45.

I am going to attempt to digest 45 books this year, as foolishly made public on Goodreads. This is good, though, as dealing with failure builds character. I routinely hit inert patches in my reading, as sometimes it's hard to find a minute to relax. And sometimes it's hard, in minutes of relaxation, to not play Call of Duty or otherwise stare into space, noodling on the guitar and watching it snow and wondering if noon is too early for a glass of whiskey.

What time is it anyway?

[glances at stove]

I suppose I could've just looked at the desktop. Maybe I'll write a screenplay. This is a good start, right?

[A MAN is seated at a table. He turns and furtively glances at the stove.]

I read online today that a hacker somewhere hacked into a person's refrigerator and used it as part of a botnet. I'll refrain from wondering why a refrigerator needs internet connectivity and instead lay claim to the idea of sentient appliances. YOU HEAR ME, INTERNET? MINE. If I see a Tom Cruise vehicle next year about sentient appliances-- actually I think this is already a movie. Pulse? I'll look it up.

[A MAN furtively searches for a plot summary of the movie "Pulse"]

"An intelligent pulse of electricity is moving from house to house. It terrorizes the occupants by taking control of the appliances..." Okay, so, similar. I wonder why I remember this movie, I've never seen it. One of those video store memories that gets lodged into your brain as a kid-- like the cover of "Earth Girls are Easy," a masterpiece in the form, obviously.

Martone.

Michael Martone by Michael Martone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A game of hide and seek where the reader is "it," and where Michael Martone chooses the most whimsical of hiding places. I'm sure there is truth here beyond that which is philosophical, but it hardly matters. Even when the author spins out such ludicrously banal biographical notes as the one that recounts an abridged history of ex-wives, ex-pets, and the accompanying oddball living arrangements (such as having resided for a time with his second wife in a remodeled congregational church), only to wind up an amateur archaeologist on the slopes of Vesuvius-- all this and more in roughly two pages-- Martone's fictional biographies are somehow warm and earthbound. For all its inventions and disguises, this collection of vignettes is never unduly fantastic. Even when Martone transforms into a giant insect in a riff on Kafka, the result is very human.

My first (literal?) foray into the author.

View all my reviews

Save the Hips!

Hello internet, I'd like to invite you to save this doggie's hips.

Her name is Ava, and she has severe hip dysplasia. That's an expensive surgery and the owners are trying to raise money to get her taken care of. And it's the holidays. AND LOOK AT HER FACE.

Please help if you can.

TGIFSGRSFTRG!

Thank God It's Friday So Go Read Some Fiction That's Really Good.

Death of the Superman by Melanie Griffin @ New Dead Families-- I'd like to see this as a graphic novel, illustrated by Frank Miller/Klaus Janson:

"Betty Page disappeared behind a three-quarters-height wall reinforced with battlements of stacked books. Hers was the only other cubicle lit up at this point in the work cycle, but even the dormant desks looked like spillover from half a dozen uniquely stuffed minds. All except mine—Artie’s—a flat desert of public school wood. I looped my voice recorder’s strap over my neck and pressed the red button as I went out to fill the void."

WHERE IS MY GOVERNMENT, AND OTHER POEMS.

Summer is over. So is September. What gives?

The esteemed Gordon Highland has a collection of shorts coming out soon, called Submission Windows-- here's the link: http://gordonhighland.com/words/short/

I've been poking around "The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis." I started it while sitting on the beach a couple of years ago-- it's not really a beach book, you know? And so I got distracted. Know what other book I took to the beach that year? "Naked Lunch." Didn't get too far into that one either. I don't know why I just didn't take a book on French law, you know? Something light and engaging.

The following year I took Steinbeck's "The Pearl," which was an excellent beach book-- easily consumable in one afternoon, and not too heavy. Once that was I finished, I read most of "Things Fall Apart." That was a good summer of beach reading.

But "Naked Lunch"-- I don't know. I mean I'll probably read it someday, but not on the beach.

Anyway, why am I talking about the beach? Because it's October and I have to believe that in spite of the pox that is this infernal GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN that beaches and human rapture still exist out there somewhere beyond this veil of uncertainty; I have to believe there is a land where humans can be free to visit national monuments and observe Mei Xiang the panda and her baby via the internet, as is our God-given right to do.

By the way, here's what you get when you attempt to visit the NASA website:

Due to the lapse in federal government funding, this website is not available.
We sincerely regret this inconvenience.

For information about available government services, visit USA.gov.

Why do you think that is? Was NASA seriously paying minute-to-minute on their internet domain, or are they just being prickly? They could at least put up a picture of some stars and have a MIDI playing "Dream  Weaver."

6/22 - 7/22 is up at Gone Lawn.

I've got a new one now live over at Gone Lawn #11. Read! My thanks to guest-editor-possibly-now-permanent-fixture, the mighty Yarrow Paisely.

Gone Lawn # 11

Blueprints.

If you've been at all thinking about reading Ryan Boudinot's "Blueprints of the Afterlife," I suggest you get to that immediately. What an insane wonder. What a hilarious misery. What an endlessly twisty rabbit hole.

Some of the elements of the book didn't resolve themselves fully in terms of the narrative-- as promised, I didn't care. They were evocative of the whole. They needed to be there. I would talk about them so as not to be cryptic, but that would be unfair to prospective readers.

It's the kind of book that's been in my head for days after finishing. I'm eager to read it again.