Hey, Guise! It's May, and I'm Reading!

You know what? I started reading it for a project at school but it was sooooo slow going that I asked my professor if I could just do 100 Years of Solitude instead, which is longer but I already read it last year. I'm going to try to finish On The Road on my own because I'm not hating it or anything... it's just the lack of paragraphs throws me off at first.

I absolutely do not blame you for stopping. I still might. Going to try not to though!

I haven't heard of The Orange Eats Creeps. There are plenty of books whose greatness I can understand but can't personally feel. I don't think there's any shame in that.

Old Ghosts: a crime novella by Nik Korpon

It's really fucking good so far. But, I mean, it's not surprising. Nik's got a great style. Love everything of his I have read so far.

I'm still reading The Stand, but it's upstairs and I'm reluctant to get it at the moment, so I'm about to start The sound of one hand clapping by Richard Flanagan.

Back to The Three Musketeers. I'm rushed to finish it now.

Also, I owe two reviews.

I'm with you guys on this one.

Surprisingly, I was never assigned this book in High School...I listened to the Audiobook a month ago and loved it. In fact, I'm now on a huge Kerouac kick (Big Sur, Book of Dreams, Dharma Bums). Having said that, if it's plot or story line you're interested in, then you need to search elsewhere.

I think the beauty of the "story" is that one could conceivably survive crisscrossing the country with simple odd jobs to maintain the supply of drink, "tea", and basic caloric intake. I think this book appeals to high school/college graduates and those suffering a mid-life crisis.

Fuck. Korpon's Old Ghosts. Fuck. So good. Seriously. Read it, everyone, immediately. It's only 80-odd pages. And you can get a FREE PDF here. Of course, you should fork out the coin to get the tangible product. I will be. One of the best covers I've seen in a long while, too. Boden, the artist, is in my other writing group and kills it at cover art. Man, that book was good. Get onto it.

I'm now reading an Aussie fella's novel: The Lost Boys by Sam de Brito. It's pretty fucking cool so far. Set in Sydney. About a no-hoper. Great voice. Really digging it.

Funny, 'cause books are usually where I go to search for plots and storylines.

But maybe you're right -maybe audiobook is the way to go with this one. I think if I was from that generation, I would've appreciated it far more than I did. I was serious when I said I liked the characters -very much, actually. I liked Sal. Liked Dean even -I thought he was full of shit, but endearing nevertheless. He was fun to read about. If not for the characters, I would've given up on it a lot sooner.

I do think I'll return to it one day. 'Cause looking back on it, for a book I couldn't finish, it seems to stay with me. I can almost remember everything I read -where that doesn't happen with every book I finish and like.

Plot is actually pretty low on my list, despite loving crime fiction, especially the older, fast-paced, pulpy stuff. The thing for me, generally, is, if the characters are weak and the words don't dance off the page and into my soul, no plot, no matter how good and thrilling it is, is gonna save the story. I'm just a sucker for the words. I want them to sing to me.

I just got done with Monkeybicycle8 last night, and besides three or four of the stories, it was pretty much awful. I'm not a fan of anything that's vague for the sake of being vague nor do enjoy things that drone on just to drone on, and there's a lot of both in it. Thank God I didn't have to pay for it.

Starting Freedom by Franzen tonight.

You writing a review for it?

I want to see somebody do a bad review. Not that I want to see somebody get ripped. It's just that sometimes it feels like the reviews aren't honest...

I am sworn to give an honest review on Amazon. I am trying just that, but ... how?

From Goodreads:

My first Monkeybicycle read, and it was pretty disappointing to say the least.

With the exception of three or four good/brilliant stories, this thing suffers from three main problems.

-There's no flow to it. One minute it's poetry. One minute it's prose. And the genre and style is always changing. Don't get me wrong...I love to mix it up, but this thing reads like a big mess when done in long sittings. Think of it like a mix CD where Sir Mix-a-Lot follows Interpol follows Willie Nelson follows Susan Boyle follows Backstreet Boys follows The Black Keys. Does that sound like it would work? No, it really doesn't.

-There was a lot of cosmetic stuff wrong with it, font and type-wise. It shouldn't be a big deal, but this kind of thing stuck out like a sore thumb.

-Finally, the content wasn't there. As I said, there's about three to four gems in this one. Other than that, it's pretty unimpressive, and I can elaborate on that to the point of: a story needs to go somewhere. That seemed to be the theme of this collection, if you could call it that: stories that don't go anywhere. I don't require the traditional literary formula, but dear God, give me something to work with. Don't drone on when you don't need to.

I was going to do one on the site that broke it down one-by-one, but wasn't feelin' it.

Hey that's better than nothing!

I'm actually excited to read that book. It looks ridiculous!

Yeah, I guess.

I also want to dig into Rico Slade. It'll probably be good to wash the Franzen out after I'm done with Freedom.

Another one I couldn't get into. Let us know how you do with that if you don't mind since you're good about being honest with the reviews -I read about 30 pages of it and I didn't hate what I read, but other books took priority and I just never went back to it.

Will do.

Despite his many glowing reviews, my expectations aren't too terribly high for this one. I think that should keep me pretty objective.

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

Loved that one.

I am referring to Rico.

I'm reading Cityboy by Geraint Anderson.

The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason.
Pretty enjoyable, for any other classical literature/mythology/ancient history nerds out there.

Just read a $0.99 Kindle short story by Kyle Minor. This guy can write. Great short. One of the best I've read in a while. He does that special thing where you straddle the fence between lit and genre.

Y'all should read it, and, I mean, it's only a buck: The Truth and all its Ugly by Kyle Minor.

AMERICAN PASTORAL - seems stuck in a three way clusterfuck between RAGTIME and HOUSE MADE OF DAWN for the worst things i have ever read, and two of those are Pulitzer winners.

Hmmm, I've heard pretty great things about American Pastoral.

Peplum - Amelie Nothomb

On Writing - Stephen King
Requiem for a Dream

Finished The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. Starting the Rabbit Angstrom by Updike today.

By Night in Chile - Roberto Bolano

When October Falls by Christopher Dwyer, who used to hang around here. I'm not very far in, but it's exactly what you'd expecting having read his short stories. Neo-noir with lots of descriptive detail. It begins with a guy getting shot, and thus saved (or at least delayed), at the moment he was gonna jump off a bridge in the hopes of being reunited with his lost love.

The poison wood bible by Barbara kings lover. And my iPad wont cooperate and keeps making things that should be one word into two words.

<3

Charactered Pieces by Caleb J Ross.

Stranger Will impressed me enough for me to order this. It's available for reading for free on the net, but in fairness this cost less than going to see a movie or ordering a pizza would. Caleb was kind enough to send me a signed copy with a couple of cool bookmarks / postcards thrown in, which is awesome.

It's good, you should check it out if you are a short story fan.

I like to tease Caleb about his Stephen Graham Jones blurb whenever we get together for drinks.

"'These stories change you'? I'm pretty sure he didn't mean it in a good way, man. He was probably reading it on the crapper and had a bad experience with it."

Huh, Caleb has reiterated the hope for these stories to change me alongside his signature. I'm not taking this book anywhere near the crapper now you've said that, it's tempting fate.

V. by Thomas Pynchon

Caleb and I have a rule when borrowing one another's books, that they won't be "flagged" in the Seinfeldian sense. I'm holding up my side of that, anyway. Heaven help my poor Kindle, though.

(Talk about a Freudian typo, I just wrote "poo Kindle" by mistake.)

I just flew through Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris, Sookie Stackhouse book 11. It was okay, definitely not enough Eric.

What what what!? There's a new one? I must have this.

Awesome.

Porno - Irvine Welsh

Even better than Trainspotting, I thought.

I thought the same thing Brandon. I thought it was plotted very well.

You know, I haven't yet been able to really get into an Irvine Welsh book. Maybe it's the dialectic prose. But, something tells me it's not.

120 pages into it. You're right. Yet Marabou Stork Nightmares remains his best, in my opinion.