Burn After Reading

No writing? There's always reading.

Recently finished:

Emperor of the Air, Ethan Canin. (I went to a reading of his at a local college, and Curtis Sittenfeld was in the audience, which makes no sense to me- why is she in St. Louis? Anyway, his short stories, especially the title one of this first collection, are pretty great, but he read from his most recent novel, America, America. It seems age and years of listening to himself talk at Iowa has made him expansive bordering on just long-winded.)

The Hunger Moon, Suzanne Matson. (So good! Beautifully drawn characters and climactic tension. And I'm not biased because she was my thesis advisor.)

Still Life with Woodpecker, Tom Robbins. (Re-read for about the twentieth time and it blew my mind all over again. Possibly- no, I think it is- my favorite book of all time.)

Currently reading:

Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut. (Awesome, as per usual.)

Of Love and Other Demons, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. (A girl bitten by a rabid dog, a corpse with flowing red hair, a smitten priest? I don't know, I can't really get into it yet.)

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace. (Oh, my God, I'm in love. "Forever Overhead": re-read, and omg what an f-ing gorgeous story.)

Whitman. (If I'm sending off an application or going into an interview, for some reason I keep repeating the first few lines of "Song of Myself." It seems to help.)

I miss the blog, Attic-addicts. Let's get it goin. How's everybody doin? I've been slinging books at Borders, got a job today at Wash U, and last night I learned to country two-step. That's about it.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.