Top Ten Books to Save If...

Say your house was destroyed by flowing lava, abducted by aliens, burned to the ground, was overtaken by the army and then blown up... basically just imagine your bookcase, filled with all of the books you've ever loved in your entire life, was destroyed. Eegads. What a horrible thought.

Annnyway, with that being this week's theme from The Broke and the Bookish, I've decided to participate.

A lot of these books I've already mentioned or talked about on A Broken Binding... and now you get to hear about some of them again! Wahoo.

1. My Alice in Wonderland books. They are old, and awesome, and they have the original Alice drawings in them. I've loved them since I was a little girl... so obviously they are coming with me.

2. If I had to choose only ONE Brautigan book, I would choose In Watermelon Sugar because it is amazing. Truly it is most likely one of my favorite books of all time.

3. I just remember reading this book and becoming obsessed with Stephen King, which I've talked about before, when you say "I love Stephen King" a lot of literary nerds will roll their eyes at you. But whatevs, I do like him, the man can tell a tale.

4. Yes, this would be cheating. But, I would take my Norton Anthologies. Because if I can't grab EVERY book in my collection, I'd like to grab a little snippet of every book I have in my collection.

5. Just because, I mean, it's awesome. And a classic, and it has all my notes in it, and I fell in love with it.

6. Well c'mon, you know you'd have to grab your FAVORITE BOOK OF ALL TIME if this happened, so thus Mr. Gatsby is coming with me.

7. It's a beauty of a book. Really, truly, fantastic.

8. You've all seen my battle with Steinbeck on here, but it's boiled down to the point that I like him. And I would totally take one of his books with me. Specifically Of Mice and Men because it ruined my life in a good way. It's so depressing but wonderful.

9. I connected immensely with this book. I need to reread it... but I would have to bring it with because of how it made me feel in the past.

10. I would take this book because of one story in it, "Until Gwen" that completely changed my life. And I don't even know why. But I cry when I read it because it has so much beauty and love packed into one tiny short story. Love love love.

Anyway, these are the books I would grab. They all have some sort of special meaning to me, have affected me at some point in my life. They are all beautiful and wonderful in their own ways, and I know they would all provide me with some sort of solace if my entire book collection was destroyed.

What books would you take with you?

On to reading!

Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame Pt 4

Section Four:

Burning in Water Drowning in Flame (Poems 1972-1973)

the way

murdered in the alley of the land
frost-bitten against flagpoles
pawned by females
educated in the dark for the dark
vomiting into plugged toilets
in rented rooms full of roaches and mice
no wonder we seldom sing
day noon or night
the useless wars
the useless years
the useless loves
and they ask us,
why do you drink so much?
well, I suppose if the days were made
to be wasted
the years and the loves were made
to be wasted
we can't cry, and it helps to laugh -
it's like letting out
dreams, ideals,
poisons
don't ask us to sing,
laughing and singing to us,
you see, it is a terrible joke
Christ should have laughed on the cross,
it would have petrified his killers
now there are more killers than ever
and I write poems for them.

Now obviously these are just a few of the poems from the book, but they were some of the ones that really stood out to me (some that I wanted to put in were far too long to sit here and type out, and could be found nowhere on the internets to copy and paste). So please. If you liked any of the ones you’ve read over the last few days, do yourself a favor and buy some Bukowski.

 On to reading!

Drowning in Water, Burning in Flame Pt 3

Section Three:

At Terror Street and Agony Way (Poems 1965 -1968)

OK, before I even write about a poem let’s just talk about how awesome the title At Terror Street and Agony Way is. I absolutely love it.

i met a genius

I met a genius on the train

today

about 6 years old,

he sat beside me

and as the train

ran down along the coast

we came to the ocean

and then he looked at me

and said,

it’s not pretty.

it was the first time I’d

realized

that.

I have to say that there are a lot of great poems from this section. But this one is short, and concise, and I like it a lot.

On to Reading!

Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame Pt 2

Per my last post of Bukowski's Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame"

Crucifix in a Deathhand (Poems 1963-1965)

don’t come around but if you do…

yeah sure, I'll be in unless I'm out
don't knock if the lights are out
or you hear voices or then
I might be reading Proust
if someone slips Proust under my door
or one of his bones for my stew,
and I can't loan money or
the phone
or what's left of my car
thought you can have yesterday's newspaper
an old shirt or a bologna sandwich
or sleep on the couch
if you don't scream at night
and you can talk about yourself
that's only normal;
hard times are upon us all
only I am not trying to raise a family
to send through Harvard
or buy hunting land,
I am not aiming high
I am only trying to keep myself alive
just a little longer,
so if you sometimes knock
and I don't answer
and there isn't a woman in here
maybe I have broken my jaw
and am looking for wire
or I am chasing the butterflies in
my wallpaper,
I mean if I don't answer
I don't answer, and the reason is
that I am not yet ready to kill you
or love you, or even accept you,
it means I don't want to talk
I am busy, I am mad, I am glad
or maybe I'm stringing up a rope;
so even if the lights are on
and you hear sound
like breathing or praying or singing
a radio or the roll of dice
or typing -
go away, it is not the day
the night, the hour;
it is not the ignorance of impoliteness,
I wish to hurt nothing, not even a bug
but sometimes I gather evidence of a kind
that takes some sorting,
and your blue eyes, be they blue
and your hair, if you have some
or your mind - they cannot enter
until the rope is cut or knotted
or until I have shaven into
new mirrors, until the world is
stopped or opened
                                forever.

From a nice day:

“good morning, nice day isn’t it?

a fat woman says

I am unable to answer

and down the sidewalk I go

shamed

unable to tell her

of the knife inside me

I do notice though the sun is shining

that the flowers are pulled up on

their strings

and I on mine”

On to reading!

Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame Pt 1

Right before Christmas my Book Nerd Friend, Book Nerd Friend’s Girlfriend, Fiance and I were all out and about looking at a used book store downtown that we had recently heard of. I was walking around the aisles, taking in that familiar dusty smell of other people’s old books, carrying around a stack of Tom Robbins, when I noticed a tiny little wooden bookshelf by the front counter. What was on this wooden bookshelf you may ask? Well, let me enlighten you my friends, it was: Charles Bukowski. Not the dirty drunk old man himself, but some of his books and a few poem collections. So, with puppy dog eyes and pouty lips I asked Fiance to get me some for Christmas and, under the pretense that I would act surprised when I opened them, I left that day with two Bukowski books and three Tom Robbins. Talk about a haul.

Anyway, this review is about Bukowski’s collection of poems entitled Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame. It is a collection of selected poems from 1955-1973.

I think the best way to “review” this book is to post one of my favorite poems from each of the four sections, or a few portions of my favorite poems. So, the first section:

It Catches My Heart in Its Hands (Poems 1955-1963)

The Tragedy of the Leaves

I awakened to dryness and the ferns were dead,
the potted plants yellow as corn;
my woman was gone
and the empty bottles like bled corpses
surrounded me with their uselessness;
the sun was still good, though,
and my landlady's note cracked in fine and
undemanding yellowness; what was needed now
was a good comedian, ancient style, a jester
with jokes upon absurd pain; pain is absurd
because it exists, nothing more;
I shaved carefully with an old razor
the man who had once been young and
said to have genius; but
that's the tragedy of the leaves,
the dead ferns, the dead plants;
and I walked into a dark hall
where the landlady stood
execrating and final,
sending me to hell,
waving her fat, sweaty arms
and screaming
screaming for rent
because the world has failed us
both

I think it’s kind of pointless to really review poetry… because I think that poetry is what you make of it.

This poem has a lot of what I love about Bukowski. It has women, and a sense of poverty, and death. It has alcohol and sadness.

 On to reading!

Hunting Lonely Hearts

 It’s been a while since I actually read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I put it down and then forgot to write about it… which I don’t know exactly what it says about the book. It was OK, a little long and not really looking like it was going to get to any sort of point at times, but it was good. 

Bleak, but good. 

Basically The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is about a man named John Singer, a deaf mute in Georgia during the 1930s. He and his friend Antonopoulos, another deaf mute, live in a tiny little apartment together and have a quaint little life until Antonopoulos begins to go insane and is taken to a mental hospital in another town. Singer moves into a sort of boarding house owned by the Kelly’s. Enter Mick Kelly, a rambunctious tomboy of a girl who has a deep devotion to all things music related. The book follows Mick as she basically grows up. I have a hard time thinking that Mick is the main character, because the whole book revolves around John Singer, but most of the book is from Mick’s point of view, so it’s a little hard to determine.

Singer attracts a whole slew of misfits in the book, all who find solace in his quiet demeanor and his ability to listen to them ramble for hours (although he is deaf, he can read lips – and carries around a little card that explains so, along with “Please don’t shout”, which made me laugh). The oddball characters that seek out Singer are; Mick Kelly, Biff Brannon – local store owner, Jake Blount – a socialistic drunk carnival worker, and Dr. Copeland – an African American doctor who feels a lot of anger towards the injustices of his race. All of these characters are somehow alienated from society, or their families. They are all very similar, yet none of them are in any way connected except through Singer.

I just couldn’t help but feel bad for Singer the most. This guy, all he really wanted was to be able to talk with his old friend Antonopoulos again, to be able to tell about all of the things that were going on in his life. And then there are all of these people just badgering him day and night, talking his deaf little ears off, and never asking him any questions about how he is doing or anything like that. They were all just selfishly leaching some form of comfort out of him. My least favorite character was Blount. I wanted to stuff a sock in his rambling mouth.

The fact that McCullers wrote this at twenty-three is really outstanding. I mean, kudos to her for sure, but I just wasn’t enraptured by the book. It was good, but not the most amazing thing I’ve ever read. If I wanted to read a book about common everyday characters in the 1930s, I would probably just pick up a Steinbeck and go with that. If you haven’t read it, I would. It’s not a waste of time really, it just takes a little extra effort to get through it (at least for me it did). I hate to judge authors on one particular book (especially their first one), so I will probably try to read another by Miss McCullers. At some point.

On to reading!

Planning a Trip.

Planning a trip leads to less reading, apparently.
I've been reading a lot of guide books for Ireland, but I doubt you'd like to hear my reviews on those.

So, instead I will tell you about all of the cool things I am planning:

There were some criteria that we knew we'd have to meet in Ireland.
1) Stay in/tour a castle.
2) Drink a Guinness
3) Do something Irish literature related
4) See some sweet cliffs


Thus, we came up with this.

We are staying in this castle!

We are going to tour the Guinness factory and drink a pint (or two, or three...)

We are going to Trinity College where I can see The Book of Kells.

And we are taking a slight detour in our trip to go see these beautiful cliffs.

Those are just the criteria we had to fulfill, the rest is going to be added fun... such as the fact we will be there for St Patrick's Day... oh, and the fact that it's Ireland!

As you can tell, I'm getting very excited.

But here's my question for all of you. I want to read an Irish author before I get over there. Naturally, I want to either read Oscar Wilde or James Joyce.
For Joyce it would be:

For Wilde probably:

Or really anything by Wilde, I enjoy him.
Suggestions? Have you read one or the other (or both?), and if so, which do you recommend?

Have a great Monday!
On to reading (more travel guides)!