Robbie Q. Telfer says I needs to read more books. He has recommended some with regard to writing.
I’m not much for fiction, so I need lists of sweet non-fiction and books about learning stuff. Good stuff. Not shite. I enjoy history and auto/biographies. I am also down to read more on English and writing.
Any thoughts?
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Word to the nerd.
2008: Doing it!
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Best Words, Best Order by Stephen Dobyns.
Collapse by Jared Diamond. I haven’t read it, but it’s in my to-do pile. And warning: it’s depressing — about the way our civilization is slowly destroying itself. Yay!
On Writing- Stephen King
He has some sections specifically for writing fiction, but he has great advice for any writer. plus, it’s a really good story.
many poets i know have gotten useful advice from this book.
I like Devil and the White City. Helter Skelter is pretty cool. Savage Beauty (Biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay) is pretty good.
I also like Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.
Freakanomics….it’s not about writing, but it’s freaking rad and will make you look at things and go…huh….interesting.
“Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk” by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
The Journals of Lewis & Clark ed. Robert Moulton
5 Degrees by Nicholas Christopher.
Bitter Angel by Amy Gersler
I second this–On Writing is awesome. Half autobiography, half writing advice.
in no particular order
“A Defense of Poetry” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Pink Institution by Selah Saterstrom
Modern Life by Matthea Harvey
Some Ether by Nick Flynn
The End of the Alphabet by Claudia Rankine
Crush by Richard Siken
In Search of Duende by Federico Garcia Lorca
Cherry and The Liars Club by Mary Karr
anything by David Sedaris, my favorite is Dress Your Family in Denim and Courderoy
Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt
hey mike!
hey mike, i’ve been reading some really awesome non-fiction lately, so you might want to check these out. i highly recommend all of them, especially if you like documentary movies, which are my favourite things ever… these are like documentaries done in print.
GIG
this book is really awesome. it’s a collection of people talking about their jobs, everyone from the greeter at walmart to a supermodel and back again, and it’s all very insightful and moving and sometimes really sad and hilarious. the guy who talks about his job as a crime scene cleaner is priceless, as is the one about the porn star. each story is about three or four pages long, and they are arranged thematically. love it!
*****
THE NEW KINGS OF NON-FICTION
this is another good one, a collection of creative non-fiction curated by ira glass of “this american life,” one of my favourite shows on NPR. he gathers very interesting writers telling very interesting stories about very interesting people, very much like extended “this american life” episodes. fascinating, and very fun to read! the very first one is about this 14-year-old kid who made nearly a million dollars on the stock market using the internet and how the government thought he must surely be a sinister rogue figure, not some kid from a trailer park who was bored with school.
*****
THE KNOW-IT-ALL
this is written by a guy who does “experiential journalism,” meaning he goes out and does stuff just to give himself something to write about. this stunt is to read the entire encyclopedia britanica. all of it. all 44 million words of it. he shares some of the absolutely bizarre facts he digs up, plus he shares how his rapidly expanding wealth of knowledge impacts his life and those around him who tire very rapidly of his constant need to let you know the average life span of the titmouse, and so on. it’s hilarious and very interesting.
*****
STIFF
the subtitle of this book is “the curious lives of human cadavers.” it tells about all the myriad things that can happen to a person’s body once they donate it to science, everything from being a fleshy crash test dummy to being a severed head used for practice in plastic surgery training. it’s morbid and fascinating and told with lots of graveyard humour. really great read!
*****
WORLD WAR Z
this is a work of fiction that reads like an actual oral history of the horrors of the zombie apocalypse. it’s told in short vignettes, in interviews with people who survived, and it’s done for real, like, this is not some goofy zombie horror movie shit that makes you roll your eyes, this is done as if this actually really happened and these are the people who survived it telling you what happened from first hand experience. it’s SOOOO well done that i completely bought into it from the beginning and i couldn’t put it down. very intense, and the writer very obviously created an entire world torn apart by zombies. so good!
Alright, I know you said no fiction, but I’m going to ignore that and suggest Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read and I really think you’ll appreciate it.
Ohyes!Second that!
I’ll have to add a third to Stephen King’s On Writing!
I know it’s going to sound a little strange, but Rick Flair’s autobiography: To be the Man. It’s a really fascinating read.
unfortunately, everything else I’ve been reading lately has been dry, academic readings.
by the way, it was freakin’ great seeing and talking to you in Buffalo!
I third this.
Maybe everyone’s read it, I don’t know . . .
I very much enjoyed Homicide: Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon. I enjoyed reading about the crime and history of Baltimore city around the late 80′s.
I second Devil and the White City.
read the Stompin’ Tom biography – Before the Fame. it’s amazing.
plus any of Dave Bidini’s road story books.
My $0.02
The Crazy Years, by Spider Robinson (a compilation of his newspaper columns) on Sedaris.
I agree with
The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman (Daily Show and NY Times writer)
Wisdom From a Rainforest by Stuart Schlegel (Anthropological history)
The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody by Will Cuppy (VERY entertaining history)
And of the “Weird” books (Weird US, Weird New England, Weird NY, etc), by the Weird NJ dudes Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman
The New Seventeen Book of Etiquette and Young Living (1970 edition) by Enid A. Haupt. Yes, it’s a manners book. It’s exceptionally entertaining!
The Greeks by Kenneth Dover (Historical/anthropological/archeological, but written by a Brit with an exceptional grasp of language and humor)
I’m not much for non-fiction, actually, but I have a couple of good ones for you. Two writing-related, one not, at least not exactly:
Forbidden Knowledge – Roger Shattuck
An intellectual tour-de-force, Forbidden Knowledge is a study of the ethics of literary and scientific inquiry. Shattuck first approaches his subject indirectly, conducting an engaging tour of Western literature: Adam and Eve, Prometheus, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Goethe’s Faust, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. He then uses these tales to address the moral questions raised by mankind’s tendency to search for dangerous knowledge. He contrasts J. Robert Oppenheimer’s acceptance of guilt for the atomic bombings with Edward Teller’s dismissal of the same. In his own field of literary criticism he argues against the neutral analysis of immoral works as “pure literature,” illustrating his point with a critique of the Marquis de Sade. Forbidden Knowledge is a stimulating and forceful intellectual argument against moral relativism, as well as a practical approach to difficult ethical problems, from genetic engineering to pornography.
Writing Down the Bones – Natalie Goldberg
[close] Wherein we discover that many of the “rules” for good writing and good sex are the same: Keep your hand moving, lose control, and don’t think. Goldberg brings a touch of both Zen and well… *eroticism* to her writing practice, the latter in exercises and anecdotes designed to ease you into your body, your whole spirit, while you create, the former in being where you are, working with what you have, and writing from the moment.
Word Work – Bruce Holland Rogers
In Word Work, Bruce Holland Rogers writes not about how to write, or how to publish, but about how to be a writer. Claiming to be “extraordinarily gifted with neuroses, even for a writer,” Rogers is well-practiced in such writerly pursuits as procrastination, self-doubt, and rejection. Thus, he is perfectly able to write from experience. Rogers’s tone is friendly, anecdotal, low-key. In each essay, he contemplates some aspect of the writing life, from writer’s block (for which he recommends “atomizing” a writing project, by breaking it down into minute parts) to writing rituals; from quitting one’s day job (“depends on how important writing is to you and how seriously you take your own death”) to writing workshops. You can almost see him holding up some aspect of the writing life–procrastination, say–between his fingertips and his thumb, turning and examining it from all angles, then musing about how to deal with it. Good news: there are benefits, he discovers, to such impediments as depression, negative thinking, and trying to write with children in the house. –Jane Steinberg
Re: in no particular order
Actually Mike, Selah Saterstrom is my favorite professor in my program at DU. SHe’s fucking amazing! :0)
Re: hey mike!
I second Stiff. It’s a very interesting book about many of the amazing things that can happen to your body after you die.
Non Fiction
Graceful Exits: How Great Beings Die –Blackman
Life’s Matrix: An Autobiography of Water –Philip Ball
Salt: A World History –Mark Kurlansky
City Of Quartz –Mike Davis
Guns, Germs, & Steel –Jared Diamond
Peace Is Every Step –Tich Nhat Hanh
Emotional Intelligence –Daniel Goleman
Aghora: At The Left Hand Of God –Svoboda
Natural Health, Natural Medicine –Andrew Weil, M.D.
Kitchen Confidential –Anthony Bourdain
Dragon’s Play –Belya & Tainer
Of Water and the Spirit –Some
The Richest Man In Babylon –George X Clauson
The Eight Human Talents –Gurmukh
Abhinavaguupta’s Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita (Tr. By Boris Marjanovic)
Animals In Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior –Temple Grandin
Autobiography of a Yogi –Paramahansa Yogananda
Book of Five Rings –Mushashi (commentary by Kaufman)
Setting Limits with your Strong-Willed Child –Robert J. MacKenzie
Sexual Energy Ecstasy –David & Ellen Ramsdale
Discipline & Punish –Foucault
Savage Beauty (biography of Edna Saint Vincent Millay)
Heaven’s Coast (Mark Doty’s memoir)
The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Li-Young Lee’s memoir)
What is Found There: Essays on Poetry and Politics (Adrienne Rich)
The Life of Poetry by Muriel Rukeyser
I’m the master of the books you search for!
Anything by Bill Bryson!
Okay, I can recommend a lot more than just Bill Bryson, but I really do like his books and I think you will two.
In regards to English Language, read Mother Tongue and then Made In America. They’re sort of books about the development of the English Language along with some history of Britain and USA, both in the guise of a traveller musing about his adventures.
If you’re interested in cultural/historical stories about America, read The Lost Continent and The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid [this one deals primarily with our parent's generation and why they turned out the way the did. VERY inciteful!]
If you’re interested in European or particularly English stuff, read Neither Here Nor There [Europe] and Notes from a Small Island [Britain - Opens with a wonderful scene of a young Bill Bryson with a pair of underwear on his head in place of a hat]
Also, he wrote the best, most readable/accessable history of science I’ve ever come across: A Short History of Nearly Everything
Off the topic of Bill Bryson, you’d probably really like Pamela Stephenson’s [aka Mrs Billy Connelley] biography called ‘Billy.’ And Steve Martin has a new autobiography out called ‘Born Standing Up.’
‘Hero with a Thousand Faces’ by Joseph Campbell might interest you. About how all heros in all stories and epics are basically the same basis types. Also ‘The Seven Basic Plots’ by Christopher Booker [who I met a few years back] about how there’s only 7 different kinds of stories that we ever tell.
You’d probably really like ‘Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure’ [traveling the world to meet the few people who's websites are a 1 in X-Billion odds] or ‘Join Me’ by Danny Wallace [Traveling the world to get people to join his 'cult,' without saying what the cult is all about [because he doesn't know himself]. It’s amazing how many people are so willing to join a movement!]
I could give you loads more ideas, but that’s probably enough for the moment.
Bryce
Oops, forgot QI
Should have mentioned this one:
QI: The Book of General Ignorance
It’s written by the staff that writes a comedy ‘quiz’ show on BBC. The point is, there’s a lot of things that we ‘know,’ that actually turn out to be completely wrong! Like, how do dogs really have sex? The fact that ‘American baseball’ was invented in England and even features in a Jane Austin novel, and America wasn’t named after Amerigo Vespucci [but the map maker who put his name on it].
It’s exactly the sort of thing that you and I would always discuss at coffee or driving from my house to yours.
If you can’t get it in the states, you can read it when you come out here to visit!
Bryce
i will triple this.
if you live in chicago it’s that much cooler
I second Freakanomics – it poses some interesting theories about economics in america touching on a range of subjects including life in a gang and the legalization of abortion.
For a good cry: Before I Say Goodbye – Ruth Picardie: Autobiography of a woman dying of breast cancer.
For a laugh: Word Freak – Stefan Fatsis: An exploration of the game of Scrabble and those people who play it professionally–including the author’s journey to become a scrabble expert.
Enjoy!
Melissa
i got your books right here!
True and False by David Mamet
It’s his book on acting and the industry as a whole but it can easily be applied to performance poetry. or any creative art for that matter. I would go so far to recommend ANY PLAY mamet has written. Take careful note of how he uses conjunctions, mono and poly-syllabic words to create a rhythmic quality to his dialog.
The Orestia by Aeschylus- The original trilogy. Back when they wrote plays completely in Verse. this bad boy chronicles the trojan war and the aftermath. it also follows the curse of the house of Atryus. The first play concerns the great general Agamemnon who before this play sacrifices his daughter so that the wind will blow again so they may sail into war.then his wife kills him. Amazing language. classic use of verse and meter.
God’s Politics- God is not a republican or a democrat. this book discusses how the republican party has taken faith based politics to create single issue voting (ie abortion) and has basically scared most demos away from supporting their faith. it also talks about how world peace, feeding the poor taking care of our neighbors are also christian ideals and issues. The dude still apposes abortion rights but an interesting read none the less.
and if you haven’t read “the audacity of hope” yet GET ON IT.