Good and Cheap (Books)! Day 9

I am actually between books right now so I was browsing some advance readers when I spied my 33 1/3 series on the shelf. I picked one up and fell in love with this fantastic series all over again.

You can stop reading here if you aren’t curious about music. You can also seek counseling because brother, something is wrong with you.

Each book is dedicated to a single album, or a time and place. It’s the best idea for a series ever. I’m not including Game of Thrones in that statement, so calm down. I’ll highlight a few of my favorite titles and give you the lowdown on three brand new releases.

Prince’s Sign O’ the Times by Michaelangelo Matos. Liz attempted to make fun of my love for Prince a couple of weeks ago. Rest assured my fellow Princetonians, she will be punished. And yes, you can use "Princetonians." Matos writes about Prince’s masterpiece (yeah, it is, so shut up) as it related to his life, how it changed his way of looking at the world. Me too, Michaelangelo…me too.

Kick out the Jams by Don McLeese makes my list because while I had heard of MC5, I actually knew very little about them and was only familiar with Rage Against the Machine’s version of the song “Kick Out the Jams.” This little book blew me away and completely inspired me. I can’t listen to Rage or the White Stripes without hearing the influence. McLeese by the way gets extra points because it’s from a boots on the ground aspect.

Talking Heads’ Fear of Music by Jonathan Lethem.  I like to think that Lethem and I were both sitting on our beds listening obsessively to the Talking Heads at the same time.  Lethem makes no bones about it, he was absolutely, totally obsessed with this record.  You get the sense he wrote this book with the same intensity that the record originally filled him with.

Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs by LD Beghton is a total insider's look at this triple album. It's exactly the book you want to read if you want to read about 69 Love Songs, that is to say it's funny, smart, and includes a crossword puzzle.

 

PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me: A Story by Kate Schatz is one of (I think) two or three titles in this series that are fiction (Joe Pernice wrote a fiction piece inspired by Meat is Murder). Schatz’s story is everything Harvey’s record is--dark, smart, and full of rage. She uses each song on Rid of Me as a chapter title and then infuses the lyrics into the story.

I could go on and on, write about Achtung Baby, Shoot Out the Lights, If You’re Feeling Sinister, Kid A, Born in the U.S.A, Pretty Hate Machine, or Dummy…but you get the point.  Three more in the series hit the street last week; They Might Be Giants’ Flood, Andrew WK’s I Get Wet, and Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melodie Nelson.

I’ve read about a dozen in the series, which means I only have about 75 more to go!

[Liz here. I don't have a clue what the hell G's talking about here. And Prince is dumb.]

Good and Cheap (Books)! Day 8

April 9th. It's a day when I tend to contemplate the passage of time. Mortality. Specifically, it's a day year when I contemplate Gianna's mortality. Each year a moment comes when I'm reminded that 1. she's old, and 2. she thinks my singing is "horrendous." Time marches on. So, in honor of this special day, I decided to select theme appropriate books.

Einstein's Dreams is a weird little book, and I say that with great fondness. Alan Lightman's day job is as a physicist, and his writings tend to challenge perceptions of the universe. In Einstein's Dreams, the reader is treated to the musings of Einstein the patent clerk as he attempts to create a new theory of time. Most of the book consists of these dream vignettes, and while the prose is clear and elegant, the concepts demand that the reader slows down and ponders the worlds he describes. In one, time moves backward, and peaches go from rotted fruit to fresh and tasty to growing on the tree to flower, and so on. One world consists of no memories; people live only in the present, and in order to provide context for themselves they constantly take notes and read the stories of their lives anew every day. One of my favorite dreams plays with the notion that time moves slower at higher altitudes, so in order to defy the aging process, everyone moves to the tops of mountains. That's not good enough, though, so they build houses on stilts on the tops of the mountains. I love the idea of the Matterhorn covered with spindly-legged houses swaying in the wind. Time is static, time is a wave, time is a god to be worshiped. Einstein's Dreams is a physics fantasy by a brilliant writer and thinker.

And after Gianna has finished pondering the ways in which time has passed, year after year, in her life, she can turn to the afterlife.

Neuroscientist David Eagleman is another one of those super-smart guys with a day job in the sciences and another career as a writer. Sum, like Einstein's Dreams, is written as a series of vignettes, but these provide scenes of various post-death possibilities. What if, when you die, you become the background characters in others' dreams? What if God is a microbe, completely unaware of we humans? What if  God is actually a married couple? What if you're doomed to spend your afterlife in the company of all of the potential annoying versions of you that could have existed? (And can we make sure that Gianna has this fate?) David Eagleman is a brain guy who is fascinated by the workings of our most complex organ, and he's a life guy who is intrigued by the myriad possibilities of things we've yet to discover. Mostly, though, I love Sum because it's an upbeat, intellectual, literary romp.

Both Einstein's Dreams and Sum are imaginative achievements that surpass their few pages. They are quick reads--probably good since Gianna is getting up there in years--but they linger. They are books to revisit and they are books to enjoy and they are books that challenge. They are perfect reads for April 9th.

Happy Birthday G.

Good and Cheap (Books)! Day 7

We here in Book Land believe in proper manners. Gianna always places her napkin in her lap when she dines at the Olive Garden, for example. I turned my research toward the old world, in this case Germany, for a book called Sorry. We're all class. In order to stay on top of the current trends in proper etiquette, I make time to read the appropriate reference guides. Emily Post? Hell no. Um, excuse me.  Ahem. I think not.

Apologies are important. Sorry by Zoran Drvenkar, drives home this point. This thriller has been compared to the Scandinavian crime novels of Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbo, but really it could be written about Austin. Four slacker friends, refusing to find "real" jobs, start a company dedicated to an aspect of the corporate world that is missing all too often these days: apologizing. Screw over your coworker for a promotion? Hire Kris, Tamara, Wolf, and Frauke to apologize for you. Breaking up with your girlfriend (or blog partner)? They can smooth out the awkwardness and make everyone feel better about the situation. It's just a nice thing to do. And for the four friends, it's a lucrative enterprise. Who wouldn't want to outsource the least pleasant part of a conversation?

Here's a great job for the crew. A man calls the company for an apology and sends Wolf to a house...where he finds--how do I phrase this nicely?--a woman with a giant spike driven through her head and pinning her to the wall. The killer wants Wolf to apologize, and he's not finished with his crimes, or expressions of

remorse, either. Suddenly saying "sorry" is a lot more complicated and hellish.

Reading Sorry has inspired me to reconsider how I treat people. For example, if I drive a spike through someone's head, I should make certain that I have no regrets first. Why pay extra for the customer service of an apology?

Zoran Dvenkar

Sometimes a really dark thriller hits the spot. BookPage wrote of this book, "Dark, demented, radical and grotesquely humorous, Sorry upends every convention of modern fiction craft, and brilliantly." I will not apologize for recommending this book. 

Good and Cheap (Books)! Day 6

I spent most of the weekend trying to catch up on my Mary Roach reading. She has a brand new book but I really want to finish reading her backlist before I move on. This weekend,  I finished Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, so I only have Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void.

I was hooked on Mary Roach from the start with her first book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, and I think that first book remains my favorite. The book starts off with cadavers being used so cosmetic surgeons can practice (so gross). Then it goes on to the ins and outs of decomposition (I once listened to a podcast about body farms so this was sort of right up my ally, sadly), and then goes on to interesting things that maybe you didn’t know would be interesting, like body snatching or cannibalism. [Who doesn't think cannibalism is interesting?]

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex is probably Roach’s funniest book (although she is pretty hilarious in every book I’ve read). She delves into the history of sex research, including medieval sexy times, which, you know, good riddance. The best part of Bonk is when the author and her husband volunteer for a sex experiment, and yes there is an observer. Hey, are you running low on dirty talk with your special someone? [Dear Gianna: I am NOT your special someone. Love, Liz.] Pick up this book and you’ll have her swooning. You learn sexy terms like vaginocavernosus reflex. I think anytime you put the words vagina and cavern together, you’ve won. And for you ladies, whisper this little nugget in your fella’s ear: nocturnal penile tumescence monitoring. I think this simply means watching a penis at night. Liz knows for sure, just email her for details. [I'm distancing myself from everything mentioned in this entire blog post.]

You can’t lose with Mary Roach. She is funny, smart, and really has a knack for finding interesting subjects to write about. Her new book is called Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, which I think has something to do with the stomach or mouth, neither of which I  think I have any interest in, so you know, Mary Roach will probably change all that.  

Good and Cheap (Books)! Day 5

Sometimes we feel like saying "I told you so." Why don't you people take our word for it when we say books are good? What am I supposed to do? Random House doesn't approve of us taking people hostage. Aren't a combined thirty years in the book business and an amplified sense of worth enough for us to be declared experts? And what's worse than the cold dismissal of people ignoring us is when you get a message like the one I recently received from one of my booksellers. She complained that I hadn't forced her to read a book I'd raved about sooner.

Anyway, the book in question this time was In the Kingdom of Men by Kim Barnes. I love Kim Barnes. She writes effortless, fluid prose that immerses readers in her books, and In the Kingdom of Men is one of those great reads. The main character is Gin Mitchell, a girl who grows up in a small town in Oklahoma, but sees an opportunity for escape into a larger world when she marries her high school sweetheart Mason. Mason signs on with an oil company and after a few years, the couple accepts a transfer to the Aramco compound in the middle of Saudi Arabia.

The Aramco Compound in Saudi Arabia

This is the 1960's, and the parties and excess that were sweeping across the United States were under a microscope within the Aramco compound. This place is a Stepford suburban village behind walls in the middle of a deeply conservative country. Here, Gin is expected to join the pool parties and social functions of the other Aramco wives, but she's not allowed outside the compound without proper escort and attire. She is a modern woman in a land where religious doctrine binds women to radically traditional beliefs. In the Kingdom of Men is a retelling of the Adam and Eve story of knowledge and self-discovery, and Kim Barnes is an incredibly skilled storyteller. This novel should be a top pick for reading groups, people who like Mad Men, and given the continued importance of oil and the US/Saudi relations, pretty much everyone else out there.

Don't make me hold a gun to your head.

Good and Cheap (Books)! Day 4

A week or two ago, Liz picked me up for a big night out. I think we went to a new dance club for some late night debauchery. It's also possible we went to the Olive Garden for a $7 meal because I had a coupon that was about to expire. We were probably home by 6:30.

My point is, when I got into the car I noticed Liz had a copy of Janet Frame: An Autobiography. I’ve never seen that book anywhere but my own bookshelf,  so I was really surprised. I said, “Now two people in this country own this book!” But I was also thinking, my God we’re soulmates. I kept those thoughts on the inside because it makes poor Lizzy terribly uncomfortable when I insist that we were meant to live and die together. Especially die together. Yeah, it makes her uncomfortable.

Janet Frame: An Autobiography is actually a collection of three memoirs, To the Is-land, An Angel at My Table, and The Envoy from Mirror City. And full disclosure: I didn’t happen upon Frame’s work at a bookstore. I saw the Jane Campion film named for her middle memoir, An Angel at My Table. Jane Campion wasn’t that well known yet either so how in the world did I happen upon that film? Well Roger Ebert said that I should go (officially he just raved about it to the general public, but I took his film reviews personally). See, all roads lead to Ebert this week.

Janet Frame had a case of the crazies. Two of Frame’s sisters drown when she was a young girl, in addition to growing up with a brother who suffered violent seizures – her father also suffered from being, well, just violent. Frame attempted suicide while in her twenties and then spent many years in and out of mental hospitals that were, as you can imagine any mental hospital in the 40’s and 50’s were, uh, rough.

She was “diagnosed” with schizophrenia, which was treated with electric shock and the occasional lobotomy. She was in fact scheduled for a lobotomy when her short story collection won a prestigious literary prize. She did what most of us would do if we were scheduled for a lobotomy the same week we won a literary prize…we rescheduled it indefinitely.

Frame went on to write many books of poetry, stories, and novels. She also found a therapist who correctly diagnosed her with depression and successfully treated her sans poking around her damn brain. She dedicated many books to him, and rightfully so.

Rest assured, more Frame books are coming down the pike as they always do with dead writers…they find more books. Found under table legs, behind bookcases, hidden in ceiling panels, in the dog’s bed, and even under a letter that says, “Please for the love of god, don’t ever ever publish these pages.” They all get published.