I don't know about you, but my to-read pile of books is absurdly out of hand. Every year, I manage to knock a hundred or so books from the stack. This makes no dent in that ever-growing behemoth. It does, however, mean that I discover a few gems each year. (A few duds, too, but I'm here to give love, not to disparage. Sorry.)Anyway, this isn't a goddamn recipe blog, so let's skip the boring story leading up to the reason why you're here and get to the goods.Please note that these are not necessarily books published in 2021, just books I read this year that made such an impact on me that I want other people to read them, too. Books by Authors Not New to Me, Who Still Managed to Surprise the Hell Out of Me:Look, this book was published in 1997 and takes place during peak AIDS crisis in San Francisco. Yet, it feels current and chillingly relevant....
Google Alerts is a useful tool. I added a couple of alerts about 10 years ago and occasionally, I'll get one letting me know where my books are being pirated. Pretty handy. But mostly, I get a bunch of alerts for Wrestlemania. Why? Because apparently, Rasmenia translates to Wrestlemania in another language. I haven't figured out which one yet.What's weird is, I'm not into wrestling.Okay, what I mean is, I'm not into wrestling anymore.When I was an eight-year-old kid living in Indiana, my mom's boyfriend took me and my friend Patty Foreman to a wrestling match. We drove all the way up to Fort Wayne from our little trailer park in Bluffton. I didn't like Mom's boyfriend, but that night, I didn't notice him. Patty and I bounced around in our seats squealing and giggling with glee while large sweaty men punched one another and bashed faces with folding chairs.Months later, me and Mom were in Colorado with her new...
Every day the Internet tells me which artists I'm not supposed to like anymore. As much as I don't want to enable anyone's shitty behavior, people have a right to say and do stupid things. I don't participate in public shaming mobs online. If an artist says an assholish thing that I can't abide, I simply stop giving them my time and money.But the work they did before that stupid thing isn't ruined for me. Mel Gibson is a shit bag, but I still love Lethal Weapon and Braveheart. Louis C.K. can fuck all the way off, but I still think Louie is a masterpiece and Horace and Pete is the closest thing we've had to The Great American Novel lately. Thriller is still a major part of my childhood soundtrack even though Michael Jackson is... well, you know.Sometimes, the offense is less severe, but more baffling. Like when punk icon Johnny Rotten goes full MAGA/Brexit. Or when Dave Mustaine...
Stories matter. They change our minds and teach us empathy. Stories help us to understand ourselves and those unlike ourselves; experiences we can never truly understand, even though we must try. If we want to make the world a place where human beings can do things like go jogging, relax at home, drive a car, or go shopping without taking a bullet or having their windpipe crushed as they call out for their mother, we must try. We must learn. We must listen to the stories. Because black stories matter.Sure, it's true that some stories are more helpful than others. For every Uncle Tom's Cabin, there's a Birth of a Nation. Every day, you have to decide what you're going to feed your brain and body. What kinds of stories you're going to consume. What kind of person you are and who you're going to be.I read as many books as I can. I try to watch all the things...
Author Bryce Corbett – wait a minute. I hesitate to even use the word “author” here. These days it seems like any jackass who can sit himself upright behind a keyboard likes to refer to himself or herself as an “author”.I wouldn’t refer to Corbett as an author – more like a blogger gone pro. Each chapter of “A Town Like Paris” reads like a long-winded blog entry, riddled with references to his friends & outings as if the reader actually cared enough to keep track of Corbett’s lifeless & bland ancillary characters.“A Town Like Paris” is an attempt at telling the story of an Australian expat living in Paris. While I am an American living expat living in France who spent more than two years living in Paris, I wondered with each turn of the page where in the hell Corbett’s Paris could be located on the map, because I had never seen the place.The...
"And I wasn't the only slave to my nesting instinct. The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue." ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 5"You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you." ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 5~I feel as though I've committed some sort of blasphemy. I had done so well, selling, giving, and throwing away most of my material possessions - all the while, reminding myself that, "the things you own end up owning you."It was...
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