I love it when a random grab from a library shelf unleashes something this good into my world. The whole time I was reading this, (in between- of course- gasps of recognition) I was thinking what a grand thing it would be; to spend an evening chatting with Ammons over cocktails, to hash out a momentary description of cognition, a slew of words coming to ephemeral omniscience. The man has skill, we’ll start at that.

Kurt Vonnegut! Hero of my earliest adventures into literature! A cynic with a heart of gold and unmistakably a member of the cognoscenti. I remember well my sadness at hearing him state that he would never write another book. Yet now, here we have this, A Man Without a Country, unmistakably Vonnegut, definitely genius.

He’s got a gift this one… knows exactly how to tap you on the forehead with a sentence hammer, leaving you momentarily stunned as your mind reels through the possibilities suddenly presented. Didn’t expect the last story to venture into science fiction, but it did, and it works.

The overwhelming theme here is humanity as it comes into contact with technology. The three tales presented dove-tail nicely, repeated themes, names, and perhaps most interestingly: Walt Whitman exists in all the stories, kind of like a ghost in the machine.

Ok, so let’s first off state that any book which refers to America and AmericaTM is going to have to commit some previous grievous acts of stupidity in order to get on my bad-side. As a matter of fact I read this when it first came out and just read it again, so there’s a great deal of good to be found.

I love first novels, being an aspiring novelist myself, I take great pleasure in cracking open a first novel. At either extreme you run the possibility of discovering a great new talent or cackling maliciously at the kind of tripe that will get published. While I’m not prepared to herald Jim Lynch as a major new talent in literature, this is a wonderful book.

Samorost is a puzzle game that requires you to find hotspots on the screen to work your way through the puzzle. It is brilliantly constructed from what looks like animations of photos.

Enjoy…

Oh, yeah. There is a sequel here.

This isn’t the sort of book you love for the way the sentences are put together, or even the fundamental beauty of the plot. This is a fun story, but the beauty of it is the questions raised.

Jostein Gaarder was a philosophy teacher, and his other book Sophie’s World reads like your basic introductory philosophy course wrapped up in an Alice in Wonderland-style fantasy.

Every so often you stumble across those books that are devoured in an afternoon because the characters live, the plot propels itself without excess of artifice, and because there are enough little bits and pieces of genius in the thing to make it adhere itself to your hands and will not be set far from one’s thoughts until the last page has turned. This is one of those.

This was a random, let’s see what’s on the new release shelves of the library, find. Called out to me because it was a nicely sized book that promised to make the myth of Atlas and Heracles relevant to our modern world. Seemed like an intriguing notion.

Andy Goldsworthy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Andy Goldsworthy (born Cheshire, England, 1956) is a British artist and photographer living in Scotland who produces site specific sculpture and land art situated in natural settings. His art involves the use of natural and found objects to create temporary sculptural pieces which both appear naturalistic and create stark contrasts with their surroundings. He works closely with form and color contrasts to produce works that are both striking and ephemeral.

Salman Rushdie. Allow me to take this moment to wax lyrical about genius. Alright, so I’m not feeling terribly lyrical this morning, but this man has put together some of the best books I’ve read. Out of his body of work it’s awfully difficult to pin-point which is my personal favorite, but this book right here is one of his best.

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.

The life-story of a man born from an English father and an Indian (that’s Ghandi’s country not Native American {bless the convolutions of language in the P.C. era}) woman. Originally raised as an Indian, his true identity is discovered and he finds himself cast out into the streets.

A Salute To Tom Robbins….

{a moment of hushed silence please, and if yer imbibing anything at the present moment, imbibe away as we salute this giant}

You, dear sir, whose fanciful wordage has transported the faithful into the heady realms of playful cosmic time-space, whose female characterizations has led me towards the slavering foolishness of lust, whose need to poke sharpened sticks into the hulking bodies of so many of our over-inflated cultural certainties…