Written on the Body
This is a love story full of just the right amount of agony and insight. The narrator (whose gender is never specified) is in love with a married woman. S/he sums up the situation when love goes wrong by saying, " Wallowing is sex for depressives". Jeanette Winterson has done the sacred: put into words things that I have felt but never knew how to say. When you find an author who can do this, you are eternally grateful. If you read this book, which I suggest you do, get ready to be led down a million little paths on the way to the end of the story. She will get there eventually, but meanwhile, sit back and enjoy her witty and thought-provoking tangents.
Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love." With this opening line begins a love story that spans fifty-one years. Garcia-Marquez weaves his story with humor, history, tragedy, and magic. His details take you away to a land of jasmine, hammocks, and cafe con leche.
Naked
I've read Naked three times in it's entirety. I've also read individual chapters so often that I have lost count. This is the perfect read-aloud book!!! If you want to make your friends laugh until their guts hurt, then this is the book. Naked is classified as biography, but the absurdity of it all keeps making you turn to the jacket time and again just to make sure you remembered right. So this really happened? Talk about wing-nuts and eccentrics, whoa Nelly, these pages are full of them. In the first thirty pages, David is reminiscing about his "plauge of tics," a series of obessive/compulsive acts that he repeated more often than he inhaled. This behavior lasts until college, when he repalces it with cigarettes and drugs. If you thought you were odd, or that your family was weird...check this out.
Still Life with Woodpecker
Tom Robbins
Still Life with Woodpecker is sort of a love sotry that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders. It also deals with "the problem of redheads." (from the book's back cover). Christ, I don't think I can sum it up better than that. This also gives you a glimpse into Robbins' writing style. He is the king of analogies...I have seen him drag one on for pages, so long you forget what the two things he is comparing are. He is entertaining, quirky, hysterical, and downright smart. "There is, however, a similarity between juggling and composing on the typewriter. The trick is, when you spill something, make it look like part of the act." -- Tom Robbins.
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water
Michael Dorris
If I was asked to give someone a book that changed the way I look at life, this would be my pick. A story about the lives of a mother, daughter, and grandmother, it leaves you grabbing for the phone to call your mother and say, "I understand." The story starts in the present, told by the daughter, then works it way back through the mother, then the grandmother. In the beginning I sympathized with the daughter, Rayona, but hated the mother and grandmother. Then I read the mother's story and began to understand why she made the choices she did. I then hated the grandmother. SWITCH. It's the grandmother's turn, and in part three it all become clear. We are all a part of our whole family's history. This book taught me to forgive, to realize that my parents have a larger story then I could ever know.
Mostly True Stories
Brian Andreas
Rad line drawings and short but monumental stories! When I say short, I mean one sentence. The things he says sound like the genious that comes from young children's mouths. This is another great read-aloud book. Or you could photocopy a particularly moving page and make a card for somebody. Imagine simple figures drawn with a narrow pen, know but next to it text written in old-style typewriter font, but all uneven and out of sorts. Or hell, better yet, go to his site and check him out. storypeople.com
"She left pieces of her life behind her everywhere she went. It's easier to feel the sunlight without them, she said."
"There are things you do because they feel right & they may make no sense & they may make no money & it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other & to eat each other's cooking & say it was good."
This and so many more great thoughts are just sitting there waiting for you to read them.
Collected Poems
Octavio Paz
Last night
in your bed
we were three
the moon you & me
-- Octavio Paz
I like his short poems best...ones like this one. He does have a habit of going off and babbling for too many pages. However, even his ten-page poems have beautiful moments that leave you gasping in awe. He is one of the quintessential Latino poets. His poems are magical and comforting in their repetition of theme and language. He makes me feel like I am in love, even if I am loverless.
A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole
John Toole's novel was submitted to the publisher by his mother after he was dead. She somehow got his number and persuaded him to read her dead son's manuscript. This couldn't have been an easy task, especially considering it weighs in at 500 pages. Anyway...somehow it works, and boy are we lucky. Confederacy of Dunces will linger with you forever. The main character is simply unforgettable. Ignatius J. Reilly is an obese, flatulant freak who thinks he is the worlds greatest genius. He works selling hotdogs, starts a riot in a factory, lives with his mother, wears a green hunting cap, and is a hysterical pain in the ass that you thank God you'll never have to meet. Enter into his world of delusional grandeur and laugh harder than seems humanly possible.
Bastard Out of Carolina
Dorothy Allison
A strongly autobiographical novel about a young girl growing up in South Carolina. Abuse, poverty, depression, and survival are the essence of this book. Depressing? Yup, you betcha...but it is well worth it. I cried reading and think it might do the same to you.
Dreaming of Babylon
Richard Brautigan
C. Card is the cheapest private eye available and he's worth every penny. This off-beat detective story takes place in San Francisco in 1942. It's filled with all the necessary noir details, but comes alive with Brautigan's brilliant poetic style. Humorous, smart, and entertaining. I'd say it's an all-around good read.