Title: Wolf Totem: A Novel
Author: Jiang Rong
LC Rating:

Every once in awhile I find myself reading a book that is just so impossibly true that it depresses the hell out me and compels me to continue reading non-stop thru the day until my eyes are strained, my nerves frayed, and my sense of indignation has been brought back to the forefront to the point that I feel like screaming at people. I imagine you’re currently scratching your heads and asking how it is that someone can actually enjoy this process. I loved this book, because it’s not just a book; it’s a weapon.

Title: Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism
Author: Daniel Pinchbeck
LC Rating:

This is for the cognoscenti;
the discerning eye.

big shout to talking plant
for bringing this tome to my attention

This is not ground to be entered lightly.

This wasn’t written to convince anyone of anything
This wasn’t written to be a great work or to explain anything

This was written because I had to write it
This was written because I hope someone will read this, and be reassured
This was written because writing is so often all I have . . .
In these modern times.

I swear it’s not doom and gloom, and I hope you’ll agree with me.
-finite (do me a favor and play along) jester

When you devour 700+ pages in less than twenty-four hours and your dreams take a turn of such tangential oddness that a careful consideration of the themes involved leads you somewhat surprisingly, yet inexorably, back to the bound stack of paper that first entered your awareness as Mark Z. Danielewki’s House of Leaves; well, when that happens . . . you know that you’ve encountered something special.

This particular book was so good that I’m a bit of quandary as how to begin this review. In truth, I finished Robert Hellenga’s Philosophy Made Simple almost a week ago, and have been sitting on this review, uncertain of the best tactic to encourage all interested parties, or indeed to spark interest in those disinterested, to read this.

Here at Lewd Cognoscenti we like to consider ourselves writers. Everyone on the staff has long harbored dreams of some sort of literary accolades, or at the very least putting a novel into print.

Well, there’s this idea that talking plant and I have been batting about for awhile, and the other day the concept of putting it into a novel came up and quickly became a necessary evil for us to attempt; truthfully I think it’s just another damn good excuse to engage in a little friendly competition and in the process spur each other into actually writing a book.

Haruki Murakami is one of only a handful of authors out there who’s work I consider worthy of elevation into the heady realms of genius. I happened across his stuff earlier this year when this book, Kafka on the Shore called out to me from the library shelf. Immediately upon completion of this book I set out to read everything I could get my hands on by Murakami. I’ve since read all of his books save one, and only two of them were less than great.

I really hate to say things like; “This is my favorite book,” but in this case it’s fairly close to true. Anybody who has read this thing should understand at least of few of the references and puns that go into my name.

David Foster Wallace is part of a new breed of writer, doing things with language that make you drool. Every page of this book brings you into a fuller and fuller realization of the kind of brilliant mind that you are dealing with, and that, for me at least is the kind of experience always to be sought.

This is actually another paper I’d written for school, but it is about the book I stumbled across this year which blew my mind in ways that a book hadn’t blown my mind in a good long time. For anyone interested in new and progressive devolpments in literature.. this is a must read.