1. An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken:This was the best book I read all year. No hemming, no hawing, no second guessing — the best. McCracken’s memoir about giving birth to a stillborn child and all that follows is heartbreaking, darkly funny, and something everyone on the planet should read. Bold claims, I know. [...]
The Soul Thief by Charles Baxter: Despite the fact that Charles Baxter induces a plot amnesia that always makes me forget what his books are about within a week of reading them, I am always keenly aware while I’m reading them that this man is a word genius. In this one, Nathanial Mason’s life story is stolen by the creepy [...]
GalleyCat has an interview with Jeffrey Friedman director of “Howl” a movie about the life and times of poet Allen Ginsberg. When I was in college I memorized large chunks of the poem. So enamored with the poem that I named my fictional magazine for a magazine writing class Howl. Also, the Wikipedia entry for the Howl is endlessly fascinating. [...]
There are so few ways to deviate from the addiction memoir outline, short of posthumous publication. The plot lines are easy, like a murder mystery or a romance novel. Your hero is a drunk/junkie/bulimic/sex addict. Your hero faces a lifestyle change in which the options are extreme: change vs. death. Your hero dusts himself off [typically more than once], washes [...]
Last week I ventured out to Magers & Quinn to listen to David Carr read from his memoir, The Night of the Gun. It was a great, great reading. If you weren’t one of the lucky hundred or so people to be there Thursday night, don’t worry, he’s reading tonight in St. Paul. I’d do whatever it took to check [...]
The Night of the Gun, David Carr’s memoir haunted me while I was reading it. At night I would dream about the book and Carr (and oddly, various Minnesota journalists), during the day I’d think about the book and the issues it represented. Carr is a reporter for the NY Times who spent many, many years as a crackhead here [...]
The NY Times compiles a nice collection of books ads. What surprised me were the ads featuring the authors smoking. Apparently smoking is totally literary. Girl Detective (one of my favorite Minnesota readers) reviews Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. The Rake’s Max Ross reviews Chris Adrian’s short story collection A Better Angel. Minn Post covers local-author Steve Thayer and the problems [...]
I’m not going to read the Strib’s review of David Carr’s The Night of the Gun, because I’m currently reading the book and really enjoying it. Sometimes I think if I read reviews they influence how I perceive the book. I like to come up with own ideas first and then see how right or wrong I think the other [...]
