Friday, July 07, 2006

Summer Reading List

Summer is flying by. Here are some titles I hope to read before the long days turn into early evenings.

-HOPSCOTCH by Julio Cortazar: The great put-it-together-in-any-order-you-want novel. Was loving it and thinking some sections (Berthe Trepat! The all-night jazz listening session!) were among the best I'd read anywhere ever. Then I got snagged in midair on a clothesline stretched between apartments in small town Argentina. Time to finish up.
-RIMBAUD by Graham Robb: biography of the 19th century punk poet, derranger of the senses, seasonal tourist in warm climes, and later African drop-out.
-UBIK by Phillip K. Dick: Summer and sand somehow mean sci-fi to me. This seems like a good place to dip my toe in the salty sea of Mr. Phillip. Paranoia-a-go-go.
-VIRTUAL LIGHT by William Gibson: Because I loved Neuromancer. And Pattern Recognition. And Idoru. And Count Zero.
-THE SONNETS by Ted Berrigan: 14 lines at a time is about my attention span these days.
-SKIPPER BEE BY by Ron Rege Jr.: Pictures without words. A graphic novel that seems to be inventing something close to a new language using pipe-smoking elephants and guitar-loving mice. Read it years ago and it boggled me. Newly reissued and time to revisit.
-CLOSER, FRISK, and TRY by Dennis Cooper: The first three parts of his five book "George Miles Cycle." I strongly suspect he's the best American writer putting pen to paper these days.