May 26, 2008
Summer reading list
I promise this isn’t one of those pretentious reading lists where I pretend to enjoy — or even understand — Kafka and Sartre. Rather, it’s a documented effort not to be one of those shitty adults who still lists Lois Lowry’s The Giver as her favorite book. This summer I’m reading:
Literal Madness by Kathy Acker
I read Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School over winter vacation and liked it so much that when I later stumbled upon a scrawl of bathroom graffiti proclaiming: “Joseph Campbell gave me hope, and now I have been saved,” I scratched out “Joseph Campbell” and wrote “Kathy Acker.” Literal Madness is a collection of three of Acker’s novels, and I’m still plodding through the first, Kathy Goes to Haiti.
Neon Wilderness by Nelson Algren
My only reason for wanting to read this book is that Windy City music maven Jessica Hopper recommended it several times in her Punk Planet column.
All the required readings from my friend Jenn’s women’s studies class
So far, I’ve made it through Laurie Notaro’s The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club and Koren Zalickas’ Smashed: Stories of a Drunken Girlhood. I really liked the former. Notaro, a Phoenix humor columnist, reminds me of David Sedaris, and the two undoubtedly function on the same level of estrogen. Meanwhile, Zalickas’ book wasn’t nearly as much fun — probably due to the subject matter with which it dealt. Somewhere around page 250, I noticed the book begin to drag. Burdened with an attention span rivaling a gnat’s, I’ve always been drawn to Ramones songs and novellas, and Zalickas’ determination to recount every one of her benders started to irk me. Still, reading Zalickas’ account of her struggle with booze is better than reading Elizabeth Wurtzel’s memoirs, but then what isn’t? Up next is what promises to be a riveting read: a book called Women and Workplace Discrimination.