Tag: Memoir

Graphic Novels, Novels, Random

dendrobiblio’s Top 10 Reads of 2016

t. michael

10. Stephen King’s the Dark Tower I : IV (1982 : 1997)

A somewhat difficult one to include, Stephen King’s writing, while always entertaining, is similarly always bothersome. The King-isms build and bug me. The Dark Tower series has been no different so far, with the Drawing of the Three and the Waste Lands, in particular, being hampered by bloated writing and awkward pacing. Wizard and Glass, the fourth of an eight-part series (including #4.5), and the last I read this year, was an absolutely engrossing and addictive fantasy yarn. The horror and post-apocalyptic settings were mostly removed in favor of straight fantasy in an extended flashback story — which was worrisome — but Roland’s tale was so focused and wonderfully-told that it alone puts this series on the list. I hope 2017 lets me finish the the final four books.

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Book Reviews, Non-fiction, Short Stories

Transgressive poetry in Yuri Kageyama’s the New and Selected Yuri (2011)

t. michael

Why hadn’t I heard of Yuri Kageyama before? She’s been quietly publishing poetry, essays, and short stories for over 30 years. Her style ranges between transgressive and journalistic, channeling similar frustrations as writers like Kathy Acker, but with a style devoid of flourish or absurdity. She’s published in journals and magazines, and had her one and only poetry collection, Peeling, published by her close friend and fellow author, Ishmael Reed, in 1988. The New and Selected Yuri, published in 2011, contains 41 short works of poetry and prose dating from 1978 to 2011. It contains short stories, essays, anecdotes, conversations, cultural explanations, and a wealth of poems.

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Book Reviews, Non-fiction

Carrie Brownstein’s Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir (2015)

t. michael

Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl is a memoir of Sleater-Kinney; of punk, riot grrl, and a young musician’s finding her identity. This isn’t the story Portlandia, but of a time and place that fostered a style of music and the messages that music imparted. Before the Internet coalesced our interests and cultural identities, being a musician or a fan of music meant being a fan of regions. This is a memoir about growing up in a music culture simultaneously inclusive and exclusive, about breaking the barriers of what it meant to be a — imagine a nebulously pejorative-but-well-intentioned tone — ‘female musician’ rather than simply a musician.

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Book Reviews, Non-fiction, YA

R.L. Stine’s It Came from Ohio!: My Life as a Writer (1997)

t. michael
co-written with Joe Arthur and Susan Lurie

R.L. Stine’s life has not been very exciting, but I think that’s something to appreciate. He’s lived a very normal life up to a point. He’s always been a writer, and that’s all he’s ever tried to be. He grew up drawing his own humor magazines and recording mock radio shows with his childhood friends; later, he wrote for Ohio State University’s Sundial and did plenty of gutter-work (like writing exclusively about soda…). Eventually, he was offered a lucky job with Scholastic and his life was set.

He’s also proud to have been an at-home dad, which is pretty awesome.

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Book Reviews, Non-fiction

Thích Nhất Hạnh’s the Miracle of Mindfulness (1975)

t. michael

With how widespread Thích Nhất Hạnh’s name is in the new age world, I completely misunderstood who he was and what he taught. Hanh’s Miracle of Mindfulness is a series of translated letters from 1968 — written while exiled from Vietnam — instructing young monks overseas on meditation. His ‘mindfulness’ isn’t the confusing buzzword it is today, but simply a way to inch towards the Buddhist idea of enlightenment.

I expected scam artistry akin to Eckhart Tolle or Deepak Chopra, not legitimate Buddhist teachings. There’s still a few lines of woo-woo that don’t mean anything (to me, at least), but the majority of Hanh’s Buddhist ideas reject the nonsense of religious text and simply want the the reader to be self-aware: Recognize their emotions and the emotions of others; the causes of social strife and personal discomfort; the is-ness of all things.

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