Believer Article

Anyone a fan of Believer? If not, you should be. As pricey as it is (for good, quality reasons may I add), it is a wonderful read and some of the articles are online. In the current issue is an interesting article about Las Vegas and suicides.

"We know that people are four times more likely to kill themselves in a city than any other kind of environment.
We also know, however, that rural can be bad.
As are the hours between noon and six.
Or May.
Or winter.
Or if you don't drink coffee your chances of suicide are three times higher than if you did."
-What Happens There written by John D'Agata


I can totally relate to the last sentence. So lets drink to our mental health shall we?

R.I.P. Salinger

My coworker and I were talking about his death, I was sad and she was not. Maybe his popularity gave him the best excuse for what he ultimately wanted. Solitude.

Five Favorite Reads of 2009

My top five reads of 2009 in no particular order...

The Crossing, Cormic McCarthy: I have almost read all of his stuff and although The Road got me weepy, the second work to the border trilogy will remain my favorite. I recommend reading the entire trilogy. No quote from this one because I don't own the book...

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, Carson McCullers: "The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love...A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll.Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.
It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many." This quote was taken from a Mary Gaitskill book (she would have made top 10) and I had to find out who McCullers was. I was not disappointed.

Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham: "Truth had nothing to do with it. There was no such thing as truth. Each man was his own philosopher, and the elaborate systems which the great men of the past had composed were only valid for the writers.
The thing then was discover what one was and one's system of philosophy would devise itself. It seemed to Philip that there were three things to find out: man's relation to the world to lives in, man's relation with the men among whom he lives, and finally man's relation to himself. He made an elaborate plan of study."
This book was recommended to me from a dear friend/coworker of mine here in Chicago and it took me a while to get into. Think of Jane Eyre through a male's perspective with more academia and no happy love story ending. Us young people can relate to it all, trying to find oneself and make a meaning of this short life, blah blah blah.

Natural Disaster, Al Burian: "There are no words to describe. At around -20 the air itself gets you high--you leave the apartment wrapped in every article of clothing you can possibly find, fully shielded against the windchill, with only eyes exposed to the elements. The moment you walk out of the front door you can feel your body heat shoot out of your eyeballs like twin laser beams, you feel your heart speed up as your temperature drops, the body goes jittery, euphoric shock, and all the extraneous thoughts of phone bills, break-ups, coffee dates, gossip and logistical consideration, all of these escape you as you realize that here you are, in the icy chasm, literally dying on your feet, freezing into a solid block, a blood and brain popsicle, even as your feet scuttle forward, propelling into the darkness along the avenue, sludging through the grimy, car-exhaust colored snow."

This is Mr. Burian describing Chicago winter...I first fell in love with his writing with Burn Collector 1-9. My favorite zine writer, I enjoyed this one as I'm living in a city he was writing about. So far there has only been one day the weather dropped in the negatives but you better believe I will be wearing half my closet when it does happen again (I hear February will be really ugly).


The Complete Stories, Flannery O'Connor: "'The world was made for the dead. Think of all the dead there are," he said and then, as if he had conceived the answer for all insolence, he said, "There's a million times for more dead than living and the dead are dead a million times longer than the living are alive!" and then he released him with a laugh." -You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead

Is it fair to claim a complete works as one of my favorites? I had to, she is amazing. And devastating (there is a theme to all my favorites as you can tell, please refrain from cutting your wrists). Yes, her stories end up with the same tragic ending and the same racial tensions, but I couldn't put this collection down. My favorite story has to be The River.

Summer Blonde

There's always guilt when buying graphic novels...they're not cheap nor are they easy to find used. Every once in a while, I drop the dough and this time I had to thanks to the sale section at Quimbys here in Chicago. This caught my eye because I realized I bought a book of postcards (another love of mine NERD!) from the same artist a while back (You want one? Send me your addy. Side note: are you allowed to use 2 side notes in the same sentence? Help Caitlin!). Intrigued and for 8 bucks, it was mine.

This is a collection of 4 stories. Themes: adolescent-like angst, loneliness, awkward situations, sex and drugs. If it sounds like your 2009, please don't feel like you have to read it. I found it hard to have a strong opinion about the work, let alone harder to pick a favorite of the stories. Don't get me wrong, the stories weren't bad, but they were not fantastic either. They all carry a depressing tone (and in one story someone poops their pants after passing out from drinking too much) which I'm all about, but it just left me saying "eh" to most of it.

I'm in So Cal in 2 days and determined to get some reading done (what else do you do in the suburbs besides eating lots of fro yo and In N Out?). Any suggestions?

You interested?

Book: A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties by Suze Rotolo

Ok so I cheated and actually wrote about the first book of the new year for the other blog project I had going (by other blog project, I mean the blog I am suppose to write for and maybe did twice at the most), because the book is music related. Please see here.

Hi friends. Welcome to my blog (ok I kind of cringe at that, just how I cringe for rejoining Facebook). This is going to be grounds for me sharing what I read for anyone who is interested. Are you interested?

This blog (ehh) was originally suppose to be called Dear Caitlin. For those of you who don't know Caitlin, she and I have brain crushes on each other and will talk about books like they are cute boys as if we were in middle school. But guess what?! That name was already taken so I went with a song title by Willie Nelson which Bob Dylan covers beautifully. In the memoir she states it is one of her favorite songs by him...

"To me, this song is the essence of Bob Dylan. It showcases his acerbic wit and his ability to twist multiple meanings around his finger...He was not the person they thought he was. He kept going; he moved on."

Another thought...it would be awesome if everyone who reads to list their top 5 favorite books of 2009. Or favorite authors for that matter. Might help for inspiration on new reading. You still interested? Email me.