More books I've read in 2008

Had some extra time over the T-giving holidays and actually got to do some reading:
Actually, I've been reading this one for sometime now. It's not the type of book you sit down and read cover to cover. It's a hilarious (if you like the dry British wit as much as I do) instruction manual teaching you how do things like "Go To Church" "Fix Things" "Be Happily Married" ("Sexual excitement may start to wane in a marriage and so you should think of all sorts of different ways to spice up the last few days of your honeymoon.") or "Go to a Barber" ("When you're young you wonder why old men with receding hair bother going to the barber. The answer is that they have more hair growing out of their ears and nose than you have growing out of your head. Similarly, older men wonder why young men bother when they leave looking more idiotic than when they came in.")Some people say that comics (or graphic novels if you will) can do everything that prose novels do. I say yes, but it's rare. Craig Thompson's "Blankets" certainly qualifies as a "real" novel but it took Thompson over 600 pages to tell his story, not many artists are willing to draw that many pictures. "Shortcomings" by Adrain Tomine is more like a short story or a novella, but a smart insightful short story, one that will stick in my memory. It's about an Asian-American guy and his struggles with racial acceptance -- not so much acceptance by others of his race, but of self acceptance of his race. He has a lot of issues, but the book doesn't take itself too seriously. There's a lot of funny stuff in there too, mostly from his eternally-randy lesbian best friend.

More books I've read in 2007

You know what I miss? I miss zines. Yeah, I know about e-zines and e-mags and all the wonders of the World Wide Web, but pixels can never take the place of paper in my heart. There are a lot of blogs and websites that I keep up with, but I still miss holding a new zine in my hands, feeling someone's handiwork, and then putting it away for I am a collector and that's what we do. Some of my favorite zines in the 90s were Thrift Score wherein Al Hoff explored the world of Goodwill and other thrift stores; Goodbye: The Death Zine which is not nearly as morbid as it sounds and is the source of my current fascination with obits, it was from Steve Miller who is currently the obituarist for the New York Sun, and the Sun has great obits but not as great as the ones found in Goodbye; Dishwasher chronicled the attempt of a man we knew only as Dishwasher Pete to get a job washing dishes each of the fifty states. This zine was so enthralling that it actually had a readership of 10,000, pretty amazing for a Xeroxed hand-stapled literary product. I also enjoyed the Hungover Gourmet, which is still being published and I recommend it highly, Mystery Date, and Duplex Planet, which was a series of off-the-wall interviews with nursing home residents.

All of these zines were quirky, idiosyncratic, full of passion and fire, and well-written (though not without typos). Few are still around today and a very select few have been collected in book form. Another of my favorite zines was Beer Frame: The Journal of Inconspicuous Consumption, and it's one of the hardest ones to describe. Paul Lukas (who currently writes for the New York Sun too) took long hard looks at things we see every day but take for granted -- like the Brannock Device -- that shoe-size determing instrument in every shoe store -- and Kraut Juice (Who drinks that stuff? What's in it?) Do you know what two elements the Hydrox cookie is named for? What do you know about Spiedies, Musk flavored Life Savers, do you know Coors intentionally misspelled the word "Arctic" in one of their products? I realize I haven't done a great job of explaining the premise here -- how about we go with "A fascinating zine, now a fascinating book."

More books I've read in 2007

I finished Nicole Krauss's "The History of Love". I haven't fallen in love with any book this much since "The Time-Traveler's Wife." This book is about love and loss and living after the loss of a love. On the last page you find out that it was about so much more than you thought it was about -- and that's why I'm probably going to read it again right away. It's that magic. When I read fiction I have to have at least one character that I like and can pull for and identify with or I can't make myself stick with it. This is the only book I can think of where I liked everybody in it. Everybody seemed very real and like they wanted to do the right thing.
I also read "Kyle Baker Cartoonist Volume 2" which I picked up from the cartoonist himself in Charlotte a couple weeks ago and "The Krypton Companion" which, believe it or not, is research for a story I'm working on.

What I bagged on the book hunt

There's not much I enjoy more than a good book sale. Rummaging through the stacks clears and focuses the mind and relieves stress better than any meditation technique I've ever tried. And when it's over you have a more tangible reward than inner peace -- although you usually have that too.
Today I went to a going-out-of-business book sale. Now I hate to see any bookstore close its doors, but it was probably inevitable with this one. Nice people, but not good businessmen. They were in a bad location. Old book and new books were mixed together. Way too much Tom Clancy and Danielle Steel type stuff for my tastes. Still I'm sorry to see them go.
But I do have some consolation, like this book autographed by one of my favorite mystery writers. Sharyn McCrumb can do it all. She can write suspense and she can be very, very funny as she is in my favorite (so far) of her books "If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him."
I also picked up this autographed beauty from George Plimpton, and to paraphrase Will Rogers
"They ain't making any more of them." :
I also got this Wizard of Oz book I've been wanting:
This art book:
(What? It's art!)

I also picked up Frank Sinatra: My father by Nancy Sinatra, The Atlas of Past Times by John Haywood, one of the few P.J. O'Rourke books I don't have, If You Want to Write by Branda Ueland, a golf book for either my brother or my father, a beautiful 100th anniversary edition of East of Eden, Mark O'Donnell's novel Getting Over Homer, three really nice baseball books including this one:First Words: Early Writings From 22 Favorite Contemporary Authors from Paul Mandelbaum, When I Was Your Age: Remarkable Achievements of Writers, Artists and musicians at every age from 1 to 100, and The Billiard Table Murders from Glen Baxter, whom I'd never heard of, but it looks like I've been missing out.
Oh, and an official Spalding Baseball score book.
And finally, I'm usually pretty persnickety about the condition of the books I buy. All the books other than this one are new or at least look new. This one's a little beat up and it's got an inscription, but I couldn't resist:
I was kinda surprised that there was a 77-page manual on such an activity, but obviously there's a lot about it I don't know.

And I got all of these books for 26 bucks. Talk about nirvana.

Then when I got home, this was in my mailbox:
That one I got free from Book Mooch, one of my favorite websites, both as way to get new books and to find good homes for books of mine that are ready to move on.
Next weekend is the Heroes Con where there will be a whole convention center full of books and comics to rummage through. I'll be so innerly peaceful I may ascend.

P.S. to the Previous Post

Gail Parent (the author of "Sheila Levine is etc., etc.") also wrote a couple of books -- "David Meyer is a Mother" and "The Best-Laid Plans" -- that I have very fond memories of. But now I'm not sure I want to seek them out and reread because I'm afraid that time may have hurt them the same way it hurt Sheila Levine. They may have somehow gotten less sexy and less funny than they were back in the 70's and 80's.
On the other hand, Gail Parent was also the head writer for "The Golden Girls," one of the great sitcoms ever. And she also helped create "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" and wrote for the "Mary Tyler Moore Show".
I'll give her another chance.

Books I've read in 2007, part 3

This was one of my favorite books when I was in the 9th or 10th grade. I thought it hilarious and very sexy -- so sexy that I took it to school and had classmates read some of the "goood parts." I've been looking for this book for years, and I finally found it a couple months ago at a book store in Myrtle Beach.
But in rereading it, I found it hard to remember just what those "good parts" were. It doesn't seem sexy nor particularly funny -- a young woman nearing thirty decides to kill herself because she is unmarried and nobody really notices that the poor girl is depressed. Now part of the reason that I didn't find this book-length suicide note as uproariously funny in 2007 as I did in 1974 is because I used to be in the second category of Jean de la Brevure's famous quote ""Life is a tragedy for those who feel, a comedy for those who think" - and now I find myself more and more of a feeler rather than a thinker -- which sounds like I grope women on the bus or something, but I just couldn't laugh at this. It seemed too tragic. I kept thinking she needed to quit worrying about getting married and get on with her life.
Maybe another part of the problem is the cover of the new edition which shows a Twiggy-like model nothing at all like the zaftig Ms. Levine.
One other thing I remember about this book was how excited I was when the movie based on the book came out -- and how disappointed and angry I was after watching the piece of celluloid crap that had nothing to do with the book other than the title. I have never trusted that any movie based on a book will be any good from that day on. And in fact now when I find a book I love, I just hope and pray that they won't make a movie of it.