All is well with the emo, Bright Eyes-bleeding couple Bella and Edward when Eclipse, the third book of Stephenie Meyer’s uber-sensitivo contemporary goth novel opens.

This one is more of a bosom clutching, fainting spells romance than the previous book in the series, New Moon. The young love birds are following a period of crossed telepathy wires, death wishes, emaciation, and a heated tour of Italy’s fanged underworld.

The nagging outside interference is coming from La Push: Jacob is pissed off at Bella, and she is desperately missing the bestie (beastie?) who coaxed her through a particularly self-destructive period with thrill seeking adventures and plenty of petting and fawning.

When Bella tries to fix things with Jacob, she meets resistance from her boyfriend, a real classic scenario in the history of high school relationships. Eventually Mr. Cool Blood realizes that he is better off letting her chill with her homey, than fighting her and building resentment. Jacob, meanwhile, has discovered an additional layer of ab muscles and has developed serious hot pants for young Bella — instead of the chaste Hallmark pining of yesteryear. While he would like nothing more than to throw her down on their special rock and make speedy, unsophisticated love (which I have to imagine would be something like a dog humping her leg), Bella is keeping ‘em crossed. Edward has the key to her chastity belt, and she damn-near begs him to, um, use it. Use it hard.

“Not a chance,” is his response. “No ring, no thing.”

Bella is unwilling to be just another 18 year old who trades in her mortar board for a marriage certificate. She explains to Edward that he has her forever, why does she need to prove it with the Mrs. Cullen moniker?

For those keeping track at home, everyone but the Morrissey-caliber asexual Edward is getting blue balled.

There is a tentative plan to turn Bella into a vampire after graduation. The mad duo is going to run off and Nosferatu-ize the shit out of her so they can be together for ever and ever and ever. Of course, Edward is skittish. Bella is putting on a brave face. Jacob, who learns of the plan, howls in horror. Even Rosalie Cullen gets in on it, taking a little girl-to-vampire-girl time to tell her she is making a huge mistake.

Meanwhile, it becomes apparent that some external force is hunting down Bella, who has a pretty sick list of other worldly enemies for someone so vanilla. Shock of all shocks, the vamps and wolfs form a temporary alliance to rid the greater Forks area of evil beings. And, uh oh, maybe these feelings for Jacob are a little south of friendly, like Bella has convinced herself. She seems to have a bit of a craving for the hair of the dog.

This is, without a doubt better than both its predecessors in the series. But that isn’t saying much. It’s like: Which way do you like mushrooms served best, madam? As a whole, the story is more compelling. The pacing is better. It’s still overwrought. It still is a disturbing portrait of the nose-dive of the American teen-ager’s ideas that stalking plus longing equals love.

The fact remains that no one in the tois-some is very likable. Bella is moody and demanding, and defined by all the things she does not like: Girls night out, shopping, parties in her honor, dresses and makeup, the grunts, dweebs, jocks and princesses who roam the hallways at her high school. She likes classic romantic fiction (in this book it is Wuthering Heights, in No. 2 it was Romeo & Juliet) and cruising on her motorbike (which she never does because she is, like, grounded from it). She really, really, really likes Edward, duh. And she really, really, really likes Jacob (uh oh).

Edward must have had a life at some point. But since meeting the aromatic Bella, all of his waking hours — and they are all waking hours since vamps don’t sleep — are spent securing her perimeter. Sometimes this is helpful, as he is able to ward off attacks. But sometimes his proximity merely allows him to catch some frozen hamburger she dropped before it hits the kitchen floor. And something the kiddies might not realize is a close cousin to abuse: When Bella decides to sneak out and visit Jacob, Edward preempts it by removing a crucial piece of her car’s engine so she can’t leave. It has, admittedly, been a few years since I’ve subscribed to Cosmo, but this seems like some sort of red flag from a cover story.

Jacob, a relative good guy, face-molests Bella despite her protests. And when it comes for the battle royale, he threatens to purposely get himself killed during the standoff — a deliberate ploy to elicit some sort of response from Bella. It works even better than Mr. Manipulation could have anticipated.

Where the first two books of the series felt like Meyer had taken a roll of Bounty, and swabbed the story dry of any humor, Eclipse has a few stray self-aware, and much appreciated, punchlines. In one scene, that towering beefcake Jacob shows up at Forks High. He needs to talk to Edward, and the two square off near the parking lot. Things get a little heated, a sort of supernatural shit storm brews. On the sidelines, the pedestrian teens — the one’s who can’t lift cars or grow a mustache, let alone a hairy back — are placing their bets in a way that apes many a slumber party debate.

Mike grinned. “Anyone in the mood for a bet?”
“Ten on Jacob,” Austin said at once.
“Ten on Cullen,” Tyler chimed in.
“Ten on Edward,” Ben agreed.
“Jacob,” Mike said.

Even the dud classmate are in the world’s greatest debate.

Instead of caulking the cracks and ignoring the characters’ faults (psycho stalk much, Edward?) and the more disturbing aspects of our hero’s relationship (co-dependent much, Bella?) Meyer addresses these issues. Bella’s parents finally, finally express concern that this 18-year-old is in a relationship that is, perhaps, a little intense for someone who probably still has the price tags on her training bra. In real life, this is exactly the kind of all-consuming passion Maury Povich drools about: One ripe with the potential for a suicide pact. Her father openly expresses hostility toward Edward, and awkwardly initiates a sex talk with Bella; Her mother, Renee, uses the set of a Summer’s Eve Douche commercial — a slow walk on a beach — to question the adhesive nature of their attachment.

There are worse books than this one: Twilight and New Moon, for example. In fact, there are even worse books than this one not by Stephenie Meyer. If you can find a way to ignore the sexism, the overwrought puppy journal-style entries, and forget the impact of this series on hundreds of thousands of young girls — and not to mention their mothers — it isn’t bad at all.

An American Type is a posthumous work by Henry Roth. Edited by The New Yorker magazine fiction editor Willing Davidson, An American Type is an autobiographical novel and a continuation of Roth’s previous novels, a fact I failed to recognize before requesting a review copy. Set during the Great Depression, Roth’s alter ego Ira is a struggling writer that falls in love with a woman named M. Ira breaks up with his girlfriend Edith, travels to Los Angeles, and realizes how much he loves M, who remained back in Manhattan. Broke and struggling, Ira moves back to Manhattan and marries M.

Roth is a fantastic descriptive writer, but the story itself was weak. Breweries with malty auras, red-penciled map routes, and people sitting tautly quiet are just some memorable descriptions in An American Type. However, the struggling writer traveling across the country trying to find both a literary identity and to cultivate romance with a true love is not an earth shattering story. It’s like an artist creating beautiful poetry about someone painting a fence. The colors can be vividly described, and the brush strokes can be elegantly illustrated. However, the person is still only painting a fence.

Furthermore, An American Type is rife with negative gender, racial, sexual orientation, indigenous, and religious stereotypes. There are plenty of slurs to go around as well. Now I’m sure Roman Polanski-like contextual rationalizations will surface to justify the stereotypes and slurs as necessary to portray Great Depression life and attitudes. Davidson said that An American Type is “a love story, and it’s a novel—perhaps the last direct testament—of the Great Depression” (p. 276). However, I tend to think one can write a good account of this time without descending into human degradation. Roth and editor Davidson have added to the lengthy body of work that carries on these stereotypes and slurs to a new generation.

If you have ever taken the majority of your dinners with an employee of the United States Postal Service, you will learn that Charles Bukowski’s novel Post Office is what these people use instead of a mirror. This has long been a favorite book of my boyfriend, and one he has suggested I read for an accurate look at how he spends his business hours.

Finally, fueled by back-to-back viewings of the movie Factotum, and the documentary “Born into It,” I had built up some juice for more of a Bukowski binge. The curmudgeonly drunk and dirty old man doesn’t just appeal to government workers, after all. Like anyone who has ever been a 20-something who enjoys scrambling word combinations and giving mouth-to-mouth to a bottle of whatever, I, too, have found an occasional Bukowski-ism that resonates. Until now, I’ve only read his poetry – which I love for its stark and frank narrative qualities and for the seedy portraits of old-school Hollywood gutter life. In non-rhyming verse.

After four years with an anecdotal USPS tutorial, I found the trip into the thinly-veiled Bukowski character Henry Chinaski’s life pretty seamless. For the brunt of the book, he is negotiating the aches and pains – both physical and mental – of various positions at the post office. He starts as a mail carrier, and is propositioned by a woman his first day on the job – which he mistakenly believes characterizes life as a mailman. Later on he becomes a clerk, working off-hours (a scenario that is very near and dear to my own heart). There is an on-going battle against supervisors, whom he refers to as “soups,” about length of breaks, and tardiness and rule book infractions.

In one scene, a supervisor reprimands him for tossing his cap on top of a machine. The supervisor feverishly typing up warnings, handing them to Chinaski who tosses the slip in the garbage can. The supervisor rushes off to write him up for that, and Chinaski again chucks the warning. This goes on and on until Chinaski tells the supervisor that one of them looks pretty stupid.

During his down time he indiscriminately ruts with women, some who stick around longer than others, plays the ponies (sometimes successfully enough to make phat cash), and drinks. Oh, lo, how he drinks. On a particularly hot day as a mail carrier, Chinaski has booze seeping out of his pores. He gets in scrapes with jilted boyfriends. He gets married to a wealthy woman. He visits and revisits his old girlfriend Betty, a down-and-outter who eventually dies, leaving behind a pool of blood in her bed.

I love Bukowski’s work, probably an unpopular opinion among women, and by publicly admitting it, I’ll probably never be able to march in a NOW parade. But I think he really opened up the definition of poetry to something modern and accessible, and he has such a uniqueness of voice and subject matter and realism. (Of course, today this voice some young men – “serious writers”– adopt like a fake Southern accent when they begin making words, so maybe we should rue the day Bukowski first got published).

University of Minnesota Duluth professor Linda LeGarde Grover’s The Dance Boots is an interconnected short story collection about indigenous families from the fictional Mozhay Point Indian Reservation set in northern Minnesota. Spanning several decades in the twentieth century, the stories of the families in The Dance Boots show the disturbing reality many indigenous families deal with on a regular basis: alcoholism, violence, racism, and boarding school trauma.

However, Grover does not allow these families to be singularly painted with these issues. Instead, Grover’s stories show how important familial relations are in this community. Tied together by the common Ojibwe language Grover uses in the stories, the siblings, grandparents, and extended families all share life’s events as many big families typically do. Artense’s aunt Shirley tells her stories about their family’s history, and when Shirley dies, Artense wears the dance boots for the family. Cousins Vernon and Sam travelled side by side to Minneapolis, stayed with Artense’s grandpa Louis, and worked together as pin setters in a bowling alley.

The Dance Boots weaves around this family’s history and illustrates the connection across generations. Grover neither sentimentalizes nor victimizes indigenous people but rather shows them as the complex humans they are. I love Grover’s use of Ojibwe words throughout the book, as well as the way the individual stories do not follow a linear timeline. Both of these qualities challenge the reader to remain engaged with the story. However, Grover’s powerful descriptive writing is the book’s greatest asset.

I wonder now if they [the horses behind the fence] watched for us, too, but obliquely, like Ojibwe people do. The obliqueness of a horse’s gaze is a necessity, because of the way its eyes have been placed by God, for reasons we will only understand after we die, if we still care to know. The obliqueness of an Ojibwe’s gaze is also a necessity, because of what transpire after we were moved from where God had placed us. The gaze of an aandakii Ojibwe, who lives elsewhere, beyond even that, is the most oblique of them all. (p. 78)

You are about to experience a great moment in MN Reads’ history. Yes, we’re making history here today. How exciting is that?

Today is the release of his second middle-grade novel, Mamba Point, about a young boy in Liberia and the deadly snake he befriends. On Saturday he’ll be celebrating the new book with a publication party and reading at 2p.m. at the Red Balloon Bookstore, 891 Grand Ave, St. Paul and today he’s humoring us by answering the 6 questions we hardly ever ask.

What’s the last book you really loved and want everyone to read?
This is challenging because I may really love a book and not want “everyone” to read it, knowing that not everyone will love it as much as I do. And I might actually want everyone (or practically everyone) to read a book that I didn’t really love, but did think made some important points or shed light on something. So what I came up with is Life of Pi. I read it a long time ago, when it came out, but it hits both criteria. I really loved it and I think everyone should read it.

What are your six dream Jeopardy categories?

1. Rodent or Not?
2. Jazz-age Mixology
3. State Capitals
4. Classic Rock
5. Rules of Baseball
6. Grammar 101

Which book in your collection have you had the longest?
It’s hard to judge. I don’t have a battered & chewed-up copy of The Pokey Little Puppy that I’ve had since I was two to show you. I do have several paperbacks from when I first started buying my own books, though, and which survived several moves. Based on publication dates, the oldest might be Flowers for Algernon. The copy I have was printed in ’78 when I was ten, and I know I got it new, not used. So it was ’78 or ’79, not much later, when I got it. I re-read it several times. It’s not even really a kids’ book, but I was a weird kid.

If you could be a fictional character who would you be?
Bertie Wooster. Who wouldn’t want that lifestyle?

If you could be a superhero, what would your superpowers to be?
Teleportation has long been my fantasy. I dislike driving, hate flying, but love to visit other places. If I could choose an additional power, it would be sleeping soundly.

Which book do you keep telling yourself you’re going to read, but probably won’t?
There’s a lot of books I say I’ll read, re-read, or finish reading. It’s hard to pick one. Just glancing at my bookshelf, I see The Book Thief, several of Patrick O’Brien’s Jack Aubrey books (I loved the first and bought a half-dozen more in the series, but never started the second), The Turtle Catcher. . . a dozen books I wish like anything I’d already read so I could say, oh, of course I’ve read that. . . On the other hand, you never know what you might pick up and read out of sheer stubbornness.

After reading Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang, I can’t decide if Chelsea Handler is going to save printed entertainment or drive the final nail into the format’s coffin.

The arguments for her as print’s savior: this is her third New York Times bestseller, so she’s apparently converting viewers of her late-night cable show into Barnes & Noble customers. Also, she can be damn funny.

The arguments for her as its grim reaper: she evidently couldn’t care less about key story-telling principles, like consistency and keeping the reader informed, and so writes in such a sloppy manner that she’ll never be mistaken for someone with a functioning understanding of how to construct a well-proportioned essay.

First, it needs to be said that Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bangis a book of comedic essays, so its principal (only?) requirement is to be funny. It is. “The Feeling,” Handler’s account of her third-grade self learning how to masturbate, is excellently twisted, and the account of a wedding gone wrong in “Wedding Chopper” made me cringe.

But some stories are so sloppily put together it’s a shame Handler didn’t have a tougher editor. “Black-on-Black Crime” reads like listening to an overly long story that means something only to the person telling it. It’s far too inside-jokey to be enjoyable. Also, the way Handler recounts conversations smacks a little of self-indulgence; I know she’s a comedian, but no one is possibly as wry and witty as she makes herself out to be, and that annoyed me after awhile.

Ultimately, I have to forgive Handler’s transgressions against the English language. She’s genuinely humorous, and that’s more than I can say for a lot of “comic” authors who nevertheless understand plotting and style.

Natsuo Kirino has a way of describing heinous death scenes, and subsequent clean up, in a lazy, clinical monotone typically reserved for reciting the tasks on a to-do list. This can either create chilling suspense for the lack of emotion, or it can lull a reader into a desensitized state where the word “Smush!” in reference to skull-implement contact barely causes pause.

In her novel Real World, a high school boy nicknamed “Worm” bludgeons his mother to death with a baseball bat for no real reason beyond the perceived slightings that plague all emo teens — not just those living in a Japanese suburb: She’s annoying. He’s under too much pressure.

Toshi, the lead off narrator in a story that combines the voices of four teenaged girls and the murderer, hears the commotion from next door. She sees a cheerful Worm leaving the scene as she is on her way to cram school — a sort of summer school hosted by a cultish mix of peppy young adults who rah-rah studying with the enthusiasm of life coaches. While Toshi’s in class, Worm steals her bike and cell phone on his way out of dodge. He skirts around town building up a summer stink and calling Toshi’s besties from her phone.

When the body is discovered, Toshi lies to the police about seeing Worm and their brief interaction. She doesn’t tell them that he has her phone, and her wheels. Toshi and her friends, an eclectic mix of the misunderstood, coax Worm along in his flight.

First up is the butch Yuzan with her gravely man-voice, who trades a new cell phone and bike for Toshi’s stolen property. Yuzan is exploring her sexuality through out-of-the-way lesbian bars and is operating under the guise that her friends don’t know she’s gay (they do).

Then there is Kirarin, the band’s token sexpot, who is still smarting from a broken heart. Hobbies include: Trolling the internet for dudes, then hooking up. The thrill seeker agrees to meet up with Worm at a train station, intrigued by what a murderer looks like.

When Worm decides he needs a brilliant manifesto to up his cult status, he solicits Terauchi to write it for him. Terauchi sympathizes with the killer because of her own complicated feelings toward her mother, who is banging one of her coworkers on the sly.

The murder is just a backdrop for the relationships in this girl posse, who communicate via phone, text, and email and are never found in the same room throughout the short novel. The story is more about public face and private face, and how secrets might not be buried as deeply as a naive teen would assume.

As far as suspense novels go, it’s pretty light on chill — especially compared to Kirino’s novel Out, which chronicles, again, four women who murder an abusive husband, which turns out to be the gateway drug to a life of bathroom butchery. But it is a nice portrait of the teenaged girl as seen through the eyes of others, versus the eyes of self — a statement that sounds much more pleasant than the outcome for these ladies.

It seems like a recipe for failure to have your storyline told by a family pet, expound on the sport of racecar driving, and top it off with the idea of reincarnation. The fact that this novel works is a testament to Garth Stein’s skill as an author. The plot is crafted beautifully, the characters are well-written, and even if you think you don’t like racecar driving, you may have that position swayed. The Art of Racing in the Rain should be on everyone’s must-read list of the summer.

From the very first pages, you know that Enzo, the family dog, is going to die, but before he does this four-legged philosopher takes us on a journey of his life with Denny, his racecar driver owner. Enzo is quite assured he will be reincarnated into a human boy in the next life, so he is not worried; rather, he embraces the idea of death and meeting Denny again on equal footing, so to speak. The story is quite amazing and it all starts with how to race in the rain.

“ ‘Very gently. Like there are eggshells on your pedals,’ Denny always says, ‘and you don’t want to break them. That’s how you drive in the rain.’ ”
pg 13

Denny happens to be one of the best racers in the rain; he can beat any other driver on any track when it’s raining. Other driver’s panic, but Denny stays calm and that’s what matters when you are going over a hundred miles an hour. It is also what matters as you go through life. Denny needs all the strength and control in the world to battle the death of his wife, Eve, to brain cancer, the scheming and lawsuits by Eve’s grandparents in order to gain custody of Denny’s only child, Zoe, and a falsely-manufactured child rape charge sought to ultimately destroy him and bleed him down to his last penny.

“ ‘What are you being arrested for?’ Mike asked.
Denny looked to the officers, but they said nothing. They waited for Denny to answer the question.
…
‘Rape of a child in the third degree,’ Denny said.
‘Felony rape,’ one of the cops clarified.”
pg 193

We don’t see the thoughts in Denny’s head, but through his actions Enzo comprehends everything. He also understands that he has to be strong for Denny, because he is all there is for the time being. Stein paints a picture so strong with emotion that it is hard to put this book down without a couple tears streaming down your face. The Art of Racing in the Rain makes us all want to be better racers. Life is not about the winners; it is about how you handle the course your given.

Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy’s The Ethical Slut is the practical guide for someone who wants to engage in polyamory or open relationships. Easton and Hardy provide valuable practical advice on negotiating boundaries & agreements, practicing safe sex, and the importance of obtaining consent. Many polyamorous forms are explored in this book, along with discussions about dispelling myths and strategies on how to make these relationships work. I admire the hutzpah it takes to put forth a polyamorous vision in a society overflowing with rigid and oppressive sexual ideas.

However, I question Easton and Hardy’s rationale in advocating their lifestyle choices. Instead of showing why polyamory works for them, they fall into illogical arguments, cultural appropriation, and an underlying anti-monogomist sentiment to justify their lifestyle. Easton and Hardy make many historical claims but lack any citations or research to back them up. Most of their arguments come from an egocentric framework, a justification of polyamory based on how it makes the individual feel. As with all things, one does not live on their own island. Reality is holistic and involves complex relationships with all things. To be truly ethical, one needs to consider how their thoughts and actions affect both themselves and others as well.

Sometimes it’s just easier to put these things in a list format.

Bad logic:

Love is not a real-world limit: the mother of nine children can love each of them as much as the mother of an only child. (p. 26)

This is giver-centric thought. Sure the mother can infinitely love her children, no matter how many there are. However, one needs to look at the relationship quality with each child or lover. Not all children or lovers are equal; they all have different needs and demands. The more relationships a person has, the more their resources are spread out. This is simple logic and can be proven when considering physical laws of hydraulics or electricity. Think of the research that shows how effective smaller class sizes are in an educational framework. The same principles apply here. Again, it’s not just about the giver. The relationship as a whole needs to be considered. Is it effective? That should be the question of the day, not one about quantity.

Only by fighting can partners struggle with their disagreements, express their most heartfelt feelings, and negotiate change and growth in their relationships. (p. 135)

There are many ways other than fighting to struggle with disagreements, express feelings, and negotiate change & growth. The authors cling a need to fight, which might show a preference to violence, something this world definitely does not need more of today.

We like to think that all sensual stimulation is sexual, from a shared emotion to a shared orgasm. (p. 228)

If all sensual stimulation is sexual, no sensual stimulation is sexual due to a lack of comparison. Easton and Hardy probably mean all sensual stimulations have the potential to be sexual, but that is not what they said.

Anti-monogomy and Egocentrism:

We think we’re [Easton and Hardy] an excellent example of what can happen if you don’t try to force all of your relationships into the monogamous till-death-do-us-part model. (p. 5)

Easton and Hardy link monogomy with negative images in many places. Usually it has to do with a commentary about a lack of freedom. Easton and Hardy show us the typical follow-us-and-you’ll-be-right mark of egocentrism, despite a centrisms lecture on page 8.

Religious/spiritual ignorance:

Isn’t that what spirituality is, an opened and expanded consciousness? (p. 129)

This came in a paragraph that tried to link polyamory with being on a spiritual path. The problem is that spirituality is one’s connection with unconditioned reality. An opened and expanded consciousness is, well, an opened and expanded consciousness.

This sluthood can become a path to transcendence, a freeing of the mind and spirit as well as the body, a way of being in the world that allows expanded awareness, spiritual growth, and love beyond imagining. (p. 269)

When one clings to sluthood, it’s difficult to transcend anything.

Cultural appropriation:

In some Native American cultures it is customary to wait several minutes after a person speaks before responding… (p. 144)

Easton and Hardy take part in the despicable tradition of using indigenous thought and practice to justify/sell what they are peddling. Just say it might be wise to wait before speaking. There is no need to steal from the indigenous culture to justify your existence.

I believe it is absolutely necessary to candidly talk about sex and advocate for complete sexual freedom. There is way too much censorship and fear concerning sex in our culture. However, if you fill up a book with poor arguments, your message suffers.

Do you have that friend in your life who, depending on the day and your mood, you are either madly in love with or so annoyed by you want to shove him in front of a bus? After reading Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, I’m pretty convinced that if Steve Almond were my friend, he’d be that friend. Why? because he’d write things like, “he called me because, well, misery loves another idiot with a jukebox where his soul should be.” And he’d also wank on endlessly about some musical genius he loved that I’d never heard of. See how it could be love or murder?

First a confession: I have a weird fetish for/obsession with rock & roll memoir/essays books. I read every one that comes down the pike in hopes of finding an author that can put into words the relationship I’ve had with rock & roll better than I can. I’m pretty sure that if they let a woman write this type of a book, she could do it. So far, I have not found a woman who has written this kind of book. No, it seems these kinds of essay-memoir-rock-and-roll books are reserved for the Steve Almonds, Rob Sheffields, and Chuck Klostermans of the world.

Yes, yes I know woman have written books about rock & roll. I’ve tried them all. But not one of them, at least that I’ve found, has written the memoir/essays book about being a music fan and what the music has meant to her. No, usually the rock and roll books by women are about being in the band or the women’s revolution in rock & roll (60s, 70s, 80s, 90s– pick your revolution).

You’d be hard-pressed to find a book by a woman about her experience with music fandom (and groupie memoirs don’t count). If you know of one, a good one, let me know and I’ll be your best friend forever.

I cannot hold the fact that he’s not a woman against Steve Almond. I can, however, hold the fact that even though he calls himself a Drooling Fanatic he’s kind of more than a fan. Anyone with the ways and means to get access to their musical heroes, to interview Dave Grohl and get Spin to foot the bill is more than a fan. Right?

Not surprising, it’s those parts of Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life where Almond goes all rock journalist I found the most unappealing. I’m not the kind of fan who wants to know where my musical idols live and what they drink for lunch and what their studio looks like. I just don’t care. Unless the rockstar is telling me exactly who or what a song is about, I just don’t care. Almond does. (A cavet: I did eat up the chapter about Ike Reilly, because I love Ike Reilly. In fact it was Almond’s inclusion of “Commie Drives a Nova” on his Largehearted Boy Book Notes essay that prompted me to give the book a shot)

However, most of these profiles come towards the end of the book and by that time Almond has been so charming you’re willing to indulge him his little fanboy escapades.

Almond’s funny and he’s a good writer, this combination is divine. I can’t even count how many times I laughed out loud. He does lyrical takedowns of Toto’s “Africa” and Air Supply’s “All Out of Love” that are so funny I live with the hope that in the future there will be an Almond book that is nothing but the explanation of lyrics. Like this about “Africa”:

Our hero is waiting for a female whose plane arrives just after midnight. Got it. This seems to place him in or around an airport, the sort of airport within earshot of drums. He can see the wings of the plane, which are lit by the moon and also, curiously, able to reflect the stars.

Finally, because I’m already at 660 words, I’m going to provide you with a 6-bullet list of things I really adored in this book. You can consider it 6 reasons you should go read it.

1. When he talks about the delicacy needed in placing a needle on a record and the insults that could be hurled if you did it incorrectly, “You yipped it, gooch.” It’s much funnier in context.
2. That he lists The Beastie Boys as some of the biggest assholes in rock because they ditched their female drummer and now are all high and mighty about misogyny after “years of of inspiring dudes to get trashed and paw women.”
3. “It’s not about the music. It’s about who you are when you listen to the music and who you wish to be and the way a particular song can bridge that gap, can make you feel the abrupt thrill of absolute faith.”
4. On the index card I use a bookmark and to keep notes I wrote: Chapter 9 = Fuck Yeah!! (two exclamation points). It’s about how Joe Henry became his writing coach.
5. His three-hour argument with Brock Clarke (who inadvertently inspired me to start MN Reads.
6. Obligatory mention that he mentions The Replacements.

(Also, the stuff he writes about his wife and Kip Winger is totally awesome. I promise to shut up now. Really. Go get the book. It’s fun.)

Mari is manning the front desk at the ramshackle sea-side hotel owned by her mother the night before the start of the busy season when a second-floor scuffle breaks out between a guest and a prostitute. The latter lands in the hallway, screeching and flailing, amid a mess of tossed pillows, strewn clothing, and a spilled purse. Other guests file into the hallway to gawk, and the john — a stoic suit-wearing sort — says to the woman in a hypnotic voice Mari likens to a mellow horn or a cello:

“Shut up, whore.”

His voice wedges itself in Mari’s soul, and is the starter pistol to a whirlwind sadomasochistic, um . . . romance?. . . between the 17-year-old high school drop out with long shiny hair and a truck-load of self loathing, and the man — a translator who lives alone on an island and is rumored to have murdered his wife, the unlikely stars of Yoko Ogawa’s dark Japanese novella Hotel Iris.

Mari stalks the man, and as they take those first tentative steps toward awkward friendship, she finds herself in his home, face smooshed into the carpeting as he binds her and does all sorts of brutal stuff to her that would definitely be illegal if her eyes weren’t saying “Yes.” The relationship progresses to include all sorts of different bodily configurations a young girl can be tied up into. When she’s not putting the translator’s socks on him by using only her mouth, she’s back at the front desk biding her time until their next visit by blackmailing the hotel’s maid to keep her hush hush on Mari’s new hobby, and inventing reasons to escape her loveless mother’s death taskmaster death grip.

The translator has an unusual relationship with his nephew, a tongue-less, college-aged lad who requires that his food — even fish — be pureed. The maid at Hotel Iris is a kleptomaniac. Mari, who is confined daily to a space where everything is within her reach, seeks release by being beaten and manipulated by a man in a way that is a sexual rendering of how her mother treats her. Somewhere along the line there was a doting alcoholic father who was beaten to death and died young. Mari suspects her mother hates her, and does a shabby job of masking it by making sure her daughter’s hair is always perfect and oiled.

This is a strange and spare book filled with odd ticks. It’s like a song that ends before you can decide if you like it. And what drives the characters — the need to torture, the need to be tortured — is a little unclear. I guess it could be billed as an unconventional coming of age, the tale of a young woman who would not be satisfied with the typical base-running vocabulary of the peers she doesn’t have. I will probably spend more time wondering what the heck was going on with this book than it actually took me to read it.

Being the only non-Minnesotan in my family, I had to take a history course in college to learn about the state I moved to some sixteen years ago. So in 2004, my second course at Augsburg College was Bill Green’s Minnesota History. Green, who recently stepped down after four years serving as Minneapolis’ public school superintendent, used a textbook by historian Theodore Blegen called Minnesota: A History of the State. In what was my first exposure to different histories, Green moved way beyond Blegen’s romantic and one-sided history to offer other views of Minnesota’s formation. Rather than the Father Hennepin history often told in the public schools, Green offered a different Minnesota history, one told from Ojibwe, Dakota, and African-American vantage points. I was enlightened and grateful.

Mary Lethert Wingerd’s North Country: The Making of Minnesota is comprehensive account of Minnesota’s formation. North Country is not Blegen’s version of history but rather a history much like the one I learned from Green. Wingerd shows the intricate relationships among the many factions in Minnesota’s history, rather than simply telling about people and events. For example, indigenous populations in North Country are neither helpless victims nor constantly on the warpath. Instead, indigenous groups are complex communities worthy of examination in their own right. Economic and geographical contexts are constantly examined, as well as illustrating existing and new cultural patterns created in Minnesota’s infancy.

Mary Lethert Wingerd Reading
7:30 p.m., Monday, July 26
Common Good Books
3038 Hennepin Ave. So
165 Western Ave N, Suite 14 St. Paul

North Country is not a book one pops open and finishes over the weekend. This book reads like a textbook with wonderful citations from many quality sources. I had to read half and take a week-long break before finishing it. There are 141 color illustrations and many maps that offer rich visual context. Though it is dense and full of information, North Country is a valuable book that gives the reader a complete history about Minnesota’s formation.

I have just spent two-plus weeks marinating in a slow vacation-style paced read of Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann, and I think the readjustment period to normal life is going to be a bit shaky. So far it has been like yawning awake after an amazing dream. Looking around groggily and wondering, Huh. When did summer get here?

My God, this novel is intense and brilliant, so beautiful. Words I usually reserve for Haruki Murakami. This is the best thing I have read in years, filled with the best sentences I’ve ever read.

It starts with lazy days in Southhampton, the proverbial calm before the storm. Eveline and her best friend Kate are in those in-between teen years where they have the resources to get stoned at the beach, but bike home in a girlish lanky-limbed way. Evie is an artist, open and curious, living with her free spirit, socially-conscious mother in a shack by the railroad tracks. Kate is into theater, just discovering what it means to be pretty. Her mother, a wise French woman, first is dying, then will die leaving both girls without their main source of maternal comfort. Kate moves in with Evie, the beginning of the dissolution of the girls’ relationship.

Evie’s boyfriend Jack is a wanderer, a philosopher, a trouble-maker according to his father — whom he has tried to kill. A nonconformist, he’s a musician searching for authenticity. And they have this incredible relationship like they are linked by a virtual umbilical chord. When Evie makes anonymous tracks in the snow in a parking lot, Jack knows that she made them. While ripping apart his bedroom in a manic fit, he finds a card addressed to a woman named Eveline beneath the carpeting, left decades earlier. Like a postcard from the universe. They speak to each other in paragraphs about things like impulses, and whether acting on them is a feral character flaw. Between them, every gesture has deep meaning. Everything is real thinky.

And so, when something chemical happens between Evie and the substitute drama teacher Harrison Rourke — on first impact — Jack senses it before Evie can even define it. Kate flounces around with a very public crush on the teacher who is directing the school play, and for Evie things are in a slow burn beneath the surface. Though they have barely spoken, every time Evie runs into Roarke there is this physical reaction involving gazes and brushes and touching.

Time out: At a time when good old-fashioned longing has become the Play-Doh Fun Factory of Stephenie Meyer, Hamann handles it in such a deep and real way. These characters aren’t wearing metaphorical chastity belts. They are plodding through life beneath a heavy, heavy blanket of reality. Where wanting something, and needing something, are so beautiful just for the sake of ripping someone to life and making them feel something and everything.

Finally, in a dramatic moment that outdoes the greatest of bodice-rippers, they are able to be together. They spend the summer in Montauk, with the knowledge that there is an end-point. Evie will be going off to NYU at the end of the summer; the ever-mysterious Roarke has plans, too. But briefly they are naked and happy, drinking and in the sun. Friends and parties and free to finally knead at each other and moan.

Then it ends. Evie in a dorm room, broken with loss. Roarke God-knows where. She is taken in by the posse he left behind: Rob, who is Roarke’s lifelong wingman and fiercely loyal, unquestionably in love with Evie, charged with watching out for her; Mark, a big time gamer with unlimited cash, who nurses her back to health after she miscarries the summer love-child. Evie gets into a relationship with Mark, a sort of oppressive character who keeps her in cars and money, the freedom to make her art . . . while understanding that he will never fully have her soul. He is fine with that, and considers possessing her to be a great big “fuck you” to his rival Roarke.

Of course there are hiccups. Occasional Roarke sightings that open old wounds, and insight into his demons. Turns out he’s a boxer, and pretty good at it too. Evie coasts along barely playing the role of a human being.

There are four things about this novel that I am overlooking in favor of the incredible experience of reading it:

1. It is 600 pages long, which is too long for this story. Can I think of anything I would cut? Nope. Would I want anyone to monkey with the way it has been written? Nuh-uh. (It was originally self-published by Hamann, then picked up by a major publishing company that had their way with it already).
2. At times, the nonlinear parts get boggy.
3. It made me think a lot about the difference between “overwrought” and true genuine emotion bared freely. I’m not convinced that someone else, maybe even me in another time or place, would read it and snort like a skeptic.
4. Deep into the book I read something that indicated this story is semi-autobiographical, which taints it a bit. Thinking that this really happened makes me lean more toward “overwrought” than “genuine emotion bared freely,” which is counter-intuitive, I know.

Regardless, I stand by my belief that this is a stunning book filled with so much smart, so much great phrasing, intense imagery, and a beautiful story. Go. Read now.

Little do you non-librarians living in the U.S. know, but we librarians are ruling the world. Information is power, after all, and we control information.

For instance, you probably think dinosaurs were big, stupid beasts who died millions of years ago. Oh, how silly of you.

Or maybe you think there is nothing but water between our continent and the continents of Europe and Africa. Again, you are so silly.

But we librarians like that you’re silly and misinformed; it’s how we keep you under control, at least until that nasty Alcatraz started stirring things up.

In Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz, living in the librarian-controlled United States, was getting bounced from foster home to foster home. No parents could handle caring for a child who continually broke things. He claimed he couldn’t control it; he was just clumsy, but could you handle living with a child who burns down kitchens, breaks valuables, and can’t open any sort of door without breaking off the doorknob or handle?

In the midst of a transfer from one family to another, Alcatraz is visited by his grandfather, whom he had never met. That’s when things really started going downhill for us librarians. You see, Alcatraz had been content in the world we built for you. The world you grew up in, the things you’re told, that’s just how it is. Why would you think that guns were actually primitive weapons compared to swords? You’re told the opposite, and we like it that way. And why would Alcatraz think that his clumsiness was actually a talent?

Alcatraz gets a wake up call from his grandfather who fills him in on all the evil (supposed evil) that we librarians do and of the talent that Alcatraz possesses. It takes a bit of convincing, but eventually he and Alcatraz, and a handful of other crazy characters, begin a quest to get back something we stole from Alcatraz.

Yes, it’s true, we did steal from him, but he thought it was just sand. Silly Alcatraz, not all sand is just sand.

I fear I’m making us librarians look bad, but you really should know that Alcatraz is a bad kid, too. Throughout Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians he continually states that he is not a good person. The fact that he published this book under the pseudonym Brandon Sanderson, and that he starts by saying he was tied to an altar of encyclopedias to be sacrificed but then doesn’t finish that suspenseful story until the end of the book, really proves that he is cruel and evil.

You’ll have to make up your minds about Alcatraz and us for yourself when you pick up the book, but since it makes us librarians look bad, good luck finding it in your local public library, unless of course there is a rogue librarian there. And if there is a rogue librarian there, would you give us his or her name? We’d like to pay that librarian a visit.

Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter definitively settles the argument, if there ever was any, as to whether sadness can be beautiful. It shows not only that it can be, but that it is.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter succeeds by being a profoundly sensitive and astute study of human emotion and loneliness. That McCullers wrote it when she was twenty-three illustrates her preternatural abilities as an observer of the troubled and forlorn.

I have the modern sensibility’s preference for a firm story arc with clearly defined elements, so I found that plot was not the strong point of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. It drifts across a Georgia mill town in the grip of the Great Depression, gently coming to rest on the very separate spheres of several isolated characters whose worlds gently collide but never fully intersecting. There’s Mick Kelly, the teenage girl whose growing pains are made more acute by her family’s desperate poverty. There’s Doctor Copeland, an icy and rigid African-American doctor separate from his community – and even his own family – by his strictness and rigor. And lastly, there is Singer, the mysterious deaf-mute upon whom everyone projects their own needs and wants. Together, these characters create an engaging psychological landscape of great clarity and depth.

McCullers’ strength is that her observations are consistently perceptive yet always gentle. There is never the suggestion that anyone she writes about is unredeemable; lost, perhaps, but never worthless. To say she is sympathetic is possibly a mischaracterization; “graceful” and “compassionate” might be better word choices.

My quick Google search on McCullers reveals that she died young after leading a pretty sad life. I hope it would be some consolation to her to know that this, arguably her most famous work, is a contribution to the world that has yet, in my mind, to be successfully imitated.