I NEED A NEW BOOK SHELF!!!
Talk about summer madness! I went a little crazy buying books yesterday. Here is a list (in no particular order) of what I picked up for various aspects of research for my novel:
Fixer Chao by Han Ong
Londonstani by Gautam Malkani
The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow
Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead
The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty (I've read this a few times but I need it as a reference.)
If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino (Another one I've read a few times but didn't have on my shelf, recently.)
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers by Tom Wolfe
Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman
Pranks and Pranks 2 from Re/Search
Black Mask & Up Against the Wall Motherfucker by Ron Hahne, Ben Morea and the Black Mask Group
Guerilla Street Theater edited by Henry Lesnick
The Whistling Song by Stephen Beachy (First novel by one of my teachers...I bought it used, so alas, he won't get paid for it.)
The World of Normal Boys by K.M. Soehnlein (First novel by another one of my teachers...also used, alas.)
Granta's "Best of Young American Novelists" edition - (The last story, by a man named John Wray, features a Sikh character, and this issue also features a story by Daniel Alarcon, who rocked everybody's world when he read at USF.)
So those are the 16 I bought yesterday. I'd also like to read the following books which have been sitting on my desk for a few months:
Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih, The Fountain at the Center of the World by Robert Newman, April Fool's Day by Josip Novakovich, and The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara.
CRAP!!! And I should also get a hold of Barbara Ehrenreich's new book Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy.
And I still want to finish Swann's Way and The Last Life from last semester. And I should probably get a leg-up on next semester's reading, too, because it's going to be pretty heavy. (We've got The Grapes of Wrath, Invisible Man, In Cold Blood, and Miami on the syllabus, along with the authors' notes and journals and letters. I've read three of those four, but still, I am going to have to read them again.) (Oh shit, and we have to read Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee in my workshop next semester!)
And...I have to write 150 pages of my own novel and take one chapter through three revisions...You know that Kool & the Gang song Summer Madness? That is not what I am talking about in this entry!
So I guess I should get off the internet, huh? Before I go, one question for you, dear readers: What groupings/trends do you see in this list?
OH! I almost forgot. I also picked up the new Wilco album. It's frickin beautiful. Best Wilco album to date.
Talk about summer madness! I went a little crazy buying books yesterday. Here is a list (in no particular order) of what I picked up for various aspects of research for my novel:
Fixer Chao by Han Ong
Londonstani by Gautam Malkani
The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow
Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead
The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty (I've read this a few times but I need it as a reference.)
If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino (Another one I've read a few times but didn't have on my shelf, recently.)
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers by Tom Wolfe
Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman
Pranks and Pranks 2 from Re/Search
Black Mask & Up Against the Wall Motherfucker by Ron Hahne, Ben Morea and the Black Mask Group
Guerilla Street Theater edited by Henry Lesnick
The Whistling Song by Stephen Beachy (First novel by one of my teachers...I bought it used, so alas, he won't get paid for it.)
The World of Normal Boys by K.M. Soehnlein (First novel by another one of my teachers...also used, alas.)
Granta's "Best of Young American Novelists" edition - (The last story, by a man named John Wray, features a Sikh character, and this issue also features a story by Daniel Alarcon, who rocked everybody's world when he read at USF.)
So those are the 16 I bought yesterday. I'd also like to read the following books which have been sitting on my desk for a few months:
Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih, The Fountain at the Center of the World by Robert Newman, April Fool's Day by Josip Novakovich, and The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara.
CRAP!!! And I should also get a hold of Barbara Ehrenreich's new book Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy.
And I still want to finish Swann's Way and The Last Life from last semester. And I should probably get a leg-up on next semester's reading, too, because it's going to be pretty heavy. (We've got The Grapes of Wrath, Invisible Man, In Cold Blood, and Miami on the syllabus, along with the authors' notes and journals and letters. I've read three of those four, but still, I am going to have to read them again.) (Oh shit, and we have to read Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee in my workshop next semester!)
And...I have to write 150 pages of my own novel and take one chapter through three revisions...You know that Kool & the Gang song Summer Madness? That is not what I am talking about in this entry!
So I guess I should get off the internet, huh? Before I go, one question for you, dear readers: What groupings/trends do you see in this list?
OH! I almost forgot. I also picked up the new Wilco album. It's frickin beautiful. Best Wilco album to date.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
I feel the need to be careful of what I write. A journal now would only be a further elucidation of why it's difficult for me to talk about a subject that's bubbling under the surface. All the while the tale at issue will be deeply personal, and probably of interest only to myself.