Llew's Reviews

I always try to at least try to keep up with the local schools’ summer reading list books which students buy here at the bookstore. Most I’ve already read, but every once in a while a teacher will be daring and sway from the normal “Scarlet Letter” and “1984” choices. This summer I have three on my own personal list, and this was the first. It was assigned to an AP Language and Composition class along with, “Into The Wild” by Jon Krakauer. Interesting choices, yes?

I adored Dillard’s “Pilgrim At Tinker Creek” and in this book she goes into a little of where she was (both physically and what kind of state of mind) when she wrote it. She also delves into other writers in sometimes amusing and in sometimes insightful ways. It’s at times both inspiring and discouraging.

An example of a paragraph that both encourages and discourages me:
“Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks; he claimed he knocked it off in his spare time from a twelve-hour-a-day job performing manual labor. There are other examples from other continents and centuries, just as albinos, assassins, saints, big people, and little people show up from time to time in large populations. Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a serious book in a year. Some people lift cars, too. Some people enter week-long sled-dog races, go over Niagara Falls in barrels, fly planes through the Arc de Triomphe. Some people feel no pain in childbirth. Some people eat cats. There is no call to take human extremes as norms.”

Burroughs’ last two books have read more like a blog than actual novels or even humorous essays. However, it’s an incredibly hilarious blog which I would have at the top of my bookmarks and would check more than once a day so they’re still so great that I spend the next several days relating the stories to friends as if Burroughs is a dear one himself.

And, really, anyone who has ever shown poster sized images of disturbing hardcore porn to fellow motorists because the other drivers were breaking common courtsey traffic laws can consider themselves my friend.

Dear Soccer Mom in The Dodge Minivan, You saw my blinker bitch! Love, Laura

I’ve tried to read Didion’s non-fiction before, and gave up before I smothered myself with the dust jacket. Man, it’s boring. However, since her latest chronicle about dealing with her husband’s sudden death while her only child was in a coma in a hopsital was receiving such accolades I decided to try it again.

I hate to kick an author when she’s down, but I still don’t see what everyone is raving about. It was basically a recounting of things that would only interest me if it had been my own mother or someone else I was close to. Otherwise, it just seemed like I was reading someone’s diary when I shouldn’t. I felt like I was invading her privacy, and listening to thoughts and feelings that weren’t universally relateable. Or maybe they’re just not to me since I’ve never lost a husband of twenty years. Either way – Meh.

The next book I was going to read was Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Memories of My Melancholy Whores.” Wouldn’t that be a menage a trois of depression? Fortunately, my order for that hasn’t come in yet so I will have to venture into, hopefully, happier territory.

I was just a few pages away from finishing “A Year Of Magical Thinking” when I decided that I would read another book instead so I wouldn’t start the year on such a sad literary note. Thus, I picked up “The Burn Journals” because nothing is more happy and more of a great foot to start a year out on than the detailing of a young man who tried to commit suicide by setting himself on fire.

The disconcerting thing about this book is that I related so much to the author. We were born in the same year, and so many of the events and people that seemed to bookmark his childhood were familiar. Also, I had the same unsettling way of solving my problems. No, I never decided to make myself a one woman bonfire, but I did set rather harsh consequences on typical juvenile actions. The only difference is that he kept escalating his personal punishments to his actions as they became more serious and likely to get him into even more trouble. Whereas I just realized that I had to make no more mistakes to stay alive so I didn’t really allow myself to screw up, be disobedient, or really even live normally until I managed a better way of coping with making mistakes.

Another note, I rather like the cover of the book that I have featured with this entry, but it was not the one of the edition I read. The one I read has cover art which looks as if it was drawn by someone who had received burns on their hands. *shudders*

What I learned most from this book was: don’t live in Alaska, just visit.

I don’t know if it’s because the author’s job is writing obituaries, but this book just seemed to be story after story of someone dying in her small Alaskan town. There were some good parts as well, but they seemed so few and far between. It was a little akin to “Marley and Me” but with more of a homage to where she lives than is ever hinted to in Marley.

Of course, they both end with a dog dying which might be why Miss Flannery always seems to be giving me discouraging looks whenever I am writing something.

I picked up this book with low expectations, thinking that I was only reading it so I might be able to be more in the know once Christmas season starts. However, it turned out to be delightfully interesting.

Berendt kind of skips and hops between different subjects all set in Venice: the burning and rebuilding of the opera house, the swindling of Ezra Pound’s mistress by the creating of the Ezra Pound foundation, the schism of the Save Venice society, and so forth. It was enough variation that it kept it interesting rather than seeing abrupt. Also, I learned fantastic little tidbits like the fact that rats can’t throw up. And that they also have an anisthetic of sorts in their saliva so you don’t feel a rat bite as much as you think you would, because that’s what kind of completely random conversations you have when you attend at a Venice masquerade ball. Not to negate Venice’s grandeur, but it’s akin to something I’d hear at a cookout at my Uncle Chip’s house.

This is one of my rare forays into non-fiction, but it came highly recommended by a friend so I decided to venture boldly into it. It’s the heartwrenching story of 26 Mexican men who walked into the US illegally, and became lost on their way causing the death of over half of them. More than just their story, and the plight of many hardworking people who are taken advantage of by the coyotes who exploit their desire to have a better life, it is also about how the men who work in the sothern counties of the border states work to keep these wanderers alive. Their job is focused more on the people’s survival than on the legalities.

I guess it was a subject that I had not thought much on but the book caused me to have two new resolves:
1. I’m never ever ever going out into the desert again. I don’t care how many indie rock bands you throw into Indio. IT’S NOT HAPPENING.
2. I have a lot more respect for certain people now, and a lot more loathing for others.

“The Old Country treated me like a king – even more than on my first visit. Girls in Paris kept putting their pantaloons in my soup. I don’t know if that’s a tradition or if they were low on dinner rolls.” – I, Fatty

This book has the most marvelous set up I have ever read. In the Introduction it explains how “Fatty” Arbuckle, a famous silent movie actor, was an addict of heroin ever since it was prescribed by a bad doctor after a botched surgery. After he was falsely accused of murder and rape, he lost everything except for his Japanese manservant who stayed with him more out of having no place to go as no one would hire someone linked to Arbuckle rather than out of loyalty. The servant had always adminstered Arbucle’s heroin doses so after he could no longer afford to pay him the servant extract salary in another manner. He would refuse to give Arbuckle his heroin until he told part of his story. The wiley man continued this until he had all of Arbuckle’s story.

The only problem is that I don’t if this is true or not. The front of the book says “a novel” but every review I’ve read treats it as the true story. Fiction or not this book was fantastically well written. In the end it’s exactly like my dating history – incredibly humorous and at the same time heartbreakingly pathetic.

Shortly after “Running With Scissors” came out in paperback, I met Augusten Burroughs at the national booksellers’ convention where he was incredibly rude. He wore a trucker’s hat. Since he was neither slim nor otherwise hip looking it just made him look like a redneck. I wanted to throw his book back in face while shouting, “The only reason you’ve been compared to David Sedaris is that you’re GAY not because you’re FUNNY!” Howver, I restrained myself. Not because I have any decorum, but even I don’t muck around with free books.

Several years later, at another booksellers’convention, I noticed a paperback copy of “Dry” sitting on a table at one of the booths. I had just read an advanced reader’s copy of his latest, “Magical Thinking” which I enjoyed. Thus, I had Dry on order but it hadn’t come in to the store yet. There I am flipping through the copy of Dry wondering if there was any way that I could sweet talk the publisher lackey there into giving me the copy of it when this pretentious looking girl in her young twenties shuffled up beside me. She sniffed and barked, “That’s a really good book. You should read it. It’s really good.” Geez, maybe I should take some handselling tips from her. The bookshop world would be blown away by such eloquence and persuasive power.

Is this how it’s going to be? I’m going to end up spluttering on about why I read the book or it’s design (I know it’s “in” to love Chip Kidd but the paperback edition of this title just makes me tingle it’s so wonderful). Will I ever even get around to the content of the book? It’s about Burroughs quitting drinking. There? Is that enough? No?

In Dry, Mr Burroughs mentions this waiter at the Time Cafe who had a coke addiction who he had a brief love affair with. If Brian, who I know who has read this book, hasn’t sifted through all the clues to narrow down who it was then all my faith in his stalking abilities will be shattered. How is that for incorporating books into my life in a real and meaningful way?