52 books in 52 weeks

22. The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

I don't know the name for this genre - suburban realism? a la Tom Perrotta? - but I always enjoy it a great deal. The fact The Slap took place in Australia and was read shortly after I returned did not hurt either. The novel of linked stories hinges on a BBQ where one man slaps another man's child. So simple, yet the perfect catalyst to reveal the characters' petty prejudices, selfish motives, and human limitations.

23. If Trouble Don't Kill Me: A Family's Story of Brotherhood, War, and Bluegrass by Ralph Berrier, Jr.

I reviewed this book for the LA Times on October 10, 2010.

24. If You're Not Yet Like Me by Edan Lepucki

This novella is a gem - sharp and sparkling - and I'm not just saying that because Edan's a friend. I first heard an excerpt at the book release party, and the voice of the narrator was totally compelling. Funny as shit and perversely intriguing in her self-involvement. When I read the rest of the book, I was impressed by Edan's ability to sustain the pitch and stay true to the character.

25. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

I got lucky at the end of the year, and I read a bunch of awesome books by women in a row. A Visit from the Goon Squad is probably my favorite book of the year. Each linked story is so rich in its own right, with details so unique and bizarre but also so plausible, and the characters are drawn so fully I still think about them regularly. Jennifer Egan wins again. Brava.

26. Room by Emma Donoghue

Where Goon Squad was remarkable for its characterization and detailed mini-plots, Room was a model for distinctive voice and style. The story is told by a young boy (age 5) who has been held captive with his mother in some suburban shed since birth. All he knows is Room. At first, it's a bit hard to accept he'd be so intelligent and cognizant and basically healthy, but the suspension of disbelief is worth it. Donoghue eerily captures what it would be like to only know such a small world and then...

27. The Best American Short Stories 2010 edited by Richard Russo

It appears that Richard Russo and I have similar taste in short stories. While I didn't love every story, there wasn't one whose inclusion I questioned. And then there were stories I loved, especially Brendan Mathews's "My Last Attempt to Explain to You What Happened with the Lion Tamer." I can't explain why - uncanny images, emotional turns of phrase, pacing - but I haven't been so creatively turned on by a story in a while.

28. Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky

In the library version I read of Bad Marie, Marcy Dermansky writes that she wanted the book to be like a French film. Aside from the fact it took place in France, that hadn't occurred to me while reading, but it makes perfect sense. The story is decadent, surreal, uncomfortable, detached, and immersive. Marie and Caitlin somehow keep surviving and ending up in the bath, and that is life affirming in its own way.

sunday short stack

"There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it."
- George Bernard Shaw

• The 2011 Tournament of Books long list
• 50 Wonderful Things from 2010
• A cornucopia of Roger Ebert's snarkiest reviews
• Why life begins at 46
• The Guardian Review literary quiz
• Music for Rants 50 Songs of 2010 for streaming or download
• Paste Magazine's 50 Best Songs and 20 Best Cover Songs of 2010

thanksgiving video mix

Not too long ago, someone asked me to make a mix of 20 of my favorite songs. In no particular order, here they are. Happy Thanksgiving!

The White Stripes - Effect & Cause [Live]



Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings - Let Them Knock [Live]

Neko Case - Furnace Room Lullaby [Official Video]

Heavy Trash - Bumble Bee [Live]

Donnie Iris - Ah! Leah [OMG Official Video]

Devotchka - Such a Lovely Thing [Live]

Raphael Saadiq - 100 Yard Dash [Official Video]

The Magnetic Fields - I Wish I Had an Evil Twin

Mike Doughty - Nectarine (Part 2) [Live]

Jeff Buckley - Everybody Here Wants You [Official Video]

Johnny Cash - The Gambler (Kenny Rogers Cover)





Liz Phair - Divorce Song [Live]

M. Ward - Magic Trick

Lucinda Williams - Righteously [Live]





Herman Dune - I Wish That I Could See You Soon [Official Video]





Etta James - You Can Leave Your Hat On





Eels - Hey Man (Now You're Really Living)





The Geraldine Fibbers - Jolene (Dolly Parton Cover)





Cousteau - Last Good Day of the Year [Official Video]





Money Mark - Color of Your Blues [Live]





Gogol Bordello - Start Wearing Purple [Official Video]





Cake - Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps





The Hives - Love in Plaster





Daniel Merriweather - Chainsaw





Tom Waits - Little Trip to Heaven

52 books in 52 weeks

14. Bluets by Maggie Nelson

I love what Maggie Nelson is doing with prose. Bluets doesn't have the macabre power of Jane: A Murder, but it is a beautiful and moving exploration of her relationship to the color blue. The one thing I don't like about the combination of poetry/memoir/aphorism Nelson practices is that I want to bite her style.

15. True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

It's unfortunate that I started here in the Carey canon, because I really could not get into this book. I picked it up as part of an Australian literature immersion around my trip to Adelaide, etc. this summer, and I was not engaged. Ned Kelly is certainly a memorable bushranger, but there was nothing for me to grab on to as a twenty-first century woman living (for now) in Los Angeles.

16. It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be by Paul Arden

I bought this book on a whim at the National Gallery of Victoria. The graphic design grabs you, and then Arden - a British advertising guru - gives you small nuggets of wisdom he acquired on his rise to the top. I read it in one sitting and felt energized, but not for that long.

17. Mission to America by Walter Kirn

My introduction to Kirn's work was his appearance at the Central Library for Lost in the Meritocracy. If you were there, you know the excerpt he read was memorable. (Teaser: there is college humiliation and piano destruction.) So I started this book, which had been on my shelf awhile. Mission to America is enjoyable as a subtle parody of the current state of American spirituality and lack thereof.

18. Dream Stuff: Stories by David Malouf

Unlike Carey's novel, Malouf's short stories gave me a smorgasbord of Australia. I was able to have a quick taste of urban Australia, rural, mid-century, contemporary, adult, child, dark, lyrical...I am very much looking forward to reading more of Malouf, and if you haven't checked him out, it's worth it.

19. Ilustrado by Miguel Sycedo

There are elements of Sycedo's rich, far-reaching novel of the Philippines and the writer's life that are derivative, but he chooses his influences well: Bolaño, Vonnegut, Pynchon...Ilustrado won the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2008, and as a first novel, it's very impressive. There are moments that call out for pruning, but for the most part, it's quite well done.

20. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

If you know anything about me, you know I adore David Mitchell, so I was half heartbroken when I started reading this new novel. I wanted another Cloud Atlas, and this epic history of an eighteenth-century Dutch-inhabited island-ette off the coast of Japan is not very similar at all. But once I got over myself and started reading this novel on its own merits, I longed to escape to Dejima every night before I slept.

21. Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shtyengart

I'm looking forward to reading more Shtyengart. While this novel started to lose me when New York descended into chaos, I was very impressed by his ventriloquism. Both main characters speak - or actually write - in very distinct styles and voices, and I never doubted their authenticity. I'd love to see what Shtyengart could do with characters I really cared about. His portrait of the dystopian near future made me feel ickily anxious.

sunday short stack

"The penalty for success is to be bored by the people who used to snub you." - Nancy Astor

• I would have been in serious trouble if I was required to dance my Ph.D.
• 5 Great Performance Art Hoaxers
• If you're one of the few who still hasn't checked out Arcade Fire's "The Wilderness Downtown," the time is now.
• Kiss Off! 28 Gleeful Breakup Songs (Weeks later, Cee-Lo still compels me to jump up and dance.)
• No relation to the previous bullet...Ten of the Bloodiest Bedtime Stories.
• The Pocket Notebooks of 20 Famous Men
• Arthur reprints a 1975 William Burroughs article on Led Zeppelin.
• The Battery Park City Library has an excellent Mad Men Reading List.
• Tracy Chevalier seems to be suffering some kind of dandruff-related neck pain. Either that or she is one-half of a Siamese twin combo connected at the shoulder.

mid-century los angeles

Check out more Echo Park/Silverlake photos from Paul Furlong's collection.

Check out more Bunker Hill photos from George Mann.

sunday short stack

"Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it." - Mark Twain

• I don't know why, but I really want to see The Last Exorcism. Here, i09 offers some infamous cases of real life possessions.
• Beautiful: 40 Vintage Magazine Covers
• 20 Authors Who Died Under 40
• Paste's 50 Best Albums of the Decade
• Subtitle-O-Matic
• I always thought ballet was sort of sinister: the trailer for Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan
• Top 10 Forgotten Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novels
• When book recommendations go wrong...
• And also from The Guardian, a weird words quiz
• 17 Literary Journals That Might Survive the Internet

the way you play your game ain't fair

et ce n'est pas fini!

(via @nyrbclassics)

sunday short stack

"There are years that ask questions, and years that answer." - Zora Neale Hurston

• Can you judge a book by its cover?
• The 50 Best Fictional Bands
• If you liked If Movie Titles Were Honest... a few weeks ago, you'll love Better Book Titles.
• A Dozen of Literature's Greatest Jerks
• David Mitchell on the internets: Bookworm, Bat Segundo, and The Millions
• This is sort of fascinating: 25 Songs About Outdated Technology
• There are some things English wordsmiths just can't describe.
• Album Covers as IKEA Catalog Pages
• Who knew? 50 Must-See French Horror Films

sunday short stack

"Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit." - Norman Mailer

• On the subject of David Mitchell, here are his six favorite books (although I think it's probably more accurately his six most obscure favorites).
• If Movie Titles Were Honest...
• Creepiosity: Nerve's Guide to the Unintentionally Creepy
• Ten of the Best Nameless Protagonists in Literature
• In development...Six illustrated versions of Blood Meridian
• Jane Austen's Fight Club
• 10 Steamiest Moments in Southern Literature
• Watch Bad Day, a 1986 short film by Exene starring John Doe as “Tripped-out Cowboy Priest.”
• 25 Songs for 25 Cities
• I'm terribly sad I won't be watching Mad Men tonight with millions of other people, so I'll have to settle for this Mad Men inspired reading list.

hero worship

Skylight has been kind enough to post a recording of the reading here.

sunday short stack

"No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one." - Elbert Hubbard

• It's true - Tim Tykwer is adapting Cloud Atlas from a script written with the Wachowski Brothers. Whoa. (And don't miss David Mitchell at Skylight on July 21st!)
• The 10 Most Unconventional Movie Trailers of the Past Decade
• C'mon, everyone was thinking it: "Pregnant Women Are Smug"
• Sex and the City 2 actually wasn't as bad as I feared, but here are 20 Gal-Pal Movies to Watch Instead
• 12 Terrifying Jell-O Recipes
• Just because there hasn't been a short stack since this came out...The New Yorker's 20 Writers Under 40
• How to Use a Semicolon (The Most Feared Punctuation on Earth) and introducing...The Friendly Period
• The 19 Most Hilariously Failed Attempts at Sexy Album Covers

ma's pretty sharp with the cleavers

sunday short stack

"The trouble with being poor is it takes up all your time." - Willem de Kooning

• In honor of Mother's Day: 21 Creepy Babies in TV and Film and...
• ’90s Alternative Kids: Where Are They Now?
• David Mitchell on historical fiction: "...if History is the family tree of Now, a historical novel may illuminate the contemporary world in ways that straight history may not."
• The 20 Most Shocking TV Deaths
• Flannery O'Connor in a bizarre video from 1932 about backwards-walking animals
• Bill Murray reads poetry to construction workers
• Famous Philosophers and How They Were First Discovered
• Paste: 10 Indie Films We're Looking Forward to This Summer
• I'm not be a student anymore, but you may be - 31 Travel Scholarships, Fellowships, and Grants to Fund Your Next Trip Abroad

52 books in 52 weeks

I'm only five books shy of being on target. Not bad...

5. Free: The Future of a Radical Priceby Chris Anderson

My friend often talks about how much the internet loves him because it gives him all this free stuff. Ha ha, I would say, not actually understanding the real explanation. Now, thanks to Chris Anderson and his concise explanation of the multiple "free" models that structure much web commerce, I get it. I know there was some controversy when this book was published, but I don't remember what it was.

6. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin

When I first started reading this short story collection, I was taken aback that it had won so many awards because three of the first four stories have basically the same plot. A pretty, poor girl is taken in by a more wealthy landowner/official who denies/abandons her shortly before his death. It was startling and a little surreal. However, the plots and characters vary much more as the collection continues and no doubt, Mueenuddin is a writer to watch.

7. A Dark Matterby Peter Straub

About once a year, I break from my typical reading material and pick up a popular, recently released horror novel with great hopes for spooking. Last year, I read Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box, which was pretty entertaining. This year, it was Straub and I sadly, snobbily found the whole production a little silly. I was not spooked and thought all the characters - especially this Eel chick - were a bit insufferable.

8. We Have Always Lived in the Castleby Shirley Jackson

Now, this was spooky and great fun. Just look at the cover of this recent edition! Creepy! Jackson's classic tale of these recluse sisters - whose family was taken by arsenic poisoning years before, for which the oldest sister was tried and acquitted - is suspenseful and richly drawn. The narrator is delightfully unreliable. When their cad of a cousin arrives on the scene, all hell breaks loose.

9. The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University by Louis Menand

I'm not sure who the audience is for this book. I would think it would be me, but I felt I was hearing a lot of what I already knew/could guess. So if it was written for a more non-academic audience, I'm just not sure they'd be all that interested. Beyond that, it's a brief, accessible overview of four different aspects of the current university climate.

10. Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life: A Book by and for the Fanatics Among Us (with Bitchin' Soundtrack)by Steve Almond

I reviewed this for the LA Times on April 29th. Check it out here.

11. Just Kidsby Patti Smith

I did not expect to love this book as much as I did. I thought I'd like to support Smith's writing and learn more about Mapplethorpe. I did not suspect that I would not be able to put this book down, reading every evocative detail with a hunger for that time period in New York that I didn't know I had. I certainly did not know I would finish the book sobbing. Beautiful and moving.

12. Fun with Problemsby Robert Stone

I'm still hungover from Stone's latest story collection. It took me about four attempts to get into the title story, but once I got past that, the remaining stories were lively and pleasantly uncomfortable - full of messy drunks causing messes.

13. Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House by Meghan Daum

I reviewed this for the LA Times on May 9th (yes, in the future). Check it out here.

sunday short stack

"The universe will reward you for taking risks on its behalf." - Shakti Gawain

• Aimee Semple McPherson's Arabian castle in Lake Elsinore is for sale.
• 17 Films About Getting in Way Over Your Head in the Big, Bad City
• 1977: Tom Waits makes a boozy appearance on Fernwood Tonight.
• The 50 Best Book People to Follow on Twitter and 40 Bloggers Who Really Count (as opposed to all those other pesky bloggers, but what is Naomi Klein doing under Food?)
• They did not like Roget's Thesaurus in 1854. At all.
• Were the "mad" heroines of literature really sane?
• I promise to be vigilant against these top 20 most annoying reviewer clichés.
• Historians have long concurred in identifying professional authors as the occupational group most prone to habitual tobacco use (with awesome photos).

los angeles festival of books 2010

Another Festival of Books has come and gone...I may have more commentary at some point, but I'm going to let photos and my panel coverage for Jacket Copy do the talking for now.

The first panel I covered on Saturday was Rebooting Culture with Ander Monson, Nicholas Carr, and David Shields, moderated by David Ulin..You can read the coverage here.


That afternoon was Carol Burnett...


And on Sunday, I had the pleasure (ahem) of covering Bret Easton Ellis.