#manicmonday #letterz @RaeLovesToRead

Adieu, Favorites A to Z! Thanks for the memories, @CBee

๐Ÿ“– ???
โœ๏ธ Howard Zinn
๐Ÿ“ฝ Zoolander
๐ŸŽค The Zombies
๐ŸŽต Ziggy Stardust (Bowie)

#manicmonday #lettery @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– You Can't Go Home Again (Thomas Wolfe)
โœ๏ธ W.B. Yeats
๐Ÿ“บ The Young Ones
๐ŸŽค Yazoo
๐ŸŽต You Send Me (Sam Cooke)

#manicmonday #letters @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– X-Men
โœ๏ธ Xenophanes
๐Ÿ“บ X-Files
๐ŸŽค X, X-Ray Spex, XTC
๐ŸŽต X Offender (Blondie)

#manicmonday #letterw @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– Wordhord (Hana Videen)
โœ๏ธ Robert Walser
๐Ÿ“บ The Wire
๐ŸŽค Wire, The Who
๐ŸŽต Watch Me Jumpstart (Guided By Voices)

#manicmonday #letterv @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– Vanity Fair (William Thackeray)
โœ๏ธ Kurt Vonnegut
๐Ÿ“ฝ Vertigo
๐ŸŽค The Velvet Underground
๐ŸŽต Victoria (The Kinks or The Fall)

#manicmonday #letters @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– The Unconsoled (Kazuo Ishiguro)
โœ๏ธ Upton Sinclair
๐Ÿ“ฝ The Usual Suspects
๐ŸŽค U2
๐ŸŽต Under the Milkyway (The Church)

#wondrouswednesday @Eggs

โค๏ธ No. I have enough productivity metrics running my life at the moment. I read to get away from that.
๐Ÿ’œ No goal to meet, but I am meeting my writing goals (which means I'm barely reading at all at the moment).
๐Ÿ’™ Laid back Christmas at home, no plans, no obligations ๐Ÿ˜Ž

Tag @RaeLovesToRead @IuliaC @eeclayton

#manicmonday #LetterT @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– True Grit (Charles Portis)
โœ๏ธ Hunter S Thompson
๐Ÿ“ฝ Trainspotting ๐Ÿ“บ Twin Peaks
๐ŸŽค A Tribe Called Quest
๐ŸŽต Throw it Away (Black Lips), They Reminisce Over You (Pete Rock and CL Smooth)

#manicmonday #LetterS @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
โœ๏ธ David Simon, George Saunders
๐Ÿ“บ The Sopranos, The Simpsons, Seinfeld
๐ŸŽค The Stooges
๐ŸŽต Search and Destroy (The Stooges)

#manicmonday #LetterR @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– Remains of the Day
โœ๏ธ Tom Robbins
๐Ÿ“บ Ramy ๐ŸŽฅ Rushmore
๐ŸŽค The Ramones
๐ŸŽต Ride the Lightning (Metallica), Russian Satellite (Mighty Sparrow)

#manicmonday #LetterQ @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– The Quiet American (Graham Greene)
โœ๏ธ Qu Yuan
๐Ÿ“บ Queen's Gambit
๐ŸŽค Q65
๐ŸŽต Queen Bitch (David Bowie)

#manicmonday #LetterP @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– Please Kill Me (Gillian McCain and Legs McNeil), A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
โœ๏ธ Charles Portis
๐Ÿ“บ Pee-wee's Playhouse
๐ŸŽค Pavement, Portishead, Pete Rock & CL Smooth,
๐ŸŽต Protect Ya Neck (Wu-Tang Clan), Pepper (Butthole Surfers), Pain in My Heart (Otis Redding)

#manicmonday #LetterO @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– On the Road (Kerouac)
โœ๏ธ George Orwell
๐Ÿ“บ The Office (UK)
๐ŸŽค Oasis
๐ŸŽต One to Another (the Charlatans)

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView

1. Music generally, but for some reason only podcasts when I go for a jog.

2. VPR/NPR, or if my daughter is being pushy, whatever garbage top-40 pop station is getting reception. Or, in rare cases, we find an 80s/90s station we both agree on ๐Ÿ˜

Tag @RaeLovesToRead @MegaWhoppingCosmicBookwyrm @IuliaC @eeclayton @CBee @AmyG @julesG

#manicmonday #LetterB @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)
โœ๏ธ Vladimir Nabokov
๐Ÿ“บ Nathan For You ๐Ÿ“ฝ No Country for Old Men
๐ŸŽค Nirvana
๐ŸŽต Needles in the Camel's Eye (Brian Eno)

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView

1. I think anything set after WWII feels too contemporary to be "historical fiction".

2. It's more like "historical fantasy", but the tagged book fits the bill.

Tag @RaeLovesToRead @CBee @MegaWhoppingCosmicBookwyrm @IuliaC @AmyG @eeclayton

#manicmonday #LetterM @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– (tie) Masters of Atlantis (Charles Portis), The Man Without Qualities (Robert Musil)
โœ๏ธ Robert Musil
๐Ÿ“บ Mr. Show
๐ŸŽค MF DOOM, Metallica
๐ŸŽต Master of Puppets (Metallica)

Easiest letter so far. Quite a few of my favorite favorites start with M.

#manicmonday #LetterL @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (Brian Moore)
โœ๏ธ le Carre, John
๐Ÿ“บ Lost (well, the first two seasons anyway ๐Ÿ˜†)
๐ŸŽค Lou Reed
๐ŸŽต Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division)

Polina Barskova is primarily a poet and scholar, so it's no surprise that this - her first foray into prose - combines florid language, history, and memoir to create a series of vignettes about life during the siege of Leningrad, an event whose echoes still dominate the now-St. Petersburg she grew up in. Like all collections of shorts, some worked better than others. Barskova's an excellent writer, though, and I'd love to read her academic work.

#manicmonday #LetterK @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain)
โœ๏ธ Franz Kafka
๐Ÿ“ฝ The Karate Kid
๐ŸŽค The Kinks
๐ŸŽต Kookies (MF DOOM)

1. Beyond a Boundary (CLR James)
2. Gringos (Charles Portis)
3. Dandelion Wine (Ray Bradbury)
4. The Lady Killer (Masako Togawa)
5. A Drinking Life (Pete Hamill)

Tag @RaeLovesToRead

Too many memoirs I've read are either sterile laundry lists of accomplishments or a series of disjointed anecdotes that don't do much to illuminate the subject. It's hard to write about things like childhood and addiction in a way that doesn't lapse into cliche, but Ditlevsen nails it here, distilling 20+ years of life down to its essence and homing in on the moments, images, and events that formed the person she became.

#manicmonday #LetterJ @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– Jitterbug Perfume (Tom Robbins)
โœ๏ธ Denis Johnson
๐Ÿ“บ Justified
๐ŸŽค Joy Division
๐ŸŽต Johnny Hit and Run Pauline (X)

#manicmonday #LetterI @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– The Idiot
โœ๏ธ John Irving
๐Ÿ“บ The IT Crowd
๐ŸŽค Iggy Pop
๐ŸŽต I'm Stranded (The Saints)

Despite going through a Russian lit phase in my teens and 20s I had never read Turgenev until now, and was shocked by what a modern, relatable novel this was. It's the age-old story of intergenerational strife, the elder fuddy duddies content to putz along with incremental liberal reforms and the young radicals who want to burn it all down and rebuild society from scratch. Apparently this novel introduced the term "nihilism" to the masses.

#manicmonday #LetterH @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– Hyperion (Dan Simmons) or Hotel New Hampshire (John Irving)
โœ๏ธ Frank Herbert
๐Ÿ“ฝ Heathers
๐ŸŽค Thee Headcoats
๐ŸŽต How Soon is Now? (The Smiths)

"Once upon a time young people had to study; if they didn't want to pass for ignoramuses then they had to work, whether they liked it or not. But now all they need is to say 'everything in the world is garbage!' and they're home and dry. The young were delighted with the idea. Before they were just blockheads, but now they've become nihilists."

Same now as it was in 1862 ?

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

"Well, Piotr, no sight of them yet?"

Sort of a meta detective story. The narrator is a writer of detective novels who gets evacuated to a rural village following the Allies' bombing of Japan, which happens to be the site of a "real life" locked-room murder mystery that occurred years earlier. The story is the narrator's attempt at reconstructing what happened based on the recollections and notes of various individuals, some of whom had more direct involvement in the case than others.

#manicmonday #LetterG @CBee @RaeLovesToRead

๐Ÿ“– Game of Thrones
โœ๏ธ Nikolai Gogol
๐ŸŽฅ Goodfellas
๐ŸŽค Guided By Voices
๐ŸŽต Game of Pricks (Guided By Voices)

Charles Portis writes the best dialogue of any author I've ever come across, hands down. Characters talk around and past one another, trade non sequiturs, and launch into meandering digressions that meld arcane trivia, wooden philosophical babble, and petty grievances in a way that's utterly unique. Neither has another author better captured America's paranoid, grasping, grifter heart. On my shortlist of favorite writer of all time.

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView

1. Post-Apocalyptic, I suppose, although there's been a glut of those books recently.

2. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. Works nicely as a parable about life and parenthood.

Tag @RaeLovesToRead @CBee @IuliaC @MegaWhoppingCosmicBookwyrm

#manicmonday #LetterF @CBee

๐Ÿ“– Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
โœ๏ธ Follett, Ken
๐ŸŽฅ Fargo
๐ŸŽค The Fall
๐ŸŽต Fuck and Run (Liz Phair)

Your turn @RaeLovesToRead ๐Ÿ˜Š

Enjoyed this book so much I read the entire thing in two days. What started out seeming as though it would be a series of interwoven vignettes involving the residents of a boarding house for women in Tokyo eventually coalesced into a single, tightly plotted narrative with an ending that was both surprising and yet fit perfectly with everything that had come before it. I've never read a mystery quite like this one. Maximum โญ๏ธs!

I have to give c-RAE-dit to @RaeLovesToRead for this recommendation. I haven't read any of the other Hobb trilogies. There may be better starting points to introduce oneself to the sprawling fictional world she's created. Still, what impressed me most about this book was how intimate it felt - a handful of characters and settings rendered in exquisite detail that still managed to give a sense of the larger world outside the story. 5โญ๏ธ

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView @MegaWhoppingCosmicBookwyrm

1. I'm going to say Ireland. I've been to Hawaii several times and all over the Caribbean, so I don't really need another tropical island in my life.

2. If it's Ireland, I guess Dubliners? To be honest probably none, since I won't be spending much time there lounging on the beach ๐Ÿ˜„

Tag @RaeLovesToRead @IuliaC @eeclayton

#manicmonday #LetterE @CBee

Thanks for the tag @RaeLovesToRead ๐Ÿ˜Š

๐Ÿ“– (The) Eye of the World
โœ๏ธ Ernest Hemingway
๐Ÿ“บ Enlightened
๐ŸŽค Eric B & Rakim
๐ŸŽต Ever Fallen in Love (The Buzzcocks)

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView

Thanks for the tag, @RaeLovesToRead ๐Ÿ˜Ž

1. That's an easy one, Ship of Magic. Technically, it's also my least favorite book of August, since it's the only one I've read this month ๐Ÿ˜ฉ But I do enjoy it quite a bit.

2. Like all the best fantasy epics, it has all those things. Will probably seek out Hobb's other series as well.

Tag @IuliaC @fredamans @MegaWhoppingCosmicBookwyrm

#manicmonday #LetterD @CBee

๐Ÿ“– Dog of the South (Charles Portis)
โœ๏ธ Dostoevsky
๐Ÿ“บ Deadwood
๐ŸŽค David Bowie
๐ŸŽต Dark Globe (Syd Barrett)

Get it girl! @RaeLovesToRead

Although I lived in New York for several years, I had never visited the Morgan Library and Museum before last week. Did you know that JP Morgan was obscenely wealthy? ๐Ÿ˜ So much so that he had not one, not two, but THREE Guttenberg Bibles in his collection. Lots of other cool stuff too, including a fragment from the original manuscript of Paradise Lost, an original copy of the Apocalypsis, and Henry VIII's personal Bible.

Since @RaeLovesToRead has embedded in my head the idea that one must buy at least four books every time one leaves the house, I picked these up on our trip to NYC last week. The two on the left came from The Strand, while the two on the right are from this fantastic Japanese bookstore, Kinokuniya, which I would recommend everyone visit if they get the chance (there are stores in Chicago and on the west coast as well).

#BlameItOnTheRae

#manicmonday #LetterC @CBee

๐Ÿ“– Catch-22
โœ๏ธ Chandler, Raymond
๐Ÿ“บ Community ๐Ÿ“ฝ Casablanca
๐ŸŽค The Cramps
๐ŸŽต Cold, Cold Heart (Hank Williams)

You're up @RaeLovesToRead ๐Ÿ˜‹

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView

Thanks for the tag @RaeLovesToRead ๐Ÿ˜€

1. It would have to be general/literary fiction. All my favorite books fall under that umbrella. If that's too broad, then probably fantasy.

2. First half. What's an ending with no buildup or stakes? I can imagine my own ending anyway ๐Ÿ™‚

#manicmonday #LetterB @CBee

Book: The Buried Giant
Author: Bangs, Lester
Movie: Big Lebowski
Band: Black (Flag, Sabbath, or Lips, I can't decide ๐Ÿ˜€)
Song: Banned in DC (Bad Brains)

Your turn @RaeLovesToRead ๐Ÿ˜

#Two4Tuesday

Thanks for the tag @TheSpineView

1. Probably more than one, but the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comes to mind right away.

2. Fantasy epic involving living ships ๐Ÿšข

Tag everyone!

#manicmonday #LetterA @CBee

"Thanks" for the tag @RaeLovesToRead ?

Book: Annihilation
Author: Adams, Douglas
TV Show: The Americans
Band: Alice in Chains
Song: Alternative Ulster (Stiff Little Fingers)

Tag @IuliaC @julesG @AmyG and whoever else wants to join!

I'm a language/etymology nerd and got turned onto this book by my favorite podcast, A Way With Words. A well-researched and engagingly written study of Old English and how it eventually morphed into the language we speak today. Worth it alone to learn the subtle differences between aelf-siden (elf-enchantment), aelf-adl (elf-disease), and aelf-sogetha (elf-ailment). ๐Ÿ˜‚

Reading has been slow-going as of late, but on the plus side I did come across this early medieval recipe for treating "elf-enchantment" ?โ€โ™€๏ธ?โ€โ™‚๏ธ

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

Wander down a small alley off London's Fleet Street and you'll find a pub with a crooked, creaky charm.

It's a shame, I only discovered Portis about a year ago and I'm already more than halfway through his oeuvre. Five novels is not a large output for a writer, but having only read three so far he's already one of my all-time favorites. Norwood was his first, and like most first novels it's a bit shaggier and less ambitious than those that came later. But the signs are all there, specifically his pristine dialogue, maybe the funniest I've ever read.