Take A Little Trip

by Denise Dee

I love to read about people's journeys- both physical and interior travels. When you get right down to it a lot of books seem to be about quests. Books that cover spiritual terrain can be hard sells because people think the writing might be boring or pious. These books are anything but.

The Year of Living Bibically- One Man's Humble Quest to follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs. Jacobs is an agnostic. So we know going into the book that it's going to be funny. I had no idea how profound it would be as he examines lying, polygamy, faith, and gratitude among other 'laws' or 'rules' of the bible. He takes us to visit the Amish, Lubavitchers, Creationists and a few other groups that take the bible literally. Jacobs wife Julie is not real thrilled with the project. And as he takes to the streets of Manhattan in a white robe, sandals, payot and a long beard you have to wonder if their marriage will last.

Longing for Darkness - Tara and The Black Madonna by China Galland. Galland journeys from the Catholicism of her childhood, through alcoholism, meditation and eventually to Tibetan Buddhism. Galland makes pilgrimages to Tibet and Czestochowa to see Tara and The Black Madonna. Along the way we make stops in Galland's childhood. This is deeply moving story about the longing deep within for both the feminine face of the divine and an understanding of mothers.

My Life in Orange by Tim Guest. Guest was raised in a series of Rajneesh houses and communes. Imagine the confusion of a small boy who is only allowed to wear clothes in the color of the sun and who is not allowed to live in the same room as his mother. Guest shows us his mothers journey as a seeker and the daily life of the Rajneeshee. Photographs taken by Guest's father are scattered throughout the book adding a layer of poignance as we see the 'family' on film versus the collection of individuals that are trying to come together but do not quite know how to do it.

The Red Book by Sera Beak. This would be a great book to give to a young spiritual seeker as Beak is both irreverant and serious about her path though different religions and beliefs. She includes rituals, meditations, sex, laughter and other 'tools' you can use on your journey to go discover the divine within. She celebrates your inner goddess and goddesses from many paths. She is eclectic and I think of this a cookbook for the soul.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. My favorite book of 2006. Gilbert has a breakdown (or breakthrough depending on your p.o.v.) and leaves a rather comfortable life to spend a year- you guessed it- eating, praying and loving. She travels to Italy, India, and Indonesia. I was calling and e-mailing people with quotes from this book and laughing quite loudly. I know it's a best seller, don't let that turn you off, it's well worth reading. She says at one point in the book- I know an unexamined life is not worth living, but can I just have an unexamined lunch? Anyone that spends time questioning their motives and interior lives should find something to relate to in this book

The Spiritual Life of Children by Robert Coles. Coles is a psychologist who is a self admitted skeptic about anything non-rational. He decides to travel to different countries and have children draw pictures about their ideas of God and their beliefs. The words and drawings of the children are mind-blowing and just as interesting is that Coles includes his own doubts about what the children are telling him. This is a fascinating book that covers everything from dreams about Elvis to a furry hand of God reaching down from the sky to 'fix' things.

My Gateway Book by Denise Dee

You've heard of gateway drugs? Marijuana leading to heroin? Well, let me introduce you to one of my most dangerous gateway books…

Dreamland by Kevin Baker - This was my first experience with 'historical fiction'; the very term used to make me cringe. Cracking this book open, I walked into a time machine and found myself washed up on the shores of early 1900's Coney Island; host to Dreamland and Luna Park. Baker mixes in gangsters, Triangle Factory workers, midgets, Freud and Jung, Tammany Hall bosses, opium dens and Bowery bars with a glossary to the colorful terms used by the Irish, Jewish and other characters populating the book. I became obsessed with turn of the century New York while reading this book, and it led me to:

Triangle: The Fire that Changed America by David Von Drehle - If you only read one book about the Triangle Factory fire, make it this one.

Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York by Luc Sante - Sante's pace and tone is perfection in conveying, yep, the lures and snares of Five Points and other 'unsavory' neighborhoods.

Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury - You've seen the movie? Even more reason to read the book. The movie glosses over the reality that is described in these pages.

Five Points by Tyler Anbinder - I believe this to be the definitive book on the neighborhood. Ponder how many people were crammed into each square foot. Relive the stench and the sounds and the sights. That might sound depressing; it's anything but. A classic in urban studies.

When you think about how one of the roughest neighborhoods ever produced so much culture (music, dancing, writing), it's truly astounding. This is where the freed slaves met the freed Irish, which disgusted Charles Dickens enough to write home to London about it.

Hopefully this has inspired you to think about the dangerous path books can lead you down.

Try Not To Leave Your Fingerprints On The Cover - By Denise Dee

I know it's considered low-brow for a bookseller to confess to a love of true crime books but I've always been interested in the 'anti-hero'. People who were apparently so spellbinding they could get people to join gangs/cults, commit murder, or drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. Or at least that's how the story goes. There's an attention to detail and to pacing in true crime books that any writer can learn something from.

Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi - This is a hefty book but it reads as if it's 50 pages long. Bugliosi zips us through the summer of love, hippies, the political climate in America, and the 'cast of characters', then puts us into the courtroom and smack in the locations where the crimes took place. I don't know that I will ever forget the image of the Manson girls and Charlie with Xs carved into their foreheads. The most haunting part of the book is when Manson says "I am only what you made me. I am a reflection of you". Someone is always going to act out our 'dark side'.

The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer - Norman Mailer to my mind is usually way too heady. In The Executioner's Song Mailer brings us into the world of feelings. Mailer (who seemed to want to portray himself as an 'outlaw') meets up with a man who shows how deep 'outlaw' runs. Mailer stays put and listens and does a great job conveying Gary Gilmore's upbringing and the paths that led him to fighting to be killed for his crimes.

Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore - Mikal, a long time staff writer for Rolling Stone is, yes, Gary Gilmore's brother. Mikal takes an unflinching look at the Gilmores, Utah, and some of the doctrines and myths of both the Mormons (blood atonement, for one) and what it is to be a 'man' in the West.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote - I read this after seeing the film in high school. Even though Robert Blake is hard to get out of your head, Capote's writing had me forgetting there ever was a movie. Capote, simultaneously an 'outsider' and 'insider' in his own life, really seems to understand what it could take to get these men to the point of killing.

The Westies: Inside New York's Irish Mob by T.J. English - Hell's Kitchen Irish mobsters following in the footsteps of the Kerryonians, the Dead Rabbits and the rest of the Five Points gangs. This book is more brutal than the rest. It's fascinating to walk the streets of Hell's Kitchen with the writer as he reveals where the bodies are buried while showing the circuits in these men's brains that made them long to be 'important' and 'known'- even if it was for crime and murders. Not for the squeamish.

When Corruption Was King: How I Helped the Mob Rule Chicago, Then Brought the Outfit Down by Robert Cooley and Hillel Levin - And so I end my true crime list with 'crime' inside the Chicago justice system. I worked in a bookstore in Chicago blocks from where most of the action in this book takes place. Love Cooley or hate him (and I heard plenty on both sides) he's a compelling narrator to the goings-on of the system in Chicago. Mixes in a bit of history and a lot of colorful characters.

Who needs to invent characters when real life is chock full of them?

Presenting Punk: Year-Round Gifts For The Punk At Heart - By Denise Dee

There's so much emphasis in the book industry about selling the 'latest' books. I might be a bit of an aberration in that I am much more excited about selling older books. I am passionate about books I consider 'classics'; and don't worry - I'm not talking about ones that were crammed down your throat in school or by some well-meaning friend. These books are must-haves for your punk library.

From the Velvets to the Voidoids by Clinton Heylin.
Sometimes it is necessary to go backwards to go forwards and Heylin gives us an excellent history of the music leading up to punk. How can you understand Richard Hell without first taking a look at John Cale and Johnny Thunders? Glam gets trashed and later thrashes in this book which moves from New York to London to Cleveland with a few stops in other cities. Cleveland gets long-deserved credit for contributing many seminal members to the punk rock scene. I read this on a Greyhound bus trip and pictured people leaving their hometowns to go find a place where they could 'fit in'. Heylin nails the simultaneous excitement of rebellion and belonging.

Punk: The Definitive Record of a Revolution by Stephen Colegrave.
A must-have if for no other reasons than the price and pictures. This stunning book is only $25 and will have you 'You Tubing' videos of bands that you may have forgotten about (or never heard of in the first place). Of course, it would be impossible to have a 'definitive' book that you could actually lift - but this book does a nice job of mixing bands that stayed around for a while with one or two-hit wonders. This makes a great gift.

Please Kill Me: the Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain.

Legs McNeil founded Punk magazine along with John Holstrom. Truly one of the first 'zines in the U.S. A nineteen year-old co-worker who was in no way, shape, or form into punk actually bought this book after hearing me rave on about it to a customer for the thousandth time. He started recommending it. He said the energy of that time was contagious. Often people think of punk as nihilists who sat around complaining. Punk was a whirlwind of energy with many people in more than one band. McNeil and McCain put the 'oral history' format to great use and mix it up so different people give you perspectives on how the New York punk scene came to be and mutated. Buy a copy for anyone who loves the spirit of D.I.Y.

Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 by Simon Reynolds.
My heart belongs to punk. But I think it's important to see where punk went and some reasons why. Reynolds covers no wave, new wave and other postpunk movements. Essential reading if for no other reason than the chapter on the No Wave bands. Their influence spread way beyond the sparse number of groups and audience members involved in the scene. If you can find it purchase No New York and listen to it while reading this chapter. Reynolds visits some of the West Coast punk bands and you start to get a sense of how punk changed in California and then again as it spread across the country.

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung by Lester Bangs. Edited by Greil Marcus.
Detroit is another city that had enormous influence on not only the punk scene but on music in general. Could much of American music exist without Detroit musicians? I don't think so. Lester Bangs was an early rock critic who found a home in Detroit writing for Creem magazine. He knew the Stooges, the MC5, Patti Smith, Destroy All Monsters, as well as jazz, soul, and blues musicians. His writing style is very much no punches pulled. It shows how raw energy that used to be worked out in fist-fights could be turned into a song or an article. Be ready to laugh and to call up friends and read them passages from this book.

I could add at least another ten books to this list. Any one of these books is a great place to start.

Easter Rising - Review by Denise Dee

Quite possibly the best punk rock memoir ever written.

Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in Southie (South Boston) and has a very delicious black humor in his writing. He is 13 when he first gets into punk- back in the late 70's. MPM comes from a very large family and you can see how punk gave him a place in the world and might very well have saved his life.

Easter Rising is also a road trip book - not just a stroll down punk memory lane. He also goes with his Ma to Ireland as an adult. Some of the roads he travels are in his head and heart, and some of them are literal roads to NYC, London, Ireland, and Paris. I felt like I was at his side listening to his stories- rather than reading words on the page.

Some of the things I laughed the hardest at were when his grandfather comes over with holy water to exorcise him- because he heard MPM has been devil worshipping with the 'punk rocks'. When a friend of his sisters tells him he heard punks like to pee on themselves, MPM writes that he is so tired of trying to explain himself (and punk) by this point that he says- "Yeah that's what we do". I also loved a part where he is exchanging notes in class with a girl who tells him her name is Siouxsie. She writes "PUNK IS DEAD- GET OVER IT ".

And this is all before he's 16.

He realized when he visits in Derry that though many of his friends back in Southie have never been to Ireland, somehow the Irish message of 'Never give up the fight' has been imprinted on their hearts.

It's the kind of book you will be calling/e-mailing friends to quote lines from. My co-worker Justin's wife, who is in her 20's, loved it as much as I did.

By the end of the book when his Ma is carrying her accordion with her on Easter Sunday (he doesn't ask her why) he realizes that you "never know when you might be called on to give it everything you have to give". I was crying.

Read it or at least go to his MySpace page and check him out.