75 books werdfert just starting

i've just started my 75 books, which means i'm doing a fiscal year of sorts, october to october.
i don't have much of a list of books i want to read. i'm interested in modern literature and small presses, so if anyone has any recommendations.

here are some of the books i want to read:

Remember You're a One-Ball by Quentin S Crisp
Richard Yates by Tao Lin
Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler
Frowns Need Friends Too by Sam Pink
The History of Luminous Motion by Scott Bradfield
I am not Jackson Pollock by John Haskell

Welcome to the group!

We have an introductions thread here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/92712 if you would like to come over and introduce yourself!

I welcomed you over there, but welcome here too!

so far, all i've managed to finish is "remember you're a one-ball!. you can read my review on its page. i started luminous motion but it was another book written from the pov of a young boy but with the vocabulary and actual pov of an adult. i am finicky. i am fickle. i need something so delightful i will finish it to the very end. i want to finish a book and feel the melancholy of the limitation of words not to go on and on.

Welcome! I think a number of us - most of us - are wistful in the same way. On the other hand, when something resonates, we expand the limitation of words for ourselves, so that's delightful too.
I must say that I don't know any of your authors from the first post except Q.S. Crisp, whom I may have confused with somebody else. I'm starring your thread so that I can have exposure to new and different. Just what I need!

I read Amelia Gray's Museum of the Weird in about 5 hours. It was a collection of short stories about things that don't really happen, but I'm not sure if that makes them weird. What was weird was her obsession with food. Here is a partial list of things eaten:
pieces of chocolate
human tongue
toes
fish sticks
hair
tomato-cream bisque
prickly pears
packet of sunflower seeds
cottage cheese
banana bread
hair (again)
even more hair
lemon bars
2 goldfish
porterhouse steak
creamed peas
strawberry
warm bread
gelatin
balogna sandwiches
tostadas
king ranch chicken
sloppy joes
a mint
meatloaf
spaghetti and meatballs
pork barbecue and french fries
breakfast tacos
fajitas
onion soup
quesadillas
chicken fried steak
grilled cheese sandwiches
steak and eggs
baked potato
tomato soup
pork chops
cheese crisp
ham and cheese
fish sandwiches
chicken salad
corn dogs
tamale pie
vegetable soup
macaroni
chili
hamburger
tomato
corn chips
yogurt
some more cottage cheese
protein shake
jelly beans
bread crumbs
slices of meat
grilled onions
milkshakes
cheeseburger no lettuce
tater tots
english muffins
mustard
peanuts
animal crackers
crab cake
tuna
summer squash
cinnamon
leaves off a tree
cat food
tiny screws
pages of a book
baking soda
the number 2 from a telephone keypad
love
bread
eggs

#6: That is quite a list - and some strange things get eaten!

book number 3: i am reading richard yates by tao lin. i think i am getting it but i'm not sure. what is it? what am i reading? i like it but why do i like it? is it anything or nothing? if it is nothing, what is it nothing about?

#7: there are also beverages drunk:
chocolate milk
miller high life
orange juice
champagne
coffee
water
milk
gin

#9: At least the things on that list are supposed to be drunk. Some of the things on the 'eaten' list are things that are not supposed to be!

book number 4: Palo Alto: Stories. see my review there. four stars.

book number five was the first book i'd read based on a recommendation here. and guess what? it was really good. the family of pascual duarte was recommended for those who liked camus' the stranger, and i can see the similarities. there is a certain sense of stark predeterminism where the main character is thrust into a series of events that leads to a murder.
i think i did like the stranger just a little bit better.

book number six was i am not jackson pollock by john haskell. i have a review of it on its page. i give it somewhere in the vicinity of four and a half stars.

book number seven was scorch atlas by blake butler.
the book is made to look weathered and worn as if it has survived the apocalypse and the stories themselves are chronicles of that era. all of the stories have the same tone and rhythm, something approaching but never achieving iambic pentameter. there seems to be a flaw in the concept. there is no surviving the apocalypse. and those living through it certainly aren't going to write about it. art is the first thing to go in a crisis. every generation has thought itself as the last, on the brink of destruction. but it certainly feels like we are closer than ever to no recovery. these stories certainly reflect a kind of doomsday bleakness but also, surprisingly, an aching beauty. the hope, if there is any, is not that things will get better, but that pain, destruction and decay are also creative forces.
except that the lulling language devoids itself of meaning over time. so that each added layer subtracts from the whole. the warning is that creativity can be destructive.

Welcome! I am very interested in the books you have listed as none are familiar to me. After a quick look, i am not jackson pollock has me curious. I'm adding it to my TBR list. Thanks!

book number eight was hiding out by jonathan messinger. it's a book of short stories that i had read before but recently obtained and wanted to read again. i feel as if i have a lot of short story collections on my to-read list. these are quirky but readable. they delve into the unusual but not to such a degree that you cannot relate to them. i give the book four and a half stars.

i'm a month in and want to do a quick recap:
1. "remember you're a one-ball!
2. museum of the weird
3. richard yates (i'm actually stuck in the middle of this)
4. palo alto: stories
5. the family of pascual duartes
6. i am not jackson pollock
7. scorch atlas
8. hiding out
i am currently reading:
the maimed
towers of midnight
i don't think there has been any book that i really didn't like. i am still kind of hoping to get introduced to something slightly different from my traditional reading material. until then i have the following books lined up for nov/dec:
daddy's: 24 fictions
the awful possibilities
the instructions
rat girl

I have never heard of any of your upcoming reads, so I will be interested in seeing what you think of them.

i have a bad habit of not finishing books that i don't like. or maybe it's a good habit. i forget how i first heard of the maimed. but when i read the description on the back, i was hesitant. but then i started reading it and it was written in the same stark prose that is typical of post-war european fiction. i liked it for a while. but then it started resembling its back-flap description more and more. that is, the main character had these self-binding character flaws and found himself caught in a strange sexual entrapment which could have easily been avoided if it weren't for certain idiosyncratic foibles. so i stopped reading it.

#19: i have a bad habit of not finishing books that i don't like. or maybe it's a good habit.

I think it is a good habit. Life is too short!

book #9: Rat Girl. I got this book from the Early Reviewers group, and although it wasn't what I expected, I did like it. You can read my review of it on its page.

Nice review. I'll have to track down Rat Girl.

book #10
How do you recommend Towers of Midnight, the thirteenth book of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series? Who would you recommend it to? Those who have read the first 12 books are going to read this one. And those who haven't couldn't possibly understand it without starting from the beginning.
I started reading this series when I was 15. As I got older, my taste in books changed so that it stands out as an oddity in my library. But I continue to read the series because it has pulled me along. I don't ever want to be someone who can only read one kind of book. I like to keep people guessing.
But for any of you who are into this series, I'm sure I could become caught up in discussing the details of what I thought about this book.
I'll probably only do that though if someone is actually interested.

book#11: Daddy's: 24 Fictions by Lyndsay Hunter.
This collection of short stories plunges headlong into aberrant sex, strange relationships and gross bodily functions. I found that some of the time, the need to be shocking overrode the desire to tell a story. So that I wasn't quite buying it. But overall, I did find something of value in these stories. They weren't just messed up for messed-up's sake.
"It's so ugly, but in a very great way," Hunter writes, referring to something specific I won't reveal. But it is equally applicable to her book.

i'm reading the orange eats creeps right now and, as much as i like it and each individual page has some wonderful and vibrant writing on it, i find myself not engaged, being bored, eyes glazing over. there really isn't a story; it's all description. and, if it were about something, it would be what krilanovich calls "hobo vampire junkie sluts." if you've ever been to portland (and maybe other pacific northwest cities where this novel is set), you know who she's modeling these vampires on. they're not indigenous to the northwest but that's where i saw more of them than what made me feel comfortable. teenage homeless dirty vagrant punkish types. hanging around, asking for money, doing drugs, wearing the same clothes, smelling badly. they don't interest me. but the prose keeps me reading. i think maybe it can transcend all this garbage. and sometimes it does. but not often enough. i keep stopping, needing to rest. it is draining me like i was one of the vampire's normal-person victims.

i'd stopped reading richard yates because it started getting on my nerves but i wanted to finish it eventually. so just now i picked it back up and tried to figure out where i had left off. and as i flipped through the book, every part was just like every other part and i remembered how irritating it was and why did i want to finish it? i'm tired and i don't want to read anything i want to read. i feel like reading nothing but i am afraid.

book #12 packing for mars
I wrote a review for this book on the page, but I did want to add one thing here for you.
It's a quote from the book that I won't give the context for. You'll just have to read the book.

"See the funny puppet? Watch his mouth. What's he saying? He's saying, 'Ooooo-aaaah-oooooo.'"

I really need to read Packing for Mars. she's one of my favorites!

book #13 i'm not myself these days
i seem to read a lot of homosexual literature. not because i am homosexual. or because i am not homosexual.
i think what i am attracted to is the struggle of personhood. the books i end up liking are ones that showcase the connection between sexuality and identity.
the title itself suggests a struggle of identity. because josh kilmer-purcell is not only gay, he's a drag queen. and so the concept of knowing oneself when that person is split without being mentally ill is interesting.
he also strives at justifying his and his lover's self-destructive tendencies. he doesn't regret all the drugs, alcohol, sex or their after effects.

#29: he also strives at justifying his and his lover's self-destructive tendencies. he doesn't regret all the drugs, alcohol, sex or their after effects.

I do not think I could deal with a book that justifies those tendencies. In my work I see the aftereffects far too often.

#30: it's really hard to believe him. i'm not an overtly moral person, but it's always been hard for me to believe people who claim to only have a good time if they can't remember it. i've never gotten off on self-destructive vices, but i know a lot of people who have. and they never seem to be as happy as they claim. and that includes the author of this memoir. he wants to be happy and he only knows one way of achieving it, even if it doesn't actually work.

i am reading the instructions by adam levin. it features a precocious ten year old boy. how many books have i read that feature a precocious ten year old boy? i remember being ten and unprecocious, ignorant of anything that was happening in the world outside my world. my world was summer and frogs and throwing a tennis ball at my dog and going to school and things like that. i didn't think about my parents or my teachers or what country i lived in or the environment or the world. you don't read books like that. i guess it's because books are written by adults and adults can't forget all the things they have learned for better or worse.

#31: it's really hard to believe him.

If that is the case, it really makes me call into question how truthfully his 'new' life is represented in his latest book, The Bucolic Plague.

i'm still reading the instructions. i'm doing a sort of real-time review of it.

when the movie A Serious Man by the Cohen brothers came out, one of the questions being bandied about was: "do you have to be jewish to 'get it'?" you did not, but some people did.

you do, however, have to be jewish to get the instructions. that's instruction #1.

i have some opinions about this book so far, but i don't know if i should share them. religion is a touchy subject.

the main character is said not to be the messiah. he does violence in the name of judaism. the other messiah, the one that started the rock band Christianity, was a pacifist. and look what good that did him.

there are other, nonjewish things occurring. if you are not jewish, you can read those things. like the nonmessiah has a crush on a girl. it's not a jewish crush. you can read about that.

"Bondage is rules you are too scared to break."

i have not been reading the instructions at work. it is against the rules to read at work, therefore i am in bondage.
gurion, the precocious ten-year-old protagonist, makes a distinction between the rules and the law. the rules are to be broken. the law (torah) is to be obeyed. jesus also made this distinction. i'm not sure if he ever came out and advised the breakage of rules but he did show by his actions that rules are interpretations of law and can therefore be broken if the rules do not adhere to the spirit of the law.
it is not against the law (by any sense of the word) for me to read at work. but it is against the rules. should i break this rule if it means i could lose my job?
the instructions might claim yes. it may be necessary to sacrifice a great many things to obey the law rather than the rules.
but does the law command me to read at work?
is my not reading at work obeying a rule at the cost of breaking the law?
i'm not sure. the instructions have not elucidated this point.

I am enjoying your posts about the Levin book. I cannot wait to see what you think of it once you are done.

edited for typo

chapter 4 of the instructions: Story of Stories.
gurion is given the assignment to write a two-page short story after having read a philip roth novel. he is 9 years old.
instead, he writes a 45-page scripture.
the scripture is his genesis story. it includes both his birth and the meeting of his parents, among other things. what those things have to do with philip roth, i'm not sure. i've only ever read portnoy's complaint, and, although there is mention of masturbation in the prelude to gurion's story, it does not play a role in the feature.
anyone can feel free to disagree with me, but it seems that the jewish story-telling tradition is more oral than literary. yes, there have been jewish writers (obviously), but they excel because they are written in dialogue, like this story of stories. it is not a story, really, but a transcription of oral tradition. jewish stories are meant to be told, not read. or am i wrong?

#37: jewish stories are meant to be told, not read.

Perhaps it would depend on the story?

in chapter 5 of the instructions, gurion describes the cage, where troubled students, he among them, are given some equivalent of the old penitentiary-style discipline.
the students are each put into their own cubicle where they must face forward, make no noise, and basically subject themselves to the mercy of the teachers. i wasn't sure about how teaching is accomplished. the cubicles are facing the wall, away from the other students and the teachers.
gurion writes about finding chinks in the rules, how between each rule there is a loophole. and when the loophole is filled by a new rule, there exists now two chinks. the chinks are smaller, but if there is an ever-increasing number of chinks, it is possible to decay the entire construct.
at the end of this chapter, gurion mentions the kurt vonnegut story, "harrison bergeron," in which people of the future are made equal by giving handicaps to favored people. so that strong people must carry weights and beautiful people must wear masks.
at the end of the story, harrison bergeron is shot because he fails to submit to his handicaps.
i imagine that adam levin wants us to make some kind of connection between gurion who is being handicapped and harrison bergeron.

The Awful Possibilities by Christian TeBordo

As a writer, I'm interested in experimentation and forging new ideas in literature. There are a few things I like to do in my stories specifically to deal with current trends or problems. TeBordo has already done them for me and better.

1. Imprecision of language
Language seems to be saturated with a more and more imprecise lexicon, a sort of dumbing down where words become devalued and meaningless. But it is possible through word choice and context to actually use imprecision as a means of expansion. So that a word that once meant little or nothing can mean anything.
"It was a passive loss, as opposed to an active one. He didn't drop something on the ground or leave it beneath a discarded newspaper in a restaurant or even never have something at all. Someone had taken something of his against his will. The man who was walking away." ("Took and Lost")
I like to use pronouns in preference to names because "he" or "she" could be anyone, could be you. And TeBordo goes even further, sometimes referring to a person as "it."
2. Fragmentation
I don't know TeBordo's motives, but I have been interested in using fragments and improper grammar for a couple of reasons.
a. With the prevalence of such tools as spell check and grammar check, using fragments indicates intention. By creating new sentences, the writer refuses to lean on such props.
b. Another reason is the intentional breaking of a rule. Who says every sentence needs to sound exactly the same? Why should we obey microsoft's conceptions of proper grammar? You know what? Screw microsoft and MLA and rules.
c. "Correct English is not usually the strongest kind of English." -The Instructions
"I asked him if he was behind the curtain. I asked him if he was decent. He didn't answer so I pulled the curtain open with my free hand and looked in. To check on the ice. And the boy because I was the leader of me and him." (The Champion of Forgetting")
3. Non Sequitur
There is only one reason to use a non sequitur: to introduce disorder and upset a reader's expectations. And to be funny.
"'I should be finding my way back to my apartment where my wife is awaiting me being patient,' I say. 'Besides, there's a doormat on the first floor embroidered with dolphins frolicking in a moonlit sea.'" ("Three Denials")

"You can only try to be in control, and fail to control -- that's what out of control is, a kind of failure." the instructions

lately i've been thinking about being out of control:
you're life has a path and you're not on it.

some more thoughts regarding the instructions.

so, adam levin is 30-something right? and so when he writes in the voices of 10-year-olds, how hard is it to make them sound smart? but what i want to know is why is every 10-year-old precocious? why do they all speak with 30-something-year-old voices?
i know i've mentioned this before, the over-abundance of precocious kid stories. but i mean, really, it's not just gurion. it goes on and on quotes within quotes and not a single authentically 10-year-old-sounding kid in the bunch.
today's passage was on the potentiality of messiahs as written in detention. and i guess i get it. levin is trying to cram an awful lot of information in a short amount of time (ie: the chronology of plot A). but i feel that at some point the authenticity is going to become compromised. i'm going to stop buying it.

i'm starting to be won over by gurion in the instructions. he is lulling me with the cadence of his vernacular.
but i kinda wish there wasn't that mushy love story. he's ten. and, yes, he's a very special boy who even Philip Roth doesn't believe is a child. but i'm just not ready to be reading about prepubescent frenching.
but, to get back to the positives, there is something about the way gurion (well, adam levin, obviously) writes that is calming. you want to like him. you want his enemies to have their bones pulverized, if you can imagine him actually having enemies.

i don't know what is happening anymore in the instructions. there are promises being held out but i don't see them being fulfilled. i've crossed over into the 2nd part: "The Gurionic War." and, no, there is no actual war like one might expect upon having read its title in the table of contents. but it is the kind of war you might expect having read the first half of the book. it is a daily and ordinary war. i still want to know what happens. i just wish it wasn't taking so long to tell it.

"Like they're already into the babe-mayses. This girl you mentioned, for example... [these scholars are] convinced there's some big story behind it, how you fell in love with her, and that it has to do with the new scripture. ... They're not just stories, but parables or allegories about the diaspora and persecution or the diaspora and salvation or a coded set of further instructions, like a second Ulpan, wherein this girl you love is the Land of Israel or Torah or maybe Adonai Himself, and this Aptakisic [Gurion's school] the world or the United States or the whole Middle East, and this Cage the Canaanites or the Romans or the law of this land..." from the instructions
would adam levin do that to us? come right out and tell us what this story is about, spell it out like that, granted in a sort of under-handed way? he might, but i don't think so. or at least, i'd hope not. i mean, if you can't get your message across with 1030 pages, should you really be chalking it on the wall?

i'm getting to a point in the instructions where i don't want to tell what's happening. because it might be a spoiler. things are happening, though.

i have four pages left of the instructions, but i can't read them.
paradoxical undressing occurs when people are suffering from hypothermia. something goes cockeye in the brain and the victim feels overbearingly hot to the extent that he/she/it disrobes.
something similar happens to me at the end of a novel.
towards the end of the novel, when the denouement is being revealed, i feel myself compulsively urged to quickly swallow the last bits of writing whole.
my brain goes cockeye, seeing the end in sight but not being able to do the thing it wants to do and read those last bits of pages. i become paralyzed.
or, to go back to the original metaphor, i strip myself of the tools i need to survive i.e.: finish the book.

i finished the instructions.
"The first time you finish any truly great book that isn't the Torah, you remember the end the best," adam levin writes of his own book. he then compares it to the catcher in the rye. and how towards the end of that book you don't know how to read Mr. Antolini's petting of Holden's head. "...eventually you come to see that the saddest option is the one J.D. Salinger exercised: the one that resists disambiguation."
and maybe for that reason, levin creates an ending that is impossible to disambiguate.

on the whole, i liked the instructions. i thought it was interesting and well-written in parts. i didn't think it was entirely necessary. i think it could have probably done what it aimed to do in half the space. but i recommend it.