Whether it be fiction or nonfiction, what writers have to offer us is something we savor. New perspectives are essential to our survival, so when we open up a book there are a multitude of sensations taking place inside of us. Some of us treat our collections as long term projects; these are our research materials. Besides, consumption can be more satisfying if we deny our senses what it wants until we’re up to our elbows in stacks. O! the ecstasy is ripe when you find yourself here…
Diving into a book is about administering discipline. It also helps if you’re truly entranced by an author’s message. Although at times it may even be more horrifying to think that soon enough you will finish that one book, and your unique journey with those characters will come to an end -yet you are free to repeat the process itself, and with a whole other set of existential awakenings. Either way, I decided to sit down and figure which books really stuck with me over the last few months. This was a complicated situation I had set up for myself, but I’ll never turn down a challenge.
A Manual For Cleaning Women – Lucia Berlin – When I’d first come across her work, I had no idea she would quickly become my muse. Lucia Berlin should be every writers hero, but if she hasn’t yet made it to your bookcase don’t distress -these stories have recently been released and A Manual for Cleaning Women is easy enough to locate. I’ll admit to you this, I just discovered her work this year. It’s time we enter into Berlin’s mysterious and humble world. Lucia was never interested in appeasing the reader, in fact she wrote from a place that most authors wished they could access. Her stories are both frightening and charming. Wander around through nausea, deuces wild, care taking, bus rides in Mexico City, stars drawn with a felt-tip marker onto Sally’s bald head, gypsy deaths, latin class, Mama’s sex life…a unique anthology is Berlin’s short stories on the true lives of outsiders.
The Arthritic Grasshopper – Gisele Prassinos – She was a young writer born in Istanbul, who at the age of fourteen read her poems to the Surrealists. It’s difficult to describe when one might feel drawn to reading her work -I would recommend when you first wake in the morning, so that you might better imagine: A corpse, a bishop, a black pearl in your nostril…uncoil a murmur, as you set down your burdens and enter the feverish slumber of Prassinos. Dandelion hangs from your bellybutton, as your gaze bares witness to the grotesque and playful universe at your fingertips.
Annie John – Jamaica Kincaid – Kincaid is one of my literary heroes, and remains an outspoken author of our times. Annie John is an enlightening and tragic tale narrated by a tough-as-nails young black girl, whose intelligence sets her apart from her classmates. She acquires an intimate friendship with a girl named Gwen, which is overshadowed by Annie’s obsession with her own mother. It’s here we are granted access to the struggles of depression, colonization, and life in the Caribbean. Follow young Annie from puberty and into her adulthood -whose mother’s laughter is like a crocodile’s grin, whose vivid dreams haunt her waking life; an intro to physics class, turning 15, funeral visitations, escaping to the cinema… a coming of age story highlighting poverty and class alienation.
The Seven Mysteries of Life – Guy Murchie – Are you on the search to further your knowledge of the playful (yet academic) insights on tentacles, hermaphrodites, and strawberries? It is here that you are presented with this option, as well as one profound research experience. The Seven Mysteries of Life consists of 659 pages that cause my cerebral cortex (and, my heart) to spin itself into about a million different directions. As a reader, you’ll find yourself overwhelmed with information. Yet, as a researcher you’ll discover a new side of yourself -amidst the midnight wind, awakening the prose admirer and science geek that lies deep within. Further your studies on pollen, mice midwives, ambiguous three dimensional illusions, limestone, eardrums, worms, dreams, amnesia…imagine if Mary Roach had created a massive compendium on all the natural curiosities she has yet to write about -and you will then find yourself arriving here, at the crux of poetic intellect.
What A Plant Knows – Daniel Chamovitz – This is no beginners guide -so instead, turn your mind on at it’s full capacity, for the time has come to indulge in the mysteries (and similarities) behind plant & human interactivity. Be aware: plants speak to us, and send us -as well as animals and other plants- signals. They speak a language we do not always find ourselves accessing. You see, our human eyes are like antennas. As they absorb electromagnetic rays, we see light in the ‘visual spectra’. Whereas the ‘eyes’ of plants simply bend toward light. Their view specifically responds to ultraviolet & infrared light. These are not recent findings, but more so ancient truths that we have limited ourselves to being aware of, being our culture (for decades) has ignored the connection we have with nature itself. Don’t be afraid, as the answers to your life dilemma are not so frightening to digest.
Cinematic Cuts – Sheila Kunkle – I’ve always been curious as to how a conclusion fully impacts my experience with a film. What better way to make this analysis, than summoning the disappointment of desire, the somber Jewish-ness of Chaplin, Kurosawa’s examination of humanism, post-modern depression, Brechtian language trajectories! If you are in fact looking to elaborate on your film facts, this could be a deal with the devil that you will never regret. More books on the progress of film history must look to Sheila’s work for the way to a truth that is no longer immitatable. Deleuze and Claire Denis would be proud.