it, “Odd that a mass-consumptionrpaperback should contain the most experimental writing I've seen in a suspense novel of late."

In 1955, Stanley Kubrick hired Thompson to help write the screenplay for The Killing. Despite feuding with Kubrick over writing credits, the two collaborated once more for the film Paths of Glory. Again, Thompson received almost no credit. Coupled with the disappointment he met in Hollywood was the news that Lion Books was folding. Despite the praise in some quarters for Thompson’s work, he had a difficult time finding a new publisher. For years, he would blame the violence in his books for this failure. That belief, however, wouldn’t stop him from writing some of his most shocking work. The Getaway, published by NAL in 1959, is most famously known as the film directed by Sam Peckinpah starring Ali MacGraw and Steve McQueen. But the movie only focuses on the first half of the novel. After committing an exciting (if typical, for a pulp novel) bank robbery, Doc and Carol flee to a rumored heaven for criminals in Mexico. Along the way they are forced to hide in Dante-like conditions: A cavern the size of coffins, a room fashioned from shit. And even when the get to El Rey’s criminal “paradise” things are not what they seem. NAL was not amused by the avant-garde flourishes, but Thompson refused to change it.

Although Thompson would live for another 13 years, 1963-4 saw the last of the really good novels, with Pop. 1280, largely a re-imagining of The Killer Inside Me, arriving in 1964 and The Grifters, the year before. The Grifters is the story of Roy Dillon and his relationship with his mother, Lily, and his girlfriend, Moira Langtry. The three are grifters of little success, each erotically involved with the other. The Grifters was also made into the best and most loyal of the Thompson movies. Directed by Stephen Frears, it was nominated for four Academy Awards.

After 1964, Thompson wrote a few more novels, but none had the same power as his work in the fifties and early sixties. He suffered from ill health due to his constant drinking, a habit he was never really able to break. In 1977 he died, largely forgotten, with his wife Alberta by his side. In 1995, Robert Polito's National Book Critics Circle Award-winning biography Savage Art was published. Thompson, dead for almost two decades, was finally getting his due.

People are always saying "I don't read books." Too often, the problem is reading too many of the wrong books, thus turning a potentially great experience into something they'd rather avoid. This is where _DictionaryGirl_ and PointBlank come in and let you borrow something awesome. Let's go to town and make some recommendations, shall we?

Here we are now, fully within the throes of Spring, and all that is old is being purged in order to make way for the new. I know this because just this week alone my computer's hard drive flat-lined, effectively purging me of the past three years of my life, and yesterday my parents sold the car on which I learned to drive. At times like this, you can either accept the transience of life and press onward, or reject it completely, digging your heels in and immersing yourself in absolute nostalgia wherever you can find it. Considering that I've been listening to The Jazz June's Breakdance Suburbia (recorded circa 1999) all day, it's safe to say which path I've chosen.

Back then I was in high school, and pretty wary of any "books that should be read," mostly because so much of what we were being made to read in AP Literature was (in my sixteen-year-old ADD-riddled opinion, at least) total bunk. The only people I was really apt to trust in any artistic sense were speaking to me in four-quarter time through my headphones; luckily I was listening to some smart records, and they referenced some books that by now I have read so many times that they risk disintegration. Here are my favorites.

1. Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker

Keep me from the old distress;
Let me, for our happiness,
be the one to love the less...

Sometimes now I wonder how Dorothy Parker would have felt about about her verse being turned into a punk rock song; she didn't "dig" bop music back when she was reviewing the works of the Beat writers, and that was still a sight closer to twenties jazz than what us crazy kids are listening to now. Nevertheless, that's how it ended up, and that's how I found her -- for in lieu of words for track four, the lyrics sheet in Mr. T Experience's Love is Dead simply said "lyrics by D. Parker." Who is this D. Parker, I thought to myself, and what band is he in? A search on the intertubes revealed my mistake -- not a he, but a she! -- and a trip to the library later, I was in love.

Let's just get this out of the way -- Enough Rope, Ms. Parker’s first collective publication, is a selection of poetry. Not just any poetry, either, but metered verse, as was still the fashion at the time (1926, before the beat poets who irked her so helped to smash the idea of iambics, tetrameters, anapestics and pentameters all to bits). At this point you might be groaning and rolling your eyes because metered poetry is dry and boring, and I almost wouldn't blame you because there really is a lot of bad poetry out there, but of course there is bad poetry, and then there is good poetry. Then there is Dorothy Parker, and once you get past the apprehension of everything rhyming, you realize that she’s the absolute coolest woman you will never meet.

The most notable thing about her poetry is that it’s never erudite. Even when she exercises her impressive vocabulary, it’s never put together in a way you couldn’t ever imagine hearing out loud. In later compilations she would touch upon subjects like Greek classics and making fun of 19th Century Brit Lit (a noble venture, if you ask me); in this one, she dwells on the basics: boys gone and yet come, drinks drank and yet drunken, and half-ironically wishing you were dead. Most of the verses turn on the last line, and nothing has a happy ending, bittersweet at best. Sometimes lost loves is one’s fault, and sometime’s it’s the other, but the results are always the same.

Oh, and not to mention that she wrote the single best couplet in the world, entirely changed in meaning when one removes the title and you don’t know who first said it and in what context.

Dorothy Parker is the queen of dry sarcasm and self-effacing sardonic wit. She’s your favorite best friend, the funny half-Jewish girl with a glass of wine in one hand and snide one-liners gesticulated wildly with the other. She’s the girlfriend that blew through like a hurricane you couldn’t just quite catch, just a little bit smarter and faster and crazier. In short, she’s something to strive for.

This one's available now along with her other poetry collections, her short story collection, and a multitude of criticism and articles and letters in the brillant omnibus Portable Dorothy Parker, out now on Penguin Classics with a fantastic cover by seth.

2. Life After God by Douglas Coupland

We live our lives to expect the worst,
but once it happens, what is left?
We will never have to be surprised again...

For the life of me I cannot find my copy of The Ataris' Look Forward to Failure right now, but I'm pretty sure I read it in their liner notes there and not an interview or anything that their song "My Hotel Year" is based on Life After God. (Hey, and both of them had interviews recently on our site! Oh, synchronicity!)

This one isn’t a full traditional novel, either; here eight separate short stories are tied together as they pinwheel around the concept of a generation grown up without religion, substituting belief with pop culture and a detached sense of irony. The narrator is nameless and somewhere on the crest of thirty; it’s unclear whether he is the same voice speaking from one story to the next (I shouldn’t like to assume, but accounts vary), but he is driving, almost always driving, in a hurry to get somehow as far away from civilization as humanly possible.

The best part of a Coupland book the way its details jump out in a way that’s almost startling. He describes landscapes like oil paintings, and since half the book takes place in Canadian wilderness, there are plenty of opportunities for him to work his magic; even so, he has a way of illuminating the most mundane objects - - a coloring book, cherry yogurt containers, Count Chocula - - in just such a way that every scene is made equally important and blessed. The chapters are extremely short (rarely more than a page), and each is punctuated by simple little line drawings that define the book to such a degree that I couldn’t imagine reading it without them.



Coupland writes just as simply, but with a photographic eye. One of Life’s major themes is the seemingly arbitrary passing of time, and within his brief paragraphs, he makes time stand still. My favorite story in the book is “The Wrong Sun,” half of which describes the narrator’s apprehensions and memories concerning death through nuclear annihilation, the other half describing death through nuclear annihilation as seen through the eyes of those who might have lived it. Each scene in the second half occurs in seconds, but they pan through in the kind of cinematic slow motion that gives you chills.

It is a kind of a meditation, I guess you could say, of faith - - but not, I have to stress, religion. This is important. The book doesn’t get preachy, and no real conclusions claim to be met. The only thing that’s true to the end is the calm and desperate (yet somehow not depressing) loneliness that comes from knowing that wherever you die, you die alone.

This one's available for your consumption on Washington Square Press.

So, there are a couple of books that really take me back, whether making me think (nuclear holocaust has been an irrational fear of mine since long before I read a whole chapter about it) or reminding me of my goals in life (to be the raddest girl in the room). Do you have anything like that? I hope so. Whether it's a book, or a record: as you can see, the results are often the same (if not intertwined) either way.


Recommended Viewing: If I'm going to be talking about music and how it relates to my reading habits, the least I can do is color in the whole picture, so this is The Ataris playing an acoustic version of "My Hotel Year" live somewhere. (Well, Brownsville, I guess, because the album version of the song goes "...and now the middle of nowhere feels like my home.") The visuals certainly aren't spectacular, but it was the best sound quality I could find, and that's the important thing. I wish I could post "Somebody's Song" as well, but apparently this new hard drive doesn't come with iMovie. Go figure. Enjoy.



_DictionaryGirl_ would like to dedicate this issue to the fine folk over at the Fashion Valley Mac store, for a lightning-fast repair turnaround time that made this update possible. Also for upgrading my OS to Tiger. Rock on! Stay tuned next week for a word from PointBlank. Same time (roughly), same station.

People are always saying "I don't read books." Too often, the problem is reading too many of the wrong books, thus turning a potentially great experience into something they'd rather avoid. This is where _DictionaryGirl_ and PointBlank come in and let you borrow something awesome. Let's go to town and make some recommendations, shall we?

We’re all familiar with the canonical classics. But does anyone really think that all the great books that have ever been published have been given their just due? I mean, we’ve all read a supposed “classic” and thought, “is that all there is?” So, by that logic, there must be some pretty damned great books that have gone ignored. Every so often, a writer will publish a book that is at least as accomplished, and just as good as anything else on the market yet for some reason, it simply doesn’t make a mark on the general population. Sometimes they aren’t even published until the author is dead. Sometimes the books simply fall out of favor until someone rediscovers them and a new classic is (re)born.

We all love feeling like we found something that no one else knows about. I like turning people on to those hidden gems that I’ve discovered (or have been discovered for me). So, let’s look at a couple of my bookshelf favorites that you might not know about yet.


1.Chromos by Felipe Alfau

The story behind Chromos and Alfau is almost as interesting as the book itself. In 1936, Alfau, a Spanish immigrant to New York, published a book called Locos which was fairly well reviewed but was bought by almost nobody. Whether this was because of its style (a proto-postmodernist mélange of Barthelme, Coover, and especially Barth), its difficulty, or the author’s rumored support of Generalissimo Franco is up for debate. What is known is that the book disappeared, almost without a trace. Disappeared, that is, until an editor from the Dalkey Archive discovered a copy at a yard sale. Surprised at the high level of talent, she tracked Alfau down to a retirement home and offered to publish it. Instead of taking any money, Alfau simply asked that Dalkey consider publishing his second novel, which he had written nearly half a century before. They did, and in 1990 the novel was nominated for the National Book Award.

The opening is one of my favorites:

The book takes place in New York (writing in English, Alfau joins writers such as Conrad, Beckett, and Nabokov, who did much of their great work in “foreign” languages) and concerns a group of Spanish immigrants—“Americaniards”—who are habitués of a bar called El Telescopia. From the title, and even the name of the bar, one can guess that time, and it’s abilities to “telescope,” that is to seem to move too fast and too slow at the same instance will play a large part in the book. The émigrés complain about the lack of time in New York, where no one stops for even a moment. In fact, the novel itself is bracketed by a story that seems to pause as the rest of the story is taking place. There are also books within books, dead characters who return from Alfau’s previous work, and characters who both argue whether they are too American, or too Spanish, mostly through a lesson on the correct way to make paella. Thankfully, this isn’t, a dry study in postmodernist technique, nor is it a book where characters talk endlessly about their circumstances. While there is an ominous undercurrent stalking the Amercaniards, there is more than enough drinking, dancing and humour to fill several lesser books. Chromos is a book that takes an unflinching look at life and its problems, but it obviously written by a man in love with living.

Chromos is available through The Dalkey Archive, one of the greatest small presses in America.

2.Epitaph Of A Small Winner by Machado De Assis

Unlike Felipe Alfau, Joaquim Maria Machado De Assis is not an unknown writer. In fact, he is probably considered one of Brazil’s greatest novelists. That, of course, doesn’t stop him from being nearly anonymous in the rest of the world (America, I’m looking at you!). What the two do have in common is their prescient ability to use postmodern techniques several years (and in the case of Machado, nearly a full century) before they would become codified. Assis, in fact is most often compared to that ur-postmodernist Lawrence Sterne and Epitaph of a Small Winner is often seen as his Tristram Shandy.

He, as well, can write a heck of an opening:

For me, that paragraph just about perfectly sums up what is so great about Epitaph of a Small Winner. That balance between, in the first statement about the author already being dead, meant to surprise the reader, is a great stylistic trick, but then in the second phrase, he admits that it’s also a great trick to keep the reader interested and to sell books. The ironic comparison to the Pentateuch at the end is just the sort of self-effacing and satirical humor that makes this book so much damned fun. Machado takes much joy in skewering the hypocrisies of nearly everyone, and he’s been called the greatest satirist since Swift. Since his targets aren’t (always) those obvious, evil people of power, he also has the ability to make the reader sympathize with those he is mocking, not to mention that his biggest target is, more often than not, himself.

Epitaph of a Small Winner is available now. Please note that it’s original (Portuguese) title is Memorias Postumas De Bras Cubas.

Hey, while we're at it: why not let me know what some of your “secret books” are and, as always:

Join us again next week for a word or two-hundred from _DictionaryGirl_! If there's anything you'd like to see here, never hesitate to let us know.

People are always saying "I don't read books." Too often, the problem is reading too many of the wrong books, thus turning a potentially great experience into something they'd rather avoid. This is where _DictionaryGirl_ and PointBlank come in and let you borrow something awesome. Let's go to town and make some recommendations, shall we?

People love to put books in little boxes labeled "young adult" or "queer lit" or whatever to make it all depressingly exclusive and intimidating, like it exists in some fantastic cute-girl counterculture bubble that you will never in a million years be able to touch or understand. But really, if the words tell a brilliant story and you can't put it down 'til you've reached the back cover and cracked the spine, then who even cares how old you are and who's kissing who in what context?

A couple of days ago I did a little article on the travelling collective Sister Spit, and now it only seems right to explain a little why I'm so sad that I missed their show. There are a million reasons, really; here are two.

1. Rose of No Man's Land, by Michelle Tea

Michelle Tea's most well-known work is probably Rent Girl, a halfway-graphic novel about her experiences as a baby dyke trying to carve out a living in the sex industry. Two weeks ago I saw Anna Joy Springer, my professor from the graphics texts class where I first read it, while we were waiting in line to stammer nervously at Jaime Hernandez and have him sign his latest Love and Rockets compilation, and I told her I was going to review Rent Girl for this column and she said "that's cool, but have you read Rose of No Man's Land? It's newer and it's even more amazing," and I said that I hadn't but that I would, so I got it and I was instantly glad I saw her, even if I didn't have a single damned intelligent thing to say to Jaime Hernandez once I made it up to meet him in line.

Rose is about a girl called Rose and the Sailor Jerry nurse tattoo of the same name, but really it's about 14-year-old Trisha Driscoll, who is having an extremely unusual day. Not that any day is particularly "usual" in her world, with a hypochondriac couch-ridden mother and a loserish ramen-crunching not-quite-stepdad who stops just short of being harmful. ("At least he doesn't 'bother' you girls..." she says it like we, me and Kristy, should drop to our knees and kiss the peeling linoleum and prostrate ourselves to the patron saint of creepy dudes for sending us such a winner.) Trisha has one goal for the summer -- to make a friend -- but her ever-optimistic Real World-bound hairdresser-school graduate sister Kristy has bigger ideas, weaving a web of little white lies to land her a job at the local mall. Just when the story settles in to its placid pace of small-town innocence, Trisha meets Rose and for a second she stands on this precipice as the potential hours unfold before her.

That's about the point just before everything tips and spills over, whipping up into a sudden manic blur of crystal meth, vodka soft drinks, mini-golf courses, frantic make-out sessions, ironic pornography, and the violently neon artificial brilliance that streams along Route One on the Massachusetts coast, consuming the rest of the book. Trisha's experiences are monumental, as every blank-page innocent bit of wind is systematically knocked out of her body over the course of the night; still, throughout the book she retains a singular voice -- snarky in that kid-like way where you know you haven't seen everything yet -- that keeps you fully in the story, believing every new layer of crazy as it unpeels and crashes toward the inevitable end.

If you can put this book down after you hit around chapter six, you're a more patient man than I. (Er, so to speak.) It's available now at Macadam Cage and I highly recommend you get yourself there. That is, unless you want to see what's behind Door Number Two. Maybe you'd better wait and then come back. Onward!

2. The IHOP Papers, by Ali Liebegott

A couple of months ago, because I'm usually a very lucky girl, I went to the official release party for The IHOP Papers, a book five struggling years in the making. Michelle Tea read a section, and so did Anna Joy all dressed up in Liebegott's old uniform dress from her days of waitressing the Pancake Haus for real. I drank a lot of red wine and took terrible poorly-lit photographs and stood in line like a stammering dork (apparently I do a lot of that) just to apologize to Ali for not buying her book that night because I was broke. I ran out like a maniac and purchased with with my very next paycheck.

The IHOP Papers is, above anything else, a coming-of-age story -- one full of forearm razor marks and AA meetings, TV star crushes and crushing depression and crushingly-small San Francisco apartments, angry tearful parents and therapy, stupid embarrassing service industry jobs, and falling in love with too many people at once (not all of them even real) and all of the problems and confusion that too much fantastical being-in-love always seems to bring. It sounds like it should be some sort of gritty after-school special, but Ali turns it around into one of the funniest books I've ever read. Francesca (Goaty to friends), our barely-post-teenage narrator, delivers vivid thought after vivid thought with such bewildered deadpan expression that it's like she doesn't even have a clue why anyone would love her -- which you find out is not altogether incorrect -- and it makes you want nothing more than to be her best friend forever and go get french fries at the nearest non-chain-restaurant diner and talk until the sun comes up.

IHOP is Ali's first full-length prose book -- her previous book, The Beautifully Worthless, is an epic-road-trip epic poem -- but no matter what form her writing takes, it's her poetic language that shines through. She has this way with cadence and pauses that stick so well it makes you feel like you're there. Some of the best parts of this book are when her poetry comes through completely, Francesca's brief words a halting, lonely counterpoint to the raging monologues that buzz inside her head.

Seriously, even if you've never been in love with a million people and aren't all that into poetry, I'm sorry for your losses but at the very least who can't relate to weird customers and weirder co-workers (Salt... the silent killer is one's incessant mantra) and the desperate need to just kick over the register and stomp on it with your combat boots and be done with it all... if only you didn't really need that reference.

In short: learn it, live it, love it. It's out through Carroll & Graf if you're interested. And really, you should be.

Join us again next week for a word or two-hundred from PointBlank! If there's anything you'd like to see here, never hesitate to let us know.

People are always saying "I don't read books." Too often, the problem is reading too many of the wrong books, thus turning a potentially great experience into something they'd rather avoid. This is where _DictionaryGirl_ and PointBlank come in and let you borrow something awesome. Let's go to town and make some recommendations, shall we?


Yes, I know: 2006 was how many years ago? Well, I thought I’d fill you all in on three of what, I think, are the best novels of last year.


1:The Night Gardener, By George Pelecanos

If you've missed out on HBO’s The Wire, I'm sorry. It’s easily the best written TV show on any network, and one of the best of all time. George Pelecanos, one of the show's writers, is, unsurprisingly, also a hell of a crime writer. The Night Gardener , his latest, is the story of a murder in Washington DC that may or may not be connected to a series of unsolved murders two decades earlier. Three detectives, one retired, one dishonored, and one still “good police”, are haunted by the earlier murders, and this new case gives them the hope that they may right old wrongs, both personally and professionally.

What makes the book stand out, however, isn’t its plot, but the way that Pelecanos captures the milieus of the underworld drug-dealers, the cops on the beat, as well as dozens of people who are just trying to live the best way they can. He is also one of the best writers since Elmore Leonard when it comes to picking up on different quirks of speech in his characters. Check out this exchange, where two petty criminals discuss one of the old legends of their neighborhood, “Red Fury.” Note the way that one character isn’t interested so much in what Fury did, but rather in the style in which he did it. It’s not hard to figure out what he desires: the respect that comes from being a badass.

The Night Gardener is available now. The soft cover comes out this August.


2:Against The Day, By Thomas Pynchon

First of all, at 1,100 pages, Against the Day is too long. Seriously, that’s just too much book to be carrying around. Fortunately, Pynchon’s latest is big enough to justify its length. Set during the period from 1890s to just after World War I, there is enough plot and more than enough characters to fill a library, let alone one novel. Adopting, at different times, the plot and tropes of children’s adventure stories, the western, and the spy novel (as well as half a dozen that I probably missed), Pynchon takes on the dreamers, the inventors, and the magicians of a time where almost anything seemed possible. In this book, in fact, everything is possible; every crackpot’s theory is in some way, true. Characters travel from the Wild West to Siberia to Mexico during the revolution, as well as travel through time and literally through the earth. And yes, someone almost drowns in a vat of mayonnaise.

What is often forgotten is that Pynchon is, in addition to being very funny and erudite, a political and humanistic author. He is always on the side of the free-thinkers, the dreamers and against those who try to dominate others. Somewhat hidden under a grand plot and humorous character names is the sad story of miners, anarchists, and freedom fighters crushed under the wheels of capitalism. Although it ends decades earlier, the specter of World War II, with its banalyzed and technological systems of murder, looms over much of the book. There is always hope, however, as long as there are dreamers. Near the end of the novel, one of the characters speaks of these dreams and fears

Yes, Against the Day is too long, but when it was over, I wanted to start it all over again. It should be available in paperback by the end of the year.


3:The Road, By Cormac McCarthy

What more is there to say about The Road? Beloved by everyone (even Oprah!) this story about a boy and his father traveling across a destroyed America has been so widely praised, that it’s almost impossible to say anything new about it. It is, by most accounts, one of the best books of the past ten years, and the masterwork of one of America’s great living writers. It’s hard to disagree.

What makes this book so impressive are the emotional notes that McCarthy is able to hit so effortlessly. Long noted for his ability to use the landscape to help tell the story, most famously in The Border Trilogy, this book tops even that with the sparsest setting possible. It is a landscape that is both fantastic and extremely realistic. The father and son journey through a world where they must avoid every other human, lest they literally be eaten. It is a world without a shred of hope, yet the father’s love and his need to save his child is his hope; it is the only way he can save his own humanity when everyone else has abandoned theirs.The Road is also an extremely thrilling book, as this passage shows.

Seriously, you might not put this book down. Even if you can, it will stay with you for a long time. The Road, Oprah Winfrey’s favorite book featuring post-apocalyptic cannibals, is now out in paperback.

(Next Week, _DictionaryGirl_ will hit you all up with something totally different! Let us know if there’s anything you’d like to see here, lit-wise)

People are always saying "I don't read books." Too often, the problem is reading too many of the wrong books, thus turning a potentially great experience into something they'd rather avoid. This is where PointBlank and I come in and let you borrow an awesome book. Let's go to town and make some recommendations, shall we?



So here I am, Easter evening, over at my grandparents' house wrestling with MS-Paint and praying that my five hundred cousins don't pile in here and that my grandmother doesn't know how to use Search History on Internet Explorer. What a holiday! I'm excited though, because I get to review my first book. I had one in mind all week to write about, but then I came across this and it was so beautiful I almost had a heart attack.

See, a year after winning the award for Best First Album at the Angouleme International Comics Festival, Drawn and Quarterly Publishing has translated Abouet and Oubrerie's AYA into English and brought it to limited release in the United States. It tells a simple story of everyday life in a small suburban village in the 1970s, and it tells it exquisitely.



Aya, a level-headed 19-year-old high-school student living in a working class suburb of Cote d'Ivoire's fashionable capital, is the book's eponymous main character. That said, she is not so much a catalyst as she is the strong and observant linchpin around which the action swirls like a pinwheel. Her friend Bintou aims for fun while chasing the dream of a rich and handsome husband, while her other friend Adjoua stumbles into a relationship more unexpectedly. Her father Ignace, offered a better job and a chance at brand-new bourgeoisie comfort, finds himself at odds with his wife Fanta, who is more concerned with staying close to family. Meanwhile, Aya herself just wants to go to university to be a doctor, much to the exasperation of her father, whose idea of an upwardly mobile daughter is an arranged date with his powerful boss's scenester son Moussa, who's last been seen partying with Bintou. And then there's easy-going Mamadou, king of dropping in at all the most awkward moments.



Alicia Grace Chase prefaces AYA with a portrait of Cote d'Ivoire at the time: an oasis of prosperity and French-inspired urban sophistication, just a few short years away from total collapse. Not only does this add a supurb simple base for anyone in need of a refresher course in African politics and history, but it helps to highlight the subtle strains of social jostling and unrest that pepper the book -- especially as Moussa slums it in the village much to his socialite parents' chagrin. In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Abouet explained her motivation behind the approach:

Indeed, part of what makes AYA so engaging is the universality of the story it tells. A kaleidoscope of bright-light dance parties, nervous first dates, midnight makeouts and raging post-teenage love triangles (not to mention maddening parents at every turn), this story could easily take place anywhere. It's the vibrant desert colors, easy flow of Abidjanaise French slang, and Deneuve-enamored urbanity floating atop a heavy undercurrent of feminist and socioeconomic struggle that anchor us to its own unique time and place.



Matching Abouet's writing on the compelling front is Oubrerie's artwork. Light lines and a bright sunwashed palette that shifts from sunrise to sunset capture a distinct mood and hold it perfectly, and a style that ranges from realistic in one panel to face-pulling cartoonish in the next keeps the story's tone on point.

Not content to rest with a stellar story and gorgeous artwork, however, AYA boasts an "Ivorian Bonus!" to those who stay past the ending credits (so to speak). Here, we're treated to a super-fun, sepia-toned how-to segment: Aya offers a handy glossary, Adjoua introduces us to pagne hair-wrapping, parents impart secret recipes for ginger juice and a delicious-sounding "back 'n forth" peanut sauce, and Bintou gives a lesson in how to "roll your tassaba" (read: shake that ass) like a pro.

MS-Paint is giving me migraines, so I'll have to delay a star system, but AYA easily wins a five-out-of-five. There's a five-page preview over at the Drawn and Quarterly site, but I strongly suggest you check it out in full. It's a fast and immensely enjoyable read, the art burns bright and brilliant, and you might even learn something.

Well, that's all for now! Happy Easter (or Passover, or lazy Sunday), and good night. Tune in next week for something completely different!


_DictionaryGirl_ is putting her Creative Writing degree to use! Got a suggestion for something that needs reviewing? Don't hesitate to let us know!