Recommend a book

[Tzara]

Yes, I know. I started this thread, then promptly kind of forgot about it. Especially after I had said I was going to post some recommendations for GuiltyPleasure.

So here's one, GP: Kayla Czaga, For Your Safety Please Hold On.

She's a very young poet, a recent MFA graduate of UBC, maybe (even now) barely 27 or so. The poems are, as one might expect of someone that young, quite uneven, the best ones being about her family, the snoozy ones being about guys she didn't click with. Or the other way around.

I guess what I liked about this collection is that it has an energy that "more sophisticated" authors leave in the locker room. Youth, in other words.

Anyway, worth reading, I think.

 

[Trixareforkids]

You're very welcome, m'dear. I'm extremely pleased you liked it.

You might also want to consider Ann Pancake's Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley. Ms. Pancake teaches in a local MFA program, and I heard her read one of the stories from this book (she's a novelist and short story writer, not a poet). She was effing hilarious. I was literally laughing so hard I cried.

She's originally from WV herself, so I am assuming that her voice is authentic.

Anyway, check her out. And happy new year.

I just checked and my library doesn't have any of her books I'll add it to my Amazon wish list for my next round of book buying.

I love a good storyteller. I read Jenny Lawson's Let's Pretend This Never Happened and woke hubby up laughing more than once. I'm looking forward to reading her Furiously Happy.

 

[LostBabygirl3489]

The Flowers Of Evil by Charles Baudelaire

 

[Sir_Sydney]

The Partner, John Grisham

 

[Piscator]

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. It deserved its Booker.

 

[LostBabygirl3489]

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. It deserved its Booker.

I'll have to check it out.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

For those of you who like a more high-class sort of smut, Brazil by John Updike.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

For those of you who like a more high-class sort of smut, Brazil by John Updike.

No one does high class smut like Mr. Updike.

 

[JanneE]

If you're reading this

"Hocus Pocus" by Kurt Vonnegut. A good-sized book that should take an average reader a few weeks of on/off reading. The foreward states it was originally written on scraps of paper torn out from books at the library where it was written (and so was later "compiled" for a printing). The writing style is fun to read, although he can approach careless with his sense of humor sometimes. His background is in science fiction.

The book is about a returning veteran who begins work at a tuition-free college for learning-disabled students. The prison across the lake from the town erupts in an outbreak and everything is torn apart that can't survive enough cynicism. I had to put it down for a while. Some of it will drop a pound or two on your heart, and then you hear the author laughing to himself about the absurdity of this or that taking care of his wife/mother or his students. A book about nothing.

I don't know who would like this! My copies of The Master and Margarita, Atlas Shrugged, and The Inferno are all at the library along with this one.

 

[JanneE]

"The Dark Snow" by Brendan DuBois. I read this short story in the original Playboy publication (late 90s) locked in a hunting cabin. I caught up with the author through email, who recommended buying on "Smashwords" or "Kindle". You'll enjoy this story if you spend too much time living peacefully alone and are constantly bothered by noisy neighbors and trash-producing deadbeats.

 

[JanneE]

Czechoslovak Stories by Sarka B. Hrbkova. "Hearty" Czech and Slovak short stories around 20 minutes each. There is a free, scanned version uploaded online which may be easier to find than the reprints of the 1920 edition.

 

[Angeline]

Not a book

but a little giftie for Tzara that involves reading and listening.

I bet this is right up your alley. Enjoy.

 

[Remec]

The Mussorgsy Riddle is one I just finished last week and can definitely recommend. It's paranormalish mystery as a psychic wanders into an autistic boy's dreamworld to try and bring him back from a semi-catatonic sort of state.

It won this last year's Eppie for best sci/fi novel, if awards hold any sway over you. *g*

 

[Tzara]

but a little giftie for Tzara that involves reading and listening.

I bet this is right up your alley. Enjoy.

I own like half of those records, of course. Tried to learn the "Psychotic Reaction" riff at 13. One of the first records I bought was the Sonics first album (the one before the one Rolling Stone lists).

So, like, thank you. Awesome stuff.

But where are the 13th Floor Elevators? (Reportedly one of Thomas Pynchon's favorite bands.)

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Tried to learn the "Psychotic Reaction" riff at 13.

I was 14. We may be in a similar age bracket.

 

[Angeline]

I own like half of those records, of course. Tried to learn the "Psychotic Reaction" riff at 13. One of the first records I bought was the Sonics first album (the one before the one Rolling Stone lists).

So, like, thank you. Awesome stuff.

But where are the 13th Floor Elevators? (Reportedly one of Thomas Pynchon's favorite bands.)

I loved The Blues Magoos, especially their version of Tobacco Road and We Ain't Got Nothing Yet. Yeah I had that album.

I was surprised they didn't mention The Seeds.

And hey the Elevators were a great garage band! I still love this song. Psychedelic, man.

 

[DanielBoone]

I love Denise Levertov.

 

[Tzara]

I loved The Blues Magoos, especially their version of Tobacco Road and We Ain't Got Nothing Yet. Yeah I had that album.

I was surprised they didn't mention The Seeds.

And hey the Elevators were a great garage band! I still love this song. Psychedelic, man.

Yeah, The Seeds. I was surprised they didn't mention them as well. I might have included The Electric Prunes (electric autoharp! and check out the white boy James Brown dance moves by the lead singer--I practiced those moves in junior high, though never got the stones to ask a real girl to dance with me) and I probably would have linked something by Iggy and the Stooges, like I Wanna Be Your Dog.

Then, there is always the incomparable Shaggs. Garage with a capital "G" and a bold italic 48 point font and several exclamation points.

 

[Tzara]

I was 14. We may be in a similar age bracket.

That seems likely.

I'm trying to think of other riffs. "Day Tripper," for example, though I was a bit older when I learned that. "Purple Haze" (my clumsy version of it), probably at 16 when a friend taught it to me on his slinky stringed Telecaster. I would have considered killing someone in exchange for knowing how to play Roger McGuinn's 12-string part on "Eight Miles High."

Ended up giving my guitar away because of serious, serious stage fright.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

That seems likely.

I'm trying to think of other riffs. "Day Tripper," for example, though I was a bit older when I learned that. "Purple Haze" (my clumsy version of it), probably at 16 when a friend taught it to me on his slinky stringed Telecaster. I would have considered killing someone in exchange for knowing how to play Roger McGuinn's 12-string part on "Eight Miles High."

Ended up giving my guitar away because of serious, serious stage fright.

Of course, you are well out of garage territory with those. I was excited when I mastered "Paperback Writer" and any number of tunes by Cream. But back in the garage, I did learn the organ part to "96 Tears." There were also some great cheesy guitar riffs on any number of tunes by Paul Revere and the Raiders.

I still play one of these in public several times a month:

 

[Angeline]

Why should anyone bother with form poetry? Here is a thoughtful and clearly stated argument for practicing with forms and meter. You may not agree with everything in the article, but you'll have a good understanding of why you might want to try.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Why should anyone bother with form poetry? Here is a thoughtful and clearly stated argument for practicing with forms and meter. You may not agree with everything in the article, but you'll have a good understanding of why you might want to try.

An interesting article, although I beg to differ with Wordsworth when he says that "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings", regardless of whether said overflow is "recollected in tranquility." If that were all that poetry is, dogs would write it. I think that poetry represents the highest form of uniquely human, cognitive activity (i.e., metaphor) that one human can share with another, although it comes as an integrated package of passion and cognition.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

While I'm in the neighborhood, I have a book to recommend, or actually, an entire series (for which I am indebted to Mer, who first acquainted me with the author.) It's the Sonchai Jitpleecheep series by John Burdett. I am a lover of noir detective novels, and Raymond Chandler has always been my ideal. Burdett takes Chandler's approach and super-charges it with weirdness and humor. His setting, instead of the seamy Los Angeles of the 1940s, is the red-light districts of present day Bangkok. The detective protagonist is a policeman, suitably hard-bitten, but also a devout and somewhat superstitious Buddhist, who is the half-caste son of a Thai hooker and an American serviceman. He is the only policeman on the force who refuses to take bribes, but he also manages his mom's brothel and smokes ganja. He teams up with an attractive blond FBI agent who is hot for him, but he spurns her advances for reasons of karma. Some of the funniest bits are the snarky observations about both Western and Eastern culture, and the clash of the two which is embodied in the collaboration between Detective Jitpleecheep and the hot-and-bothered Kimberly of the FBI.

 

[gNocis]

"Mother Night", which was the second book by Kurt Vonnegut I found. It fits nicely in your hand and can be read inside a week if you're busy. The story revolves around a Nazi war criminal who was never recognized in the United States until his neighbor turns him in. His writing style is best described as "ascerbic".

 

[Piscator]

I think that poetry represents the highest form of uniquely human, cognitive activity (i.e., metaphor) that one human can share with another, although it comes as an integrated package of passion and cognition.

You might appreciate "Fifteen Dogs" by Andre Alexis in which dogs are given human intellect (Processes Too Complicated To Explain (thank you Salaman Rushdie)) and one of the dogs is a poet.