On the Bookshelf / I Am Famous
This last week or so I've been in a manic phase of reading. I love it when this happens. Sometimes it seems like there's nothing good around to read...and, other times, there's too much. Such is the case now. I go to bed with literally three book on my lap, because I can't decide which one to focus on. Here's a rundown.
-I Love You More Than You Know by Jonathan Ames
My husband and I love us some Ames. This is his third book of essays--and, I think, his weakest, though I may be saying that because I read half of them once already when they were published on the web or in magazines. It's like how when you wait for your favorite band to release a new album and half of the songs are re-recordings of tracks that were already on an EP. That's the way I am about Ames: a superfan, a fan who seeks out magazines when I get wind that he has a piece in them (I read the articles at Barnes & Noble, then out the magazine back on the rack; I'm not that obsessive). A bit embarrassing, especially since the more Ames I read, the more disappointed I am by his unrelenting obsessions with his malfunctioning body, his malfunctioning career, and his malfunctioning lovelife.
The man is truly hilarious, though. I have a big crush on his literary persona, just like a number of other deranged females. Ames the man I don't know personally, and I have a feeling that he might actually be a drag...but what does it matter? We'll never be pals. So the present arrangement works out splendidly: I have a crush on a stack of books by a neurotic maniac--books that I can put away when I choose--and I have a caring, stable, flesh-and-blood husband to love in real life.
-Comfort Me with Apples by Ruth Reichl
This book came out what seems like ages ago--2001. I am just now getting around to reading Reichl's trilogy of memoirs, and it's both discouraging and encouraging. You see, Ruth Reichl is currently one of America's most respected food writers. She's the editor of Gourmet, a magazine that improved a hundredfold under her direction. Her self-portrait in food Tender at the Bone talked about her early life, but its follow-up, Comfort Me with Apples, is, to me, way more fun to read. That's because it's--pardon the pun--dishy. She becomes a restaurant critic and meets all of these towering figures in food media; she sleeps with some of them, even.
Comfort Me with Apples takes place mainly in the Bay Area--Reichl lived in a commune on Berkleye's Channing Way for over a decade--and it's full of landmarks that I recognize. As an aspiring food writer in my late 20s, I read this book and become inspired--she did it, I can do it too! But I also read the book and run across all kinds of now-famous names and marvel at how some people have a knack for being in the right place at the right time. Have you ever met someone that seems to know everyone and have been everywhere? I should not care about becoming that person, but maybe I do. A little.
-Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memmoir by Graham Roumieu
This is a follow-up, if not a sequel, to Bigfoot/Roumieu's previous book, In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot. That book gave me and the Mister countless hours of idiotic joy. Me Write Book is twice as long and a bit more thematically complex (it deals with the dark emotional underbelly of fame). Both books are picture books for adults, narrated in Bigfoot's inkblotted scrawl. They are too fuckin' funny. Here's a passage from Me Write Book: "Yes, everyone know Bigfoot smell like shit. Please make effort not to point out every time you see Bigfoot. Thank you." I ripped off this Bigfoot voice 100% in one of my anti-JT LeRoy tirades, but I will happily admit this.
-Marriage, A History by Stephanie Coontz
Whoa! What an eye-opener. This is too heavy for me to read too much of in one sitting. It makes me a little depressed. Love marriage is a pretty new thing for us humans; Coontz maintains that it began to emerge only during the Enlightenment, which--in grand terms, was not so very long ago. What forms did love take prior to this? I think that back in the day--marriage or no marriage--people just did not have very much time to run arounf flirting and fucking, because they were too busy trying to get food and shelter. So maybe, just because of circumstances, many crushes on Oog the next villiage over didn't have time to blossom because Ogg was too exhausted after gleaning millet fields for 13 hours. See what technology has brought us! More time to pine.
-I Love You More Than You Know by Jonathan Ames
My husband and I love us some Ames. This is his third book of essays--and, I think, his weakest, though I may be saying that because I read half of them once already when they were published on the web or in magazines. It's like how when you wait for your favorite band to release a new album and half of the songs are re-recordings of tracks that were already on an EP. That's the way I am about Ames: a superfan, a fan who seeks out magazines when I get wind that he has a piece in them (I read the articles at Barnes & Noble, then out the magazine back on the rack; I'm not that obsessive). A bit embarrassing, especially since the more Ames I read, the more disappointed I am by his unrelenting obsessions with his malfunctioning body, his malfunctioning career, and his malfunctioning lovelife.
The man is truly hilarious, though. I have a big crush on his literary persona, just like a number of other deranged females. Ames the man I don't know personally, and I have a feeling that he might actually be a drag...but what does it matter? We'll never be pals. So the present arrangement works out splendidly: I have a crush on a stack of books by a neurotic maniac--books that I can put away when I choose--and I have a caring, stable, flesh-and-blood husband to love in real life.
-Comfort Me with Apples by Ruth Reichl
This book came out what seems like ages ago--2001. I am just now getting around to reading Reichl's trilogy of memoirs, and it's both discouraging and encouraging. You see, Ruth Reichl is currently one of America's most respected food writers. She's the editor of Gourmet, a magazine that improved a hundredfold under her direction. Her self-portrait in food Tender at the Bone talked about her early life, but its follow-up, Comfort Me with Apples, is, to me, way more fun to read. That's because it's--pardon the pun--dishy. She becomes a restaurant critic and meets all of these towering figures in food media; she sleeps with some of them, even.
Comfort Me with Apples takes place mainly in the Bay Area--Reichl lived in a commune on Berkleye's Channing Way for over a decade--and it's full of landmarks that I recognize. As an aspiring food writer in my late 20s, I read this book and become inspired--she did it, I can do it too! But I also read the book and run across all kinds of now-famous names and marvel at how some people have a knack for being in the right place at the right time. Have you ever met someone that seems to know everyone and have been everywhere? I should not care about becoming that person, but maybe I do. A little.
-Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memmoir by Graham Roumieu
This is a follow-up, if not a sequel, to Bigfoot/Roumieu's previous book, In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot. That book gave me and the Mister countless hours of idiotic joy. Me Write Book is twice as long and a bit more thematically complex (it deals with the dark emotional underbelly of fame). Both books are picture books for adults, narrated in Bigfoot's inkblotted scrawl. They are too fuckin' funny. Here's a passage from Me Write Book: "Yes, everyone know Bigfoot smell like shit. Please make effort not to point out every time you see Bigfoot. Thank you." I ripped off this Bigfoot voice 100% in one of my anti-JT LeRoy tirades, but I will happily admit this.
-Marriage, A History by Stephanie Coontz
Whoa! What an eye-opener. This is too heavy for me to read too much of in one sitting. It makes me a little depressed. Love marriage is a pretty new thing for us humans; Coontz maintains that it began to emerge only during the Enlightenment, which--in grand terms, was not so very long ago. What forms did love take prior to this? I think that back in the day--marriage or no marriage--people just did not have very much time to run arounf flirting and fucking, because they were too busy trying to get food and shelter. So maybe, just because of circumstances, many crushes on Oog the next villiage over didn't have time to blossom because Ogg was too exhausted after gleaning millet fields for 13 hours. See what technology has brought us! More time to pine.
posted by Lefty at 9:30 AM
1 Comments:
Is that "Oog" as in the Oog??
...take a trip to your local dump, post apocalyptic themepark methane pump...
from MP's "the Oog"
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