No Excuses

I don’t care if you don’t like comics. I don’t care if you have dial-up that causes snails to guffaw. I don’t care if someone just lit your mustache on fire. I don’t care if you dropped your nitroglycerin pill into your Lipton Iced Tea and feel a gripper coming on. I just don’t care. You must read this! Right away! No excuses. That is all.

Warren Ellis/Paul Duffield - Freakangels

P.S. Then take a look at all of Warren Ellis' work. It's great with no exceptions.

It's April. Read some Dean Young!

by Sarah Marine

It is National Poetry Month. It is! Therefore, I will take this blog opportunity to express my deep gratiitude for the writings of Dean Young, Gertrude Stein, Richard Brautigan and Anne Sexton. I couldn't go a day without them.

I am currently mulling over an extended entry concerning Jenny Erpenbeck and Fleur Jaeggy. Soon, soon.

Also, if you're not listening to The National and Bon Iver...you should. really.

Drowning in Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley: Selected Poems, 1945-2005
edited by Benjamin Friedlander
$21.95, University of California Press

I continue to describe my discovery of the poet Robert Creeley as "drowning". I feel entirely sucked under the weight of his words, despite their simplicity and sameness. A number of his poems stand out for me for reasons having more to do with initial gut reactions than to anything I may or may not know about poetry.

He writes...

of the transience of subtle experiences in Things to Do in Tokyo

Begin at the beginning,
find the end.
Remember everything

forget it. Go on,
and on. Find ecstasy,
forget it.

of longing in A Form of Women

I could not touch you.
I wanted very much to
touch you
but could not.

of enduring love in The Act of Love

How dear
you are

to me, how love-
ly all your body is, how

all these
senses do
commingle, so

that in your very
arms I still
can think of you.

And of old age, and impending death in Old Song

I'm feeling ok still in some small way.
I've come too far to just go away.
I wish I could stay here some way.

So that what now comes wouldn't only be more
of what's to be lost. What's left would still leave more
to come if one didn't rush to get there.

Then we have the poem which should be every writer's prayer: End

End of page,
end of this

company -- wee
notebook kept

my mind in hand,
let the world stay

open to me
day after day,

words to say,
things to be.

The number of shining, beautiful poems in this insightful collection is to great to share them all with you here. This is only a taste. Pick it up. Read straight through to experience Creeley's changing perspectives on life, love, loss and eventual aging and death. It is a timeline of a soul that will not leave yours unaffected.

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.

Downer Ave News - Birthdengagement

Congrats to Sarah "the Birthday Girl" Marine and Bayard Godsave on their recent engagement. Both are booksellers and brilliant and kind friends to all of us. We wish you all the best today and in the future.

The e-book VS. Christine Schutt

The new year has thrust me ever so abruptly into that intangible chasm of mystery and ephemera feared most by bibliophiles/booksellers. This chasm is the e-book.

Some background info: as a left-handed, lit-obsessed liberal I have naturally never excelled much in the area of mathematics. Not to say that it isn’t possible for a person with those traits to overcome the anxiety induced by numbers, I’m reaching for something to excuse my inherent disdain for the subject. In fact, even when stumbling upon a signed first edition hardcover of Aimee Bender’s An Invisible Sign of My Own, a novel which features a mathematician protagonist, I couldn’t get past page twenty. Purchasing it was natural because I’m a book squirrel, tucking those treasures away in little stores around the house. Read it, however? Nope. It’s about math.

So, anyway, I digress. I am enrolled in a Statistics of Africology course. I chose the course over others because although it is stats. I hoped to perhaps broaden my Africology course base, which is already solid in foundation. But, in the end it’s really just a statistics course. Even worse, the class required the purchase of an e-book. The e-book is by far the most inconvenient , ineffective learning tool I have ever encountered. I went to the doctor to get my eyes tested for glasses the other day, 75 dollars out of pocket and what did I leave the shop with? Nothing on paper, I assure you. No prescription. Just the advice that I should “spend less time on the computer”. Leads me to wonder, will I be in any position to sue the university if in ten years I am blind from reading hundreds of pages of statistics jargon in my last year as an undergrad? Also, unlike a regular textbook the student doesn’t have the option of recouping any of the excessive funds used to purchase the book. Instead, the “subscription” runs out after a certain amount of time. Thus my relationship with the e-book is doomed. I mean, why get attached to something that will just end up leaving you anyway. My professor might buy that defense.


In closing , I am involved with a couple REAL books right now. You know how I do.
They are:



Our Aperture- The new chapbook from Ander Monson, available only online from New Michigan Press. This slight work requires a few reads, as it works a lot to challenge your notions of memory, cyclical narrative and the manipulations of language and meaning.






All Souls- The forthcoming novel from Christine Schutt. I received this upon request after Bayard Godsave introduced me to her work through A Day, a Night, Another Day, Summer, which blew me away. I have to admit that I will judge a book by its cover and All Souls really scared me upon first glance, for a second I thought, “Oh God, they’ve gotten to her.” But, upon reading, I can’t imagine Schutt could to turn out anything less than extraordinary.

Reading Christine Schutt is like entering a grand old mansion. A mansion built by some over-zealous speculator in early 20th century North Dakota, abandoned shortly after. Each sentence is a room in that house. You can just feel the potential energy. You look out the window, open and close the window, place your hat in the closet, take it out. You turn the light on and off. You take in the storied colors and smells. You know that this room is desperate for purpose and you feel comforted knowing that just standing there is fulfilling the wish and you start running from room to room until before you know it you’re out the front door again, outside marveling at this grand old mansion.


Verdict: e-books, bad. REAL books, best ever.

The Resurrectionist - Jack O'Connell

The very fact that you read up on books on The Inside Flap says to me that you, the reader, are discerning in your tastes. Without tooting any unnecessary horns, I think it’s safe to say that the contributors to this blog know a bit about fantastic reads. In this spirit of congratulations all around on taste and meritorious reading, I’d like to ask a question…

How strange are you willing to get?

Jack O’Connell seems to ask this question at the close of nearly every chapter of The Resurrectionist; and it’s not altogether unlikely that you’ll ask yourself that same question while reading the book.

I hope you’re willing to get so strange that a troupe of alternate reality circus freaks led by a chicken boy doesn’t throw you off the exploration of what might be a window into the collective unconscious.

I hope you’re willing to get so strange that the hard-riding biker gang holed up in an abandoned prosthetics factory and dealing in human bodily fluids doesn’t blind you to the thoughtful meditation about fatherhood and family.

I hope you’re willing to get so strange that an egomaniacal neurosurgeon and his prized salamander don’t obscure the questions raised about ethics and motivation in medicine.

I hope you’re willing to get so strange that you can recognize how a story within the story has the power to teach a lesson about happiness and the dangers of seeking it from a storyteller who owes you nothing.

Most of all, I hope you’re willing to get so strange that all of the bells, whistles, oddities and weirdos populating The Resurrectionist serve not to distract, but steer you right to the ultimate point; forgiveness is transformative.

If the sort of insanity cited above doesn’t faze you, enjoy. If it does, make the leap. You know what they say; The first three hundred and four pages are the strangest.