My Retinas Burn With Failure

What I Read In 2009:

1) JPod - Douglas Coupland
2) Running With Scissors - Augusten Burroughs
3) I'm With the Band - Pamela Des Barres
4) Da Capo Best Music Writing 2008 - Various
5) Helpless - Barbara Gowdy
6) House of Meetings - Martin Amis
7) Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden
8) Flight - Sherman Alexie
9) Twilight - Stephanie Meyer
10) New Moon - Stephanie Meyer
11) Eclipse - Stephanie Meyer
12) Breaking Dawn - Stephanie Meyer
13) The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
14) Heart-Shaped Box - Joe Hill
15) I & I - George Elliot Clarke
16) Colours Insulting to Nature - Cintra Wilson
17) The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
18) From Hell - Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
19) The Road - Cormac McCarthy
20) Half the Sky - Nicholas D. Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn
21) Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl
22) Our Band Could Be Your Life - Michael Azzerad
23) Wonderland Avenue - Danny Sugerman*
24) John Steinbeck - Cannery Row*
25) Black Water - Joyce Carol Oates*
26) Youth in Revolt - C.D. Payne*
27) First Love, Last Rites - Ian MacEwan*
28) Dance Me Outside - W.P. Kinsella*
29) Whiteman - Tony D'Souza*
30) The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For - Alison Bechdel*
31) Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues - Loren Rhoads (editor)*
32) The Glass Castle - Jeanette Walls*


* blogs pending

Of the 100 books I swore to read by the end of 2009, I read 32.

How do I feel about it?

When I learn about the efforts of people like this woman , I feel sort of crappy about it. But when I look at the cumulative effects of this blog and the book reviews I logged, I feel better. It sparked a lot of great conversations, if nothing else. I figured out a little more about my personal tastes; distressingly, I also had to confront my lack of focus and especially my lack of conviction (and conciseness) when it came to actually blogging about the books I'd read.

I've decided to continue the blog in order to firstly, complete the reviews that are still pending (I think I need a new word limit) and secondly because I read more when I blog about reading than when I don't. New challenges and new features are on the horizon. Recipes. Fan fiction. Trash. Pictures. Videos. The internet.

In the meantime, more reviews, and suggestions for new books are, as always, welcome. Thanks to the devoted few who followed (and continue to follow) along.

Love, Lang

I Suck At Reading

Well, I could make up a litany of excuses as to why I have not been reading Hard Times by Charles Dickens (or much of anything else for that matter.) I had my wisdom teeth out a week ago, the economy is shit, I'm worried about money, blah blah fuckity fuck. Generally, I've been looking for distractions. Any kind of distraction. And, well, Hard Times is a shitty book to read if you are in pain and depressed about money. I guess that's sort of obvious.
Anyway, I am not at the moment feeling so good about books I think I "should read" because of one reason or another. There is a time for that, but it's not now at this particular moment. If I'm going to get anywhere in this competition, I need to focus on my natural inclinations - which are not always the most, uh, lofty. (gleefully claps hands together)TRASH TIME!

Anyway, instead of Dickens I've been reading and doing other things that do not fit into the parameters of this competition because they are less than 200 pages or are not books. So I can tell you what those are. Then I'm going to put Dickens aside for the moment and read something less weighty. Yeah? Good.

Locke and Key:Welcome to Lovecraft - Joe Hill


Locke and Key: Welcome to Lovecraft is the first issue of a 24-issue series written by Joe Hill, who happens to be Stephen King's son. He has won a bunch of Bram Stoker awards for his short fiction and this is his first comic. A co-worker and comic freak lent this to me. Her taste is very good, but I took one look at Gabriel Rodriguez's cutesy art and was like "Augh! This looks like Bratz! Terrible!" and didn't pick it up for two weeks. Then I started reading and finished it in two hours. It's damn good.

I wish I hadn't known that Hill was King-spawn, because I can't help but make comparisons between the two of them. Hill has King's knack for dialogue, especially with kids. A lot of the story comes from the perspective of a small child so this is important. And the story ultimately belied the cutesy artwork by being very, very dark, dealing with kids and murder and unspeakable paranormal terrors. And yes, it's not an accident that the town the story is based in is called, uh, Lovecraft. The Lovecraftian elements especially ring out when one character discovers a secret door that literally turns people into omniscient ghosts. The supernatural elements never overwhelm, though. It's heartfelt, too, and not in the melodramatic way that some horror comics are. Hill pitches his tone in a way that somehow matches the medium and the artwork perfectly. I don't know anything about comics, so whatever, take this as you will. But I eagerly await the next installment.

Elmore Leonard - When the Girls Come Out To Dance



I generally find I'm in the minority here, but I just fucking love Elmore Leonard. His books are so satisfying. I love the way his characters talk and always say the right thing. I love how most of his female heroines either carry guns or know how to shoot them. I love that the assholes in the stories always get their comeuppance in a very classy and/or hilarious way. I love that all his characters talk hard and drink ten of the hardest drinks in a row (generally made with some kind of horrible whiskey like Tullamore Dew with a twist of lime) and they can still rattle off one-liners. So all of these things happen in this collection of short stories and I was tickled, amused, saddened and most of all wistful. That's what Elmore Leonard does to me. He makes me wistful for experiences I couldn't possibly relate to. And yet I DO. Let's all quit our jobs and be con artists.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

I used to hate silent films. The few I had seen (mostly in some film class or another) struck me as cheesy or painfully melodramatic. And worst of all---unnecessary. I thought I was a "dialogue person." Then last weekend, I was supposed to go wish a friend farewell. I was vaguely anxious about this and drank a bunch of wine and watched The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari on YouTube with extremely low expectations. I was completely mesmerized. Everything about this film is mind-boggling. The acting, the music, and most of all, the shots and the set-pieces:



YES. So beautiful and ahead of the times. Imagine an entire film designed like this about a hypnotist, his sleeping and very creepy subject, and MURDER. Also, there is a twist, and I found it genuinely SHOCKING. Who thought a movie could be so shocking in 1919? My goodness. After it was all over I was terrified and immediately went to the party because I had to be around other people. Also, I felt like an artless troll. Never again will I doubt the paralytic power of the silent film era. No, really.

Oh, and here's the YouTube link.

Ok. Thanks for indulging this diversion. Hopefully I will be back on track in a few.

2) Running With Scissors: Memoirs and Crazies

Book Read: Running With Scissors
Author: Augusten Burroughs
Pages: 331
Favorite quote: "I am paranoid about serial killers. Any of Finch's patients could be one. Especially that crazy lady who owns the Blue Moon Grill in Easthampton. I just look at her and she creeps me out. She looks like she would eat a baby. Not that she's fat. She just looks hungry in some dangerous way that can't be explained."
Method of acquisition: Bought in Chapters with a gift certificate. Supercheap. Paperback.
Distraction level: Moderate. I am now on season two of The Wire and it continues to suck up my life. Damn you, Bunk! I am counteracting this problem by reading during lunch breaks; this is helpful.

Background: My bookish pal friend Dave passed me Burroughs' story of his battle with alcoholism, Dry, a couple of years ago, with a resounding "bleh." He was not a fan. I read it largely while hungover. It was funny, sad and nauseating. The book implies that his alcoholism is rooted in his undoubtedly shitty and bizarre childhood, which is chronicled the earlier memoir Running with Scissors.

All Familes Are Psychotic? The basic facts (and plot) follow. Burroughs was given away by his batshit-crazy matchstick-eating aspiring-poet mother to her psychiatrist and his family. They are also crazy. The psychiatrist's adopted son begins raping the 13-year-old Burroughs and they eventually develop a relationship. Burrough's father, also an alcoholic, disappears during this time (although he reappeared this year in a sense when Burroughs published the rather tellingly-titled Wolf At The Table.)
So basically, I'm just letting you know that my understanding of Burroughs' messed-up life is all out of order. So what? You're out of order.

The Memoir: Platform of the Whiny?: Here's the thing. Some memoirs are fantastic. We have all read amazing memoirs about people who have lived through war, extreme poverty, police states, abuse and so on. Then there are some stories that are simply so deliciously and magically sensational that you absolutely can't. stop. reading. (The Dirt is one of my favorite books of all time. Don't judge until you read it.) Some memoirs, though, are indulgent and stupid. I am an overprivileged North American, and generally I don't like reading books written by other overprivileged North Americans. They're whiny. The exceptions to this rule are David Sedaris, because his books have made me laugh so hard that I cried, and Burroughs.

Family Circus:There's definitely an indulgent aspect to Burroughs' story. The young boy that comes of age in Running With Scissors is a nascent celebrity whore if I ever saw one. If the young Burroughs didn't have intelligence and talent on his side, he could have been a 1970's Captain and Tennille-chasing Perez Hilton. Thankfully, the man can write, and the story he shares is compelling enough that I stayed with it even as certain moments strained credulity. The greatest flaw of Running With Scissors is that some of its characters are so sketchily drawn that we end up not caring about them anymore, while you can't help but care about Burroughs, his dysfunctional "sister" and partner-in-crime Natalie Finch and even his creepy, pedophilic, manipulative and desperately needy "lover" Bookman. Aside from these three, though, I didn't give a shit about anyone in the book---especially Burroughs' mother. Crazy or not, the woman was a heartless shrew.

The book's style is also a bit distracting as it falls into a rhythm of Sedaris-like vignettes about forgotten Christmas trees and fortune-telling turds. Don't get me wrong---it's interesting and sometimes it's really, really funny. But when these little interludes are interspersed with entire chapters about rough gay sex and lunatic violence, things get uneven.

The true tragedy of Burroughs' upbringing is threaded throughout the book. For me, that's what stuck. Burroughs has a wonderful ear for dialogue and it's through his conversations with Natalie and Bookman that we see what the book is really about: loss, numbness, and coping with the infinite disappointment and fuckery of a truly dysfunctional upbringing. In that light, Burroughs' story is one of Survival---with none of the saccharine or sentimental trappings associated with the term. And it's certainly one worth reading.