Jeff's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 17 Jul 2024 13:45:37 -0700 60 Jeff's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The boy who set the fire & other stories]]> 1195712 123 Paul Bowles 087685174X Jeff 5 4.31 1975 The boy who set the fire & other stories
author: Paul Bowles
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1975
rating: 5
read at: 2019/09/25
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves:
review:
The stories in this book have endings. And sometimes those endings matter. I enjoyed the endings, amongst other details.
]]> A Gate at the Stairs 7812011
As the United States begins gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the Midwestern daughter of a gentleman hill farmer—his “Keltjin potatoes� are justifiably famous—has come to a university town as a college student, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir.

Between semesters, she takes a job as a part-time nanny.

The family she works for seems both mysterious and glamorous to her, and although Tassie had once found children boring, she comes to care for, and to protect, their newly adopted little girl as her own.

As the year unfolds and she is drawn deeper into each of these lives, her own life back home becomes ever more alien to her: her parents are frailer; her brother, aimless and lost in high school, contemplates joining the military. Tassie finds herself becoming more and more the stranger she felt herself to be, and as life and love unravel dramatically, even shockingly, she is forever changed.]]> 336 Lorrie Moore 0375708464 Jeff 4 2.95 2009 A Gate at the Stairs
author: Lorrie Moore
name: Jeff
average rating: 2.95
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2018/03/27
date added: 2024/06/29
shelves:
review:
Did any of you actually read this? I read it. Glad I did. What time is it? Jeez, I should head to bed. You guys have a good one. We’ll talk soon.
]]> <![CDATA[Adrienne Rich's Poetry: Texts of the Poems; The Poet on Her Work; Reviews and Criticism (Norton Critical Edition)]]> 262467 215 Adrienne Rich 0393092410 Jeff 5 4.05 1975 Adrienne Rich's Poetry: Texts of the Poems; The Poet on Her Work; Reviews and Criticism (Norton Critical Edition)
author: Adrienne Rich
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1975
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]> 17125 The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most extraordinary literary documents to have emerged from the Soviet Union and confirms Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dosotevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy"--Harrison Salisbury

This unexpurgated 1991 translation by H. T. Willetts is the only authorized edition available, and fully captures the power and beauty of the original Russian.]]> 182 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Jeff 4 3.98 1962 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/03/15
shelves:
review:

]]> Alien Hearts 1782012
Richard Howard’s new English translation of this complex and brooding novel—the first in more than a hundred years—reveals the final, unexpected flowering of a great French realist’s art.]]> 177 Guy de Maupassant 1590172604 Jeff 3 3.82 1890 Alien Hearts
author: Guy de Maupassant
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1890
rating: 3
read at: 2015/09/08
date added: 2023/07/29
shelves:
review:

]]> The Bridge 75495 The Bridge is Crane's major work. "Very roughly," he wrote a friend, "it concerns a mystical synthesis of 'America.' . . . The initial impulses of 'our people' will have to be gathered up toward the climax of the bridge, symbol of our constructive future, our unique identity."]]> 76 Hart Crane 0871402254 Jeff 4 4.11 1930 The Bridge
author: Hart Crane
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1930
rating: 4
read at: 2019/09/30
date added: 2023/07/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Selected Poems 1298073 115 Randall Jarrell 0374530882 Jeff 3
I love what this man did.]]> 4.04 1963 Selected Poems
author: Randall Jarrell
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1963
rating: 3
read at: 2004/08/01
date added: 2023/07/04
shelves:
review:
Greensboro, what.

I love what this man did.
]]> Book of Reincarnation 17734346
Combining Chinese classicism with modern ideas, Buddhist concepts, and metaphors with subjects associated with the Taiwanese claim to their native soil, Hsu is one of the most noted of contemporary Taiwan writers. This book of poetry, his first collection in English, reveals the effectiveness of his work.
Hsu Hui-chih was born in Taoyuan, Taiwan, in 1966. To date he has published five collections of poetry, among them _Sunlight Beehive_, _A Formosan Clan_ and _Longing for the Ocean_. He has won numerous awards and prizes and is chief editor of the Literary Supplement to 'The Liberty Times' in Taiwan.]]> 64 Hsu Hui-Chih Jeff 4 3.50 2002 Book of Reincarnation
author: Hsu Hui-Chih
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/05/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Barabbas 12890
Translated from the Swedish by Alan Blair]]> 144 Pär Lagerkvist 067972544X Jeff 5 3.87 1946 Barabbas
author: Pär Lagerkvist
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1946
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/05/29
shelves:
review:
Barabbas was kind of a dick, don’t @ me.
]]> <![CDATA[Zone: Selected Poems (NYRB Poets)]]> 25430740 Zone is the fruit of poet-translator Ron Padgett’s fifty-year engagement with the work of France’s greatest modern poet. This bilingual edition of Apollinaire’s poetry represents the full range of his achievement from traditional lyric verse to the pathbreaking visual poems he called calligrams, from often-anthologized classics to hitherto-untranslated gems, from poems of cosmic breadth to a poem about his shoes. Including an introduction by the distinguished scholar Peter Read, helpful endnotes, a preface, and an annotated bibliography by Padgett, this new edition of Apollinaire stands out not only for its compact and judicious selection of the essential poems but also as the work of an important American poet. The Washington Post has said, “No praise can be too high for Ron Padgett’s translations.”]]> 251 Guillaume Apollinaire 1590179242 Jeff 4 4.17 1986 Zone: Selected Poems (NYRB Poets)
author: Guillaume Apollinaire
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1986
rating: 4
read at: 2019/06/02
date added: 2022/04/13
shelves:
review:
Buncha poems if that is your thing. It’s my thing.
]]> <![CDATA[My Village: Selected Poems, 1966-2014]]> 60397715 180 Wu Sheng 1938890795 Jeff 5 5.00 My Village: Selected Poems, 1966-2014
author: Wu Sheng
name: Jeff
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/02/21
shelves:
review:
I liked all the poems, which is a really good start to liking a poetry title.
]]> Graves Registry 3231025 216 Keith Wilson 094443942X Jeff 5 3.64 Graves Registry
author: Keith Wilson
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.64
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/10/08
shelves:
review:
A masterclass on pacing or maybe I just really like this particular pace? Let’s let your pets decide.
]]> Bartleby and Benito Cereno 24694 "Bartleby" (also known as "Bartleby the Scrivener") is an intriguing moral allegory set in the business world of mid-19th-century New York. A strange, enigmatic man employed as a clerk in a legal office, Bartleby forces his employer to come to grips with the most basic questions of human responsibility, and haunts the latter's conscience, even after Bartleby's dismissal.
"Benito Cereno," considered one of Melville's best short stories, deals with a bloody slave revolt on a Spanish vessel. A splendid parable of man's struggle against the forces of evil, the carefully developed and mysteriously guarded plot builds to a dramatic climax while revealing the horror and depravity of which man is capable.
Reprinted here from standard texts in a finely made, yet inexpensive new edition, these stories offer the general reader and students of Melville and American literature sterling examples of a literary giant at his story-telling best.
--back cover]]> 104 Herman Melville 0486264734 Jeff 4
One of my favorite stories. Unbelievably perfect.]]> 3.78 Bartleby and Benito Cereno
author: Herman Melville
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.78
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2002/04/01
date added: 2021/08/11
shelves:
review:
Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity!

One of my favorite stories. Unbelievably perfect.
]]> Disgrace 409449 Man Booker Prize, Fiction, 1999

Set in post-apartheid South Africa, Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee's searing novel tells the story of David Lurie, a twice divorced 52-year-old professor of communications and Romantic Poetry at Cape Technical University.

Lurie believes he has created a comfortable, if somewhat passionless, life for himself. He lives within his financial and emotional means. Though his position at the university has been reduced, he teaches his classes dutifully; and while age has diminished his attractiveness, weekly visits to a prostitute satisfy his sexual needs. He considers himself happy. But when Lurie seduces one of his students, he sets in motion a chain of events that will shatter his complacency and leave him utterly disgraced.

Lurie pursues his relationship with the young Melanie - whom he describes as having hips "as slim as a 12-year-old's" - obsessively and narcissistically, ignoring, on one occasion, her wish not to have sex. When Melanie and her father lodge a complaint against him, Lurie is brought before an academic committee where he admits he is guilty of all the charges but refuses to express any repentance for his acts. In the furor of the scandal, jeered at by students, threatened by Melanie's boyfriend, ridiculed by his ex-wife, Lurie is forced to resign and flees Cape Town for his daughter Lucy's small holding in the country.

Written with the austere clarity that has made J. M. Coetzee the winner of two Booker Prizes, Disgrace explores the downfall of one man and dramatizes, with unforgettable, at times almost unbearable, vividness the plight of a country caught in the chaotic aftermath of centuries of racial oppression.]]> 220 J.M. Coetzee Jeff 3 3.81 1999 Disgrace
author: J.M. Coetzee
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at: 2003/09/01
date added: 2021/07/14
shelves:
review:
This is a great book that I should reread. Once I do that, it will garner that fourth star I wanted to give it in the first place.
]]> 33 Revolutions 29657542
Our hero separates from his wife and now spends much of his time in the company of his Russian neighbor, from whom he discovers the pleasures of reading. The books he reads gradually open his eyes to the incongruity between party slogans and the gray oppressive reality that surrounds him: the office routine; the daily complaints of his colleagues about problems big and small; his own obsessive thoughts which circulate like a broken record. Every day he photographs the spontaneous eruptions of dissent on the streets and witnesses the sad spectacle of young people crowding onto makeshift rafts and leaving the island. Every night he suffers from Kafkaesque nightmares in which he is arrested and tried for unknown crimes. His disappointment and delusion grow until a day comes when he declares his unwillingness to become an informer, and his real troubles begin.

33 Revolutions is a candid and moving story about the disappointments of a generation that believed in the ideals of the Castro Revolution. it is a unique look into the lives of ordinary people in Cuba over the past five decades and a stylish work of fiction about a young man's awakening.]]> 128 Canek Sánchez Guevara 1609453484 Jeff 3 3.55 2016 33 Revolutions
author: Canek Sánchez Guevara
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/07/09
shelves:
review:

]]> War and Peace 35222261 War and Peace broadly focuses on Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman who intrigues both men.

As Napoleon's army invades, Tolstoy brilliantly follows characters from diverse backgrounds—peasants and nobility, civilians and soldiers—as they struggle with the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture. And as the novel progresses, these characters transcend their specificity, becoming some of the most moving—and human—figures in world literature.]]> 1275 Leo Tolstoy Jeff 0 to-read 4.60 1869 War and Peace
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.60
book published: 1869
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Incredible Voyage: A Personal Odyssey]]> 24678
With a singleness of purpose as ferocious as any hazard he encountered, Tristan Jones would not give up—even after dodging snipers on the Red Sea, capsizing off the Cape of Good Hope, starving in the Amazon, struggling for 3,000 miles against the mightiest sea current in the world, and hauling his boat over the rugged Andes three miles above sea level to find at last the legendary Island of the Sun. And beyond lay the most awesome challenge of the tortuous trek through 6,000 miles of uncharted rivers to find his way back to the ocean.]]> 410 Tristan Jones 0924486902 Jeff 0 to-read 4.17 1977 The Incredible Voyage: A Personal Odyssey
author: Tristan Jones
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> BASS 1998 55659564 52 Karen Marron 1938900359 Jeff 5 5.00 BASS 1998
author: Karen Marron
name: Jeff
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2021/03/14
date added: 2021/03/14
shelves:
review:
My favorite part of this book is how much I liked it.
]]> First and Last Words: Poems 13790627
The watchman keeps his vigil on the roof
Of the ruining house. This long year,
Stretched out on his belly like a hound,
He has awaited the semaphore
Blaze, awaited proof
Of the victory that shall pull down
A proud and bitter family. In rain
Or cold starshine, gripping the eave,
He has searched the hard horizon for a sign.

Still other poems are appreciations of music or the visual arts, as in “My Hand Placed on a Rubens Drawing�:

The ages work toward mastery
Of a single gesture. A torso’s twist,
The revelation of a thigh,
White stone corded in a

Fragments that might still add up
To compose a figure of the perfected soul
As it releases from the grip
Of vision that burned to draw it whole.

All of the poems in First and Last Words are marked by a thoughtful use of the voice and a careful attention to language. They confirm Fred Chappell’s status as one of our very finest living poets.]]> 64 Fred Chappell 0807114871 Jeff 4 4.00 1988 First and Last Words: Poems
author: Fred Chappell
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/02/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Eternal Moment: Selected Poems]]> 2588892 72 Sándor Weöres 0856461865 Jeff 5 4.32 1988 Eternal Moment: Selected Poems
author: Sándor Weöres
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1988
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/02/13
shelves:
review:
A lot more of this made sense than I thought it would.
]]> Governing by Debt 24783911
In Governing by Debt, Lazzarato confronts a wide range of thinkers—from Félix Guattari and Michel Foucault to David Graeber and Carl Schmitt—and draws on examples from the United States and Europe to argue that it is time that we unite in a collective refusal of this most dire status quo.]]> 278 Maurizio Lazzarato 1584351632 Jeff 2 3.74 2015 Governing by Debt
author: Maurizio Lazzarato
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2019/08/11
date added: 2020/11/24
shelves:
review:

]]> News of the World - Poems 8769722 84 Philip Levine 0375711902 Jeff 0 to-read 4.29 2009 News of the World - Poems
author: Philip Levine
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2020/04/07
date added: 2020/11/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music]]> 283211 Book by Kofsky, Frank 280 Frank Kofsky 0873481496 Jeff 0 currently-reading 2.80 1970 Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music
author: Frank Kofsky
name: Jeff
average rating: 2.80
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/11/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Flight to Canada 166335 Dysaethesia Aethipica (a term coined in the nineteenth century for the disease that makes Negroes run away) escape from Virginia. Not satisfied with leaving slavery halfway, one of the trio has vowed to go the whole distance to Canada; his master, Arthur Swille, determined to recover his property, pursues, hot on Raven Quickskill's trail.

With his myth-bending ingenuity, Reed merges history, fantasy, political reality, and high comedy as he parodies the fugitive slave narrative: the slave-poet Quickskill flees to Canada on a nonstop jumbo jet; Abe Lincoln waltzes through slave quarters to the tune of "Hello Dolly"; the plantation mistress lies in bed watching the Beecher Hour on TV. Flight to Canada's preposterous episodes leap out from the pages of history to reveal a keen sense of America past and present.]]> 179 Ishmael Reed 0684847507 Jeff 4 3.69 1976 Flight to Canada
author: Ishmael Reed
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1976
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/11/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blues People: Negro Music in White America]]> 17595 256 Amiri Baraka 068818474X Jeff 5 4.15 1963 Blues People: Negro Music in White America
author: Amiri Baraka
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1963
rating: 5
read at: 2020/11/22
date added: 2020/11/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blood of the Quill: Selected Poetry from Kosova (Green Integer)]]> 3012143 259 Azem Shkreli 1933382910 Jeff 0 4.50 2007 Blood of the Quill: Selected Poetry from Kosova (Green Integer)
author: Azem Shkreli
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/22
shelves:
review:

]]> The Country of Marriage 227302 53 Wendell Berry 0156226979 Jeff 4 4.37 1973 The Country of Marriage
author: Wendell Berry
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1973
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/10/22
shelves:
review:

]]> On Balance 38888138 0 Charlotte Shane 0997044446 Jeff 3 4.00 On Balance
author: Charlotte Shane
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2019/11/09
date added: 2020/10/11
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Gigantic Beard that Was Evil]]> 16054793 The job of the skin is to keep things in.

On the buttoned-down island of Here, all is well. By which we mean: orderly, neat, contained and, moreover, beardless.

Or at least it is until one famous day, when Dave, bald but for a single hair, finds himself assailed by a terrifying, unstoppable... monster*!

Where did it come from? How should the islanders deal with it? And what, most importantly, are they going to do with Dave?

The first book from a new leading light of UK comics, The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil is an off-beat fable worthy of Roald Dahl. It is about life, death and the meaning of beards.

(*We mean a gigantic beard, basically.)]]> 240 Stephen Collins 0224096281 Jeff 5 4.04 2013 The Gigantic Beard that Was Evil
author: Stephen Collins
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/05/26
shelves:
review:

]]> The Night in Question 251374
In short, fiction of dazzling emotional range and absolute authority.]]> 206 Tobias Wolff 0679402187 Jeff 5 4.18 1995 The Night in Question
author: Tobias Wolff
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/04/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth]]> 1271940 112 Adrienne Rich 0393065650 Jeff 5 3.72 2007 Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth
author: Adrienne Rich
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/04/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Creating alternative futures: The end of economics]]> 15277368 Hazel Henderson 0399504230 Jeff 0 currently-reading 0.0 1978 Creating alternative futures: The end of economics
author: Hazel Henderson
name: Jeff
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/11
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Dien Cai Dau 978917 72 Yusef Komunyakaa 0819511641 Jeff 5 4.34 1988 Dien Cai Dau
author: Yusef Komunyakaa
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1988
rating: 5
read at: 2020/04/09
date added: 2020/04/09
shelves:
review:
LOL people gave this one star. Imagine cowardice.
]]> <![CDATA[Distance from Loved Ones (Wesleyan Poetry Series)]]> 1459315 Tate, James James Tate 0819521892 Jeff 0 0.0 1990 Distance from Loved Ones (Wesleyan Poetry Series)
author: James Tate
name: Jeff
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/07
shelves:
review:

]]> Hiroshima 27323 152 John Hersey 0679721037 Jeff 5 4.03 1946 Hiroshima
author: John Hersey
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1946
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/04/06
shelves:
review:

]]> Vita Nova 76545 64 Louise GlĂĽck 0060957956 Jeff 5 3.97 1999 Vita Nova
author: Louise GlĂĽck
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/03/29
shelves:
review:

]]> The Cage 1601306


Cryptic and disturbing, like Dave Gibbons (Watchmen) illustrating a film by Ozu, The Cage spurns narrative for atmosphere, guiding us through a series of disarrayed rooms and desolate landscapes, tracking a stuttering and circling time and a sequence of objects: headphones, inky stains, bedsheets. It's not about where we're going but how � if � we get there.]]> 192 Martin Vaughn-James Jeff 5 Pictures AND words, hot damn. 3.53 1975 The Cage
author: Martin Vaughn-James
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1975
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/03/28
shelves:
review:
Pictures AND words, hot damn.
]]> Siddhartha 45126182 152 Hermann Hesse 0553208845 Jeff 3 4.29 1922 Siddhartha
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1922
rating: 3
read at: 2020/03/28
date added: 2020/03/28
shelves:
review:

]]> Everything Inside 43064139
Rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity, set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, Everything Inside is at once wide in scope and intimate, as it explores the forces that pull us together, or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant.

In these eight powerful, emotionally absorbing stories, a romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends; a marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences; a young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival; two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives; a baby's christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new; a man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life he is about to lose.

This is the indelible work of a keen observer of the human heart--a master at her best.]]> 224 Edwidge Danticat 0525521275 Jeff 3 3.66 2019 Everything Inside
author: Edwidge Danticat
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2020/03/18
shelves:
review:

]]> My Life and Hard Times 72995 Alternate cover edition of ISBN-13: 9780060933081, ISBN-10/ASIN: 0060933089Ěý

“Thurber is... a landmark in American humor... he is the funniest artist who ever lived. � —�New Republic

Widely hailed as one of the finest humorist of the twentieth century, James Thurber looks back at his own life growing up in Columbus, Ohio, with the same humor and sharp wit that defined his famous sketches and writings. In My Life and Hard times, first published in 1933, he recounts the delightful chaos and frustrations of family, boyhood, youth, odd dogs, recalcitrant machinery, and the foibles of human nature.]]> 106 James Thurber Jeff 4 4.11 1933 My Life and Hard Times
author: James Thurber
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1933
rating: 4
read at: 2020/02/04
date added: 2020/02/04
shelves:
review:
The stories have endings, the endings have stories.
]]> <![CDATA[Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s]]> 13514353
In Prove It On Me, Erin D. Chapman explores the gender and sexual politics of this modern racial ethos and reveals the constraining and exploitative underside of the New Negro era's vaunted liberation and opportunities. Chapman's cultural history documents the effects on black women of the intersection of primitivism, New Negro patriarchal aspirations, and the early twentieth-century consumer culture. As U.S. society invested in the New Negroes, turning their expressions and race politics into entertaining commodities in a sexualized, primitivist popular culture, the New Negroes invested in the idea of black womanhood as a pillar of stability against the unsettling forces of myriad social and racial transformations. And both groups used black women's bodies and identities to "prove" their own modern notions and new identities. Chapman's analysis brings together advertisements selling the blueswoman to black and white consumers in a "sex-race marketplace," the didactic preachments of New Negro reformers advocating a conservative gender politics of "race motherhood," and the words of the New Negro women authors and migrants who boldly or implicitly challenged these dehumanizing discourses. Prove It On Me investigates the uses made of black women's bodies in 1920s popular culture and racial politics and black women's opportunities to assert their own modern, racial identities.]]> 208 Erin D. Chapman 0199758328 Jeff 5 I learned a whole bunch. 4.33 2012 Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s
author: Erin D. Chapman
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/01/26
shelves:
review:
I learned a whole bunch.
]]> Praise 139783 Praise, the writer's second volume of poetry.]]> 80 Robert Hass 0880012420 Jeff 4 4.23 1979 Praise
author: Robert Hass
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1979
rating: 4
read at: 2019/11/12
date added: 2019/11/12
shelves:
review:

]]> Everything, Then and Since 36054794 112 Michael Parker 1495157679 Jeff 5 4.34 Everything, Then and Since
author: Michael Parker
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.34
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2019/11/04
date added: 2019/11/04
shelves:
review:
Every single one of these stories has characters in it. Astounding!
]]> Ape and Essence 30561 Ape and Essence is Huxley's vision of the ruin of humanity, told with all his knowledge and imaginative genius.]]> 222 Aldous Huxley 0929587782 Jeff 4 3.78 1948 Ape and Essence
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1948
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2019/10/29
shelves:
review:
Spoiler alert: the ape and the essence totally make out. And it’s tepid.
]]> Star 40611182
Being a star, constantly performing, being watched and scrutinized as if under a microscope, is often a drag. But so is life. Written shortly after Yukio Mishima himself had acted in the film “Afraid to Die,� this novella is a rich and unflinching psychological portrait of a celebrity coming apart at the seams. With exquisite, vivid prose, Star begs the question: is there any escape from how we are seen by others?
Ěý]]> 96 Yukio Mishima 0811228428 Jeff 3 3.59 1961 Star
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1961
rating: 3
read at: 2019/10/13
date added: 2019/10/13
shelves:
review:

]]> The Coming Insurrection 6447374 A call to arms by a group of French intellectuals that rejects leftist reform and aligns itself with younger, wilder forms of resistance.

Thirty years of “crisis,� mass unemployment, and flagging growth, and they still want us to believe in the economy... We have to see that the economy is itself the crisis. It's not that there's not enough work, it's that there is too much of it. The Coming Insurrection is an eloquent call to arms arising from the recent waves of social contestation in France and Europe. Written by the anonymous Invisible Committee in the vein of Guy Debord—and with comparable elegance—it has been proclaimed a manual for terrorism by the French government (who recently arrested its alleged authors). One of its members more adequately described the group as “the name given to a collective voice bent on denouncing contemporary cynicism and reality.� The Coming Insurrection is a strategic prescription for an emergent war-machine capable of “spreading anarchy and live communism.� Written in the wake of the riots that erupted throughout the Paris suburbs in the fall of 2005 and presaging more recent riots and general strikes in France and Greece, The Coming Insurrection articulates a rejection of the official Left and its reformist agenda, aligning itself instead with the younger, wilder forms of resistance that have emerged in Europe around recent struggles against immigration control and the “war on terror.� Hot-wired to the movement of '77 in Italy, its preferred historical reference point, The Coming Insurrection formulates an ethics that takes as its starting point theft, sabotage, the refusal to work, and the elaboration of collective, self-organized life forms. It is a philosophical statement that addresses the growing number of those—in France, in the United States, and elsewhere—who refuse the idea that theory, politics, and life are separate realms.]]> 136 The Invisible Committee 1584350806 Jeff 5 3.81 2007 The Coming Insurrection
author: The Invisible Committee
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2019/09/09
date added: 2019/09/09
shelves:
review:

]]> Ways of Seeing 2067599 Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the (London) Sunday Times critic "This is an eye-opener in more ways than by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures." By now he has. "Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of the professional art critics . . . He is a liberator of and once we have allowed the paintings to work on us directly, we are in a much better position to make a meaningful evaluation" -Peter Fuller, Arts Review "The influence of the series and the book . . . was enormous . . . It opened up for general attention to areas of cultural study that are now commonplace" -Geoff Dyer in Ways of Telling]]> 176 John Berger 0563122447 Jeff 5 3.73 1972 Ways of Seeing
author: John Berger
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1972
rating: 5
read at: 2019/06/19
date added: 2019/06/19
shelves:
review:

]]> Billiards at Half-Past Nine 69882 280 Heinrich Böll 0140187243 Jeff 3 3.97 1959 Billiards at Half-Past Nine
author: Heinrich Böll
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1959
rating: 3
read at: 2019/05/30
date added: 2019/05/30
shelves:
review:

]]> I Wrote Stone 1494437 96 Ryszard Kapuściński 1897231377 Jeff 5 Poems, all of them. 3.74 2007 I Wrote Stone
author: Ryszard Kapuściński
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2019/03/13
date added: 2019/03/13
shelves:
review:
Poems, all of them.
]]> <![CDATA[Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space]]> 25734115
Keller Easterling reveals the nexus of emerging governmental and corporate forces buried within the concrete and fiber-optics of our modern habitat. Extrastatecraft will change how we think about cities—and, perhaps, how we live in them.]]> 256 Keller Easterling 1784783641 Jeff 4 3.70 2014 Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space
author: Keller Easterling
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2019/02/20
date added: 2019/02/20
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor (FSG Classics)]]> 6458206 560 Peter Taylor 0374531846 Jeff 5 4.25 1969 The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor (FSG Classics)
author: Peter Taylor
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1969
rating: 5
read at: 2019/02/17
date added: 2019/02/17
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Homage to the Lame Wolf: Vasko Popa - Selected Poems]]> 461963 163 Vasko Popa 0932440223 Jeff 5 4.43 1979 Homage to the Lame Wolf: Vasko Popa - Selected Poems
author: Vasko Popa
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1979
rating: 5
read at: 2019/01/26
date added: 2019/01/26
shelves:
review:
Lotta wolves, folks. Lotta wolves.
]]> Radon 17449986 44 Aaron Cometbus Jeff 5 3.99 2013 Radon
author: Aaron Cometbus
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2019/01/22
shelves:
review:
Maud is right that punk is right.
]]> <![CDATA[Hello, Shadowlands: Inside the Meth Fiefdoms, Rebel Hideouts and Bomb-Scarred Party Towns of Southeast Asia]]> 39854808 348 Patrick Winn 178578479X Jeff 5 4.21 Hello, Shadowlands: Inside the Meth Fiefdoms, Rebel Hideouts and Bomb-Scarred Party Towns of Southeast Asia
author: Patrick Winn
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.21
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2018/12/19
date added: 2018/12/19
shelves:
review:
Read the book then you’ll know what I know. Worth it tbh.
]]> <![CDATA[The New Life Of Dante Alighieri]]> 174164 148 Dante Alighieri 1428603492 Jeff 4 3.63 1294 The New Life Of Dante Alighieri
author: Dante Alighieri
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1294
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/12/01
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Trial of the Catonsville Nine]]> 9767709 139 Daniel Berrigan 0807005495 Jeff 5 Do stuff or, I guess, don’t. 4.50 1970 The Trial of the Catonsville Nine
author: Daniel Berrigan
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1970
rating: 5
read at: 2018/11/07
date added: 2018/11/07
shelves:
review:
Do stuff or, I guess, don’t.
]]> Corregidora 530773
From the back cover: "History and fiction have yielded little about those black slave women who were mistress and breeder to their white owners. There are some facts and figures, but they tell us nothing about the women themselves: their motives, their emotions, and the memories they passed on to their children. Gayl Jones's first novel is a gripping portrait of this harsh sexual and psychological genealogy....Jones's language is subtle and sinewy, and her imagination sure." —Margo Jefferson, Newsweek]]> 185 Gayl Jones Jeff 4 3.92 1975 Corregidora
author: Gayl Jones
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1975
rating: 4
read at: 2018/11/04
date added: 2018/11/04
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Day of Their Wedding (Green Integer)]]> 795082 144 William Dean Howells 1933382716 Jeff 4 3.67 The Day of Their Wedding (Green Integer)
author: William Dean Howells
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.67
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2018/06/10
date added: 2018/10/27
shelves:
review:
If you like to remember things, this book might appeal to you. I remember a lot of it.
]]> <![CDATA[The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg]]> 7786087 Transactions in a Foreign Currency (1986), Under the 82nd Airborne (1992), All Around Atlantis (1997) and her most recent collection-Twilight of the Superheroes (2006).

“One of America’s finest writers.”â€�San Francisco ChronicleĚýĚýĚý “Concentrated bursts of perfection.”â€�The Times (London)ĚýĚýĚý “Shimmering stories that possess the power and charm to move us.â€� â€�The New York TimesĚýĚýĚý “Ełćłóľ±±ô˛ą°ů˛ąłŮľ±˛Ô˛µ.â€Ĺ¨¶Ä�Harper’s MagazineĚýĚýĚý “OłÜłŮ˛őłŮ˛ą˛Ô»ĺľ±˛Ô˛µ.â€Ĺ¨¶Ä�Christian Science MonitorĚýĚýĚý “Eisenberg simply writes like no one else.”â€�ElleĚýĚýĚý “Eisenberg’s stories possess all the steely beauty of a knife wrapped in velvet.”â€�The Boston GlobeĚýĚýĚý â€Ćಹłúłú±ôľ±˛Ô˛µ.â€Ĺ¨¶Ä�Time Out New YorkĚýĚýĚý “M˛ą˛µľ±ł¦.â€Ĺ¨¶Ä�NewsweekĚýĚýĚý “Comic, elegant and pitch perfect.”â€�Vanity FairĚýĚýĚý “One of the great fiction writers living in America today.”â€�The Dallas Morning NewsĚýĚýĚý “There aren’t many contemporary novels as shudderingly intimate and mordantly funny as Eisenberg’s best stories.”â€�The New York Times Book Review

Ěý]]> 992 Deborah Eisenberg 0312429894 Jeff 0 to-read 4.13 2008 The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg
author: Deborah Eisenberg
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/10/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Threshold Of Pain 35108854 Her stories show a longing for the pre-war period but surprisingly also for experiences that occurred during the war. Memories such as her stay at the children’s home in the ghetto, where she painted and acted in the ghetto’s production of the play “Firefly,� or the fatherly German soldier, who gave her milk and attention, enliven her stories to reveal the tiny sparkles of kindness that shone within the
grim reality that surrounded her.
Her book describes her past from the perspective of the present, with a moving sensitivity that transforms the stories into a complex, subtle work of art--a tapestry of her experiences as a woman, mother, sculptor, and poet.]]> 236 Vera Meisels Jeff 0 3.92 Threshold Of Pain
author: Vera Meisels
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.92
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> Thinking In Systems: A Primer 3828902 Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life.

Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking.

While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner.

In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.]]> 218 Donella H. Meadows 1603580557 Jeff 5 word 4.17 2008 Thinking In Systems: A Primer
author: Donella H. Meadows
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2018/10/18
date added: 2018/10/18
shelves:
review:
word
]]> <![CDATA[Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (Paradigm)]]> 51645
This pamphlet ponders what that response would be, and explores the implications of linking anthropology to anarchism. Here, David Graeber invites readers to imagine this discipline that currently only exists in the realm of possibility: anarchist anthropology.]]> 102 David Graeber 0972819649 Jeff 5 4.24 2004 Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (Paradigm)
author: David Graeber
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at: 2018/10/02
date added: 2018/10/02
shelves:
review:
Some people do the damn thing and some people are around the damn thing and some people believe the damn thing and I read this book. We’re all pitching in, I guess.
]]> <![CDATA[Miami and the Siege of Chicago (New York Review Books Classics)]]> 2376119 In Miami and the Siege of Chicago, Norman Mailer, America’s most protean and provocative writer, brings a novelist’s eye to bear on the events of 1968, a decisive year in modern American politics, from which today’s bitterly divided country arose.]]> 224 Norman Mailer 1590172965 Jeff 3 3.84 1968 Miami and the Siege of Chicago (New York Review Books Classics)
author: Norman Mailer
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1968
rating: 3
read at: 2018/09/18
date added: 2018/09/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Don't Make Me Stop Now 517737
Whether it’s a college student undone by the boy who leaves her, or the boyfriend intent on leveling old scores from high school for his lover, or the husband who discovers—in the grocery store—the woman he should have been with all along, every character, no matter how off track, wants to believe in debt and credit and payback and making the messy world—and the messy world of love—turn out neatly.]]> 276 Michael Parker 1565124855 Jeff 5 3.51 2007 Don't Make Me Stop Now
author: Michael Parker
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2018/08/13
date added: 2018/08/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Emperor: Downfall of An Autocrat]]> 59660 The New York Review of Books) is Kapuscinski's rendition of their accounts—humorous, frightening, sad, grotesque—of a man living amidst nearly unimaginable pomp and luxury while his people teetered between hunger and starvation.]]> 164 Ryszard Kapuściński 0679722033 Jeff 5 4.14 1978 The Emperor: Downfall of An Autocrat
author: Ryszard Kapuściński
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at: 2018/08/07
date added: 2018/08/06
shelves:
review:
You should read this. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
]]> <![CDATA[People on the Run (Green Integer Books, 55) (Italian Edition)]]> 1331404 240 Tiziano Rossi 1931243379 Jeff 5 3.25 2002 People on the Run (Green Integer Books, 55) (Italian Edition)
author: Tiziano Rossi
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at: 2018/06/24
date added: 2018/06/24
shelves:
review:
As a human, I enjoyed reading about humans this time; at least this one time I did.
]]> Kolyma Tales 109812
This new enlarged edition combines two collections previously published in the United States as Kolyma Tales and Graphite.]]> 508 Varlam Shalamov 0140186956 Jeff 0 to-read 4.31 1966 Kolyma Tales
author: Varlam Shalamov
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/06/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dear Zoo: A Lift-the-Flap Book]]> 809849
Dear Zoo is twenty-five years old -- and still as popular as ever!

And with an updated look, this children's classic is sure to delight a new generation of readers!]]> 18 Rod Campbell 141694737X Jeff 2 4.29 1982 Dear Zoo: A Lift-the-Flap Book
author: Rod Campbell
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1982
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2018/06/10
shelves:
review:

]]> Jamberry 886512 Shoeberry
In my canoeberry
Under the bridge
And over the dam
Looking for berries...Berries for jam!]]> 32 Bruce Degen 0694006513 Jeff 3 4.20 1982 Jamberry
author: Bruce Degen
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1982
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2018/06/10
shelves:
review:

]]> Sound of Soul 4316742 212 Phyl Garland 0671772880 Jeff 5 3.80 1969 Sound of Soul
author: Phyl Garland
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1969
rating: 5
read at: 2018/06/04
date added: 2018/06/04
shelves:
review:
The best thing about this book are the words about music.
]]> Buck Studies 27070953 The Los Angeles Times

Dynamic poet, performer, librettist, and professor Douglas Kearney's works speak to those who are listening to what our living, material language has to say about race and history. At the hub of Buck StudiesĚýis a long mash-up of the stories of Herakles, the Greek bad-man, and that of Stagger Lee, the black bad-man. "Stagger Put Work In" examines the Twelve Labors Herakles performed to atone for murdering his family through Stagger Lee's murder of black man Billy Lyons. What is enacted by this appropriation is an exhaustion of forms—gangsta rap and its antecedent, the murder ballad.

only good one dead one we scold our mirror. should've been dead
before Stagger wrassled it bull-headed red-blind muscle-a-muscle.
bully and bull stagger the city levee round round round.

Douglas Kearney resides in Altadena, California, and teaches at California College for the Arts. His degrees are from Howard University and California Institute of the Arts. He is the author of three previous poetry collections; his work appears in many anthologies including Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Art & Literature. His honors include a Cave Canem fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, and commissions from Minneapolis's Weisman Art Museum and New York's Studio Museum.]]> 88 Douglas Kearney 0986437379 Jeff 4 jamz<br /> 4.13 2016 Buck Studies
author: Douglas Kearney
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2018/05/18
date added: 2018/05/18
shelves:
review:
jamz

]]> <![CDATA[The Last of the Hippies - An Hysterical Romance]]> 12169433 Excellent Book Penny Rimbaud Jeff 5 3.95 1982 The Last of the Hippies - An Hysterical Romance
author: Penny Rimbaud
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1982
rating: 5
read at: 2018/05/07
date added: 2018/05/07
shelves:
review:

]]> Going to Meet the Man 743822 Guardian

How our earliest experiences can shape our destiny is the theme that runs like a thread of revelation through these extraordinary stories. They explore the roots of love, of murder and of racial conflict, from the child in 'The Rockpile' who can never be forgiven by his God-fearing father for his illegitimacy to the loneliness of a young black girl in love with a white man who, she knows, will leave her in 'Come Out of the Wilderness' and the horrifying story of the initiation of a racist as a man remembers his parents taking him to see the mutilation and murder of a black man in 'Going to Meet the Man'. In them Baldwin unlocks the concepts of history and prejudice and probes beneath the skin to the soul.]]> 256 James Baldwin Jeff 5 4.22 1965 Going to Meet the Man
author: James Baldwin
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1965
rating: 5
read at: 2018/04/14
date added: 2018/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Burning Bright: A Play in Story Form]]> 186376 112 John Steinbeck 0140187421 Jeff 3 3.53 1950 Burning Bright: A Play in Story Form
author: John Steinbeck
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1950
rating: 3
read at: 2018/03/24
date added: 2018/03/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[At the Damascus Gate: Short Hallucinations (Green Integer)]]> 369687 116 Elana Greenfield 1931243492 Jeff 4 3.67 2003 At the Damascus Gate: Short Hallucinations (Green Integer)
author: Elana Greenfield
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2018/03/18
date added: 2018/03/18
shelves:
review:
At times I was totally lost and had to re-read and at times I instantly felt like I memorized. What else should experimental jams do? I felt things.
]]> <![CDATA[The Monster Lives of Boys and Girls]]> 417797

Winner of the 2002 National Poetry Series, selected by Diane Ward, this book in four parts explores a dark world of sleep, dreams, and evil. But there is also joy in Sikelianos’s work. Amidst the fears and despair for her own life and those of her children, the author recognizes the beauty of nature of the fleetingness of the natural world: "summer summer summer thunder, thief, thief, thief in the night it’s something you love, it’s there only for you.

]]> 96 Eleni Sikelianos 1931243670 Jeff 4 4.45 2003 The Monster Lives of Boys and Girls
author: Eleni Sikelianos
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2018/03/12
date added: 2018/03/12
shelves:
review:
I liked this book because nothing is so important as to bend to my judgement.
]]> <![CDATA[East of West: The Apocalypse, Year One]]> 25402964
The over-sized prestige collection of the First Year of the Apocalypse.

Collecting: East of West 1-15]]> 504 Jonathan Hickman 1632154307 Jeff 5 4.38 2015 East of West: The Apocalypse, Year One
author: Jonathan Hickman
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2018/03/12
date added: 2018/03/12
shelves:
review:
If you are me you’ll really like this. If you are not me, your fate lies in mystery.
]]> Agostino 18666080 111 Alberto Moravia 1590177231 Jeff 4 3.73 1945 Agostino
author: Alberto Moravia
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1945
rating: 4
read at: 2018/03/12
date added: 2018/03/12
shelves:
review:
This is a story all about how some kid saw boobs in some beach town. And it’s, like, good and stuff. Books!
]]> Knockemstiff 6262460 Knockemstiff is a genuine entry into the literature of place. Spanning a period from the mid-sixties to the late nineties, the linked stories that comprise Knockemstiff feature a cast of recurring characters who are irresistibly, undeniably real. A father pumps his son full of steroids so he can vicariously relive his days as a perpetual runner-up body builder. A psychotic rural recluse comes upon two siblings committing incest and feels compelled to take action. Donald Ray Pollock presents his characters and the sordid goings-on with a stern intelligence, a bracing absence of value judgments, and a refreshingly dark sense of bottom-dog humor.]]> 203 Donald Ray Pollock 076792830X Jeff 5 4.00 2008 Knockemstiff
author: Donald Ray Pollock
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2018/03/12
date added: 2018/03/12
shelves:
review:
Holy living hell, misery hates company as much as it loves company.
]]> FLAPPERHOUSE - Year One 24921244 360 Joseph P. O'Brien 1507700520 Jeff 5 4.69 2015 FLAPPERHOUSE - Year One
author: Joseph P. O'Brien
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.69
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2018/03/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Voyager Record: A Transmission]]> 28694048 images, and greetings in 55 languages meant to summarize all life on our planet for the extraterrestrials who might one day encounter the crafts. The Voyager Record: A Transmission is the record of that record: a history in fragments exploring how legendary astronomer Carl Sagan and his team attempted to press the entire human race into a single groove. Combining elements of poetry, flash fiction, and essay, Anthony Michael Morena
creates a collage of music, observation, humor, and alienation. Giving the 38-year-old original playlist a B-side update, Morena’s The Voyager Record calls out to its namesake across the billions of miles of emptiness: Send more answers.]]> 168 Anthony Michael Morena 1941628044 Jeff 5 3.96 2016 The Voyager Record: A Transmission
author: Anthony Michael Morena
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2018/03/09
date added: 2018/03/08
shelves:
review:
I am proud to have read this and enamored with its existence. Well done, Anthony. Can’t wait to see what the next book holds.
]]> Play It As It Lays 1276261 Joan Didion 0671822195 Jeff 5 4.22 1970 Play It As It Lays
author: Joan Didion
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1970
rating: 5
read at: 2018/02/22
date added: 2018/02/21
shelves:
review:
I’ll maybe never know why I waited this long to read Joan.
]]> Vera & Linus 1020994 228 9979971568 Jeff 2 4.20 2006 Vera & Linus
author: Jesse Ball; Thordis Bjornsdottir
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at: 2018/02/03
date added: 2018/02/04
shelves:
review:
A violent and one-note exploration of new mythology. Them words real pretty tho.
]]> <![CDATA[The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor]]> 227373 544 Peter Taylor 031242020X Jeff 5 4.22 1969 The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor
author: Peter Taylor
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1969
rating: 5
read at: 2018/01/02
date added: 2018/01/02
shelves:
review:
The bile and shit of the previous generations certainly makes for interesting fodder.
]]> Technics and Civilization 688489 philosophers have so far shed but little light" (Journal of Philosophy).]]> 495 Lewis Mumford 015688254X Jeff 0 to-read 4.30 1934 Technics and Civilization
author: Lewis Mumford
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1934
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Johnny Would You Love Me If...]]> 26831135 Brand new book from the acclaimed author of Fag School and The Cruising Diaries!

Purnell offers part case study and part (fictional) Scene Report on the incidentals and consequences of hipster life from the viewpoint of a young man in crisis. He's a slut. He's a nerd. He's a working class hero. He's an American waiter, often bored at work.

His friends are leaving the party and leaving the city, and he doesn't trust the new breed of fags taking over. They wear bicycle helmets; they wear seat belts; they wear condoms. Subsequently, they will have nothing to do with him (and vice-versa, really). He sabotages meaningless relationships to free himself to hallucinate affection in late night park cruising, bath-houses, and other nooks and crannies of a ruined and newly conservative city.

He compartmentalizes his everyday struggles in a series of dissertations on subjects including (but sure as fuck not limited to) creative writing, STD hysteria, junkie lovers, Punk Rock, experimental dance, tour diaries, witchcraft, marijuana, and the pitfalls of restaurant work. He wrote it down in his diary as it happened. He saw the future and knew that in 20 years he wouldn't want to be bothered with trying to remember.]]> 126 Brontez Purnell Jeff 5 4.20 2015 Johnny Would You Love Me If...
author: Brontez Purnell
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/11/04
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[If on a Winter's Night a Traveler]]> 526730 Based on a witty analogy between the reader's desire to finish the story and the lover's desire to consummate his or her passion, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of the same book, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino, of course, are constantly and comically frustrated. In between chasing missing chapters of the book, the hapless readers tangle with an international conspiracy, a rogue translator, an elusive novelist, a disintegrating publishing house, and several oppressive governments. The result is a literary labyrinth of storylines that interrupt one another - an Arabian Nights of the postmodern age.]]> 260 Italo Calvino 0151436894 Jeff 4 4.00 1979 If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
author: Italo Calvino
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1979
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/05/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hands Behind My Back: Selected Poems]]> 813454 168 Marin Sorescu 0932440576 Jeff 4 4.33 1991 Hands Behind My Back: Selected Poems
author: Marin Sorescu
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at: 2017/04/12
date added: 2017/04/12
shelves:
review:
This is my kinda dude, which means not a classic but a jam. A real good little jam.
]]> <![CDATA[Poetry from the Russian Underground]]> 6835882 249 Joseph Langland 0060125012 Jeff 5 The Russians. 4.20 1973 Poetry from the Russian Underground
author: Joseph Langland
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1973
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/04/12
shelves:
review:
The Russians.
]]> <![CDATA[Anarchism & Anarcho-Syndicalism]]> 25075417 198 Rudolf Rocker Jeff 5 3.90 1938 Anarchism & Anarcho-Syndicalism
author: Rudolf Rocker
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1938
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/03/09
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Essential Etheridge Knight (Pitt Poetry Series)]]> 404075 124 Etheridge Knight 0822953781 Jeff 5 4.40 1986 The Essential Etheridge Knight (Pitt Poetry Series)
author: Etheridge Knight
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1986
rating: 5
read at: 2017/01/22
date added: 2017/01/22
shelves:
review:
Essential Knight is my favorite single-author collection of poems. I love it as much as a human can love a book.
]]> <![CDATA[Hipster! Comic-Strip Dispatches From Brooklyn, NY]]> 30740627 day-olds,
futons,
and
falafel.

More autobio comics from Greg Farrell]]> 128 Greg Farrell 0692674063 Jeff 5 4.15 Hipster! Comic-Strip Dispatches From Brooklyn, NY
author: Greg Farrell
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.15
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/10/25
shelves:
review:
An oversharer's view of life in NYC-- wildly interesting even though I lived through it at the same time as the author. Greg impresses me.
]]> The Complete Stories 284996 ISBN: 0374515360 (ISBN13: 9780374515362

Winner of the National Book Award

The publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery O'Connor's monumental contribution to American fiction. There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime - Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

O'Connor published her first story, "The Geranium," in 1946, while she was working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, "Judgement Day" - sent to her publisher shortly before her death - is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of "The Geranium." Taken together, these stories reveal a lively, penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O'Connor's longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux.

Contents:
The geranium --
The barber --
Wildcat --
The crop --
The turkey --
The train --
The peeler --
The heart of the park --
A stoke of good fortune --
Enoch and the gorilla --
A good man is hard to find --
A late encounter with the enemy --
The life you save may be your own --
The river --
A circle in the fire --
The displaced person --
A temple of the Holy Ghost --
The artificial nigger --
Good country people --
You can't be any poorer than dead --
Greenleaf --
A view of the woods --
The enduring chill --
The comforts of home --
Everything that rises must converge --
The partridge festival --
The lame shall enter first --
Why do the heathen rage? --
Revelation --
Parker's back --
Judgement Day.]]> 555 Flannery O'Connor Jeff 5 4.41 1971 The Complete Stories
author: Flannery O'Connor
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1971
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/10/23
shelves:
review:

]]> M'Hashish 148550 56 Mohammed Mrabet 0872860345 Jeff 5 3.91 1969 M'Hashish
author: Mohammed Mrabet
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1969
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/10/23
shelves:
review:
Smoking that shit and reading that shit ain't shit, just some everyday.
]]> <![CDATA[A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard]]> 12050
"His work is art. At his best Paul Bowles has no peer." �Time

"[W]riters and artists such as Williams, Jack Kerouac, Francis Bacon, Christopher Isherwood, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg to Tangier. . .sought Bowles as an oracle, a writer whose work demonstrated its author as an original who saw farther, deeper, and clearer, and who refused to flinch."--The Australian

Paul Bowles (1910-1999) was an expatriate composer, author, and translator. His other famous literary works include The Sheltering Sky, Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993, and Without Stopping


]]> 90 Paul Bowles 0872860027 Jeff 4 3.95 1962 A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard
author: Paul Bowles
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/10/23
shelves:
review:
I mean, sometimes you smoke drugs and read about smoking drugs. Works out that way, sometimes.
]]> Tender Is the Night 46164 Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character, Tender Is the Night is lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.]]> 430 F. Scott Fitzgerald Jeff 1 Also trash 3.80 1934 Tender Is the Night
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1934
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2016/08/24
shelves:
review:
Also trash
]]> The Great Gatsby 4671 The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald’s family and from his lifelong publisher.

This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author’s own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.]]> 180 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0743273567 Jeff 1 Trash 3.93 1925 The Great Gatsby
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1925
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2016/08/24
shelves:
review:
Trash
]]> Devil's Lunch: Selected Poems 162601
Make me a long coat of heavy cloth, tailor,
the kind that won't fray,
and of a dark color,
so no one will notice the cigarette ashes.

Make the dark trousers of the same material,
to last as long as I want them to,
wearing them to visit many cities, villages,
and other out-of-the-way places.
* * * * *
Make me a dark jacket, tailor, with wide, deep pockets
to clench my fists in, while watching the one
they're dragging from my table into the bushes,
which begin to shake after a few moments.
-from "Gingerbread Heart"

Whether addressing pigs, speaking for prostitutes, or considering lavatories, the great Serbian poet Ristovic (1933-94) revealed a capacious yet unsentimental sympathy with the despised, downtrodden, and disregarded. Devil's Lunch , hitherto unpublished in America, is a quirky and moving selection of his work greatly enriched by Charles Simic's earthy and authentic translations. Simic, himself a Pulitzer Prize-winning contemporary poet, allows us to fully appreciate a major talent who always spoke with humor, honesty, and compassion.]]> 96 Aleksandar Ristović 0571200087 Jeff 5 4.21 2000 Devil's Lunch: Selected Poems
author: Aleksandar Ristović
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2016/07/25
date added: 2016/07/25
shelves:
review:
If you are me you'll love this. Not sure if you are you though. Risty is a weirdo, man -- my kind of weirdo but still.
]]> Netochka Nezvanova 17893 176 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0140444556 Jeff 3 3.88 1849 Netochka Nezvanova
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1849
rating: 3
read at: 2006/06/01
date added: 2016/07/13
shelves:
review:
Strangely depicted and unfinished, but oddly worth it, says I.
]]> The Complete Poems 90051 ]]> 310 Constantinos P. Cavafy 0156198207 Jeff 5 4.50 1934 The Complete Poems
author: Constantinos P. Cavafy
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1934
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/06/26
shelves:
review:
Three of my favorite poems in history are in this book, including "Waiting for the Barbarians." There is a more complete version of this book now, with a new translator and more poems. I have that one too, but there are some word choices I don't agree with-- or maybe like?-- so I stick with this translation. It's all a matter of taste, of course. I like the word "flippant" more than the word "dilettante." Things like that don't really matter. I like hats too, if that's a thing and it most certainly is... trust me.
]]>