Blog* He's going to feel really dumb when he realizes they're actually cutting off his less significant toes. Title is from Futurama.Books* Unusual blog entry ahead: I am going to post a list of my comfort books. These are the books I turn to when I'm tired/stressed out/the world seems cold and cruel/we're out of energy drinks. They sustain me. And as a result, I have huge chunks of them memorized. I've read these books so many times that some are onto second or third copies, simply because the original versions fell apart.Some of these books are funny, some are sad, some are very strange and probably shouldn't be described as 'comforting,' but these are the books I love best when I feel worst. In no order, because what sort of monster do you think I am?
This is part one, because this turned out to be much longer than I anticipated, and anyway now I get two blog entries out of one idea. GENIUS.
* Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry: I was introduced to this epic Western novel years ago, thanks to the mini-series (which is one of the greatest Westerns, ever, END OF CONVERSATION, and even if you don't like Westerns you should see it and read this book) (if you don't like Westerns, I am totally judging you).The mini-series may also be the reason I had a very, very long-term crush on Tommy Lee Jones, because Woodrow Call is one of the original B.A.M.F. STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT.It's a beautiful book. It tells a story, with characters you come to love desperately as they make their way to Montana. It breaks your heart. It intertwines lives in unexpected ways. And every time I read it, I want to run off and be a cowgirl.There's a whole book series, but the original really is the best, and as for the other movies, David Arquette was in one, and I do NOT wish to discuss that, because it hurts my SOUL.Oh, and if Woodrow F. Call is unavailable, I'll take July Johnson. He got no love in the book, and that made me sad. And he's played by Chris Cooper in the mini-series. Hell, you know what? Watch the mini-series, then read the book. I'll allow it, this one time.
This is one of the books that fell apart. Badly. I still have the old, broken copy, but one day the pages summarily threw themselves from the book in a desperate bid for freedom.
* A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, by Betty Smith: I've loved this book since I was little, and it's part of the reason I wanted to live in New York.
The problem is, THIS is the New York I imagined, and I got there and realized everyone else wanted to live in Sex & The City, so there was no time for heartbreaking, beautiful stories about poor families and the lives they lead, because we're all talking about BAGS AND ORGASMS, GOD THIS SPECIES IS SHAMEFUL SOMETIMES.
Ahem. The last line of this book makes me cry, every time, because I am always sad that the book is over.
* The Club Dumas, by Arturo Perez-Reverte: This was a movie too, and I was super excited, because I freaking love this book so hard, and the movie was directed by Roman Polanski and starred Johnny Depp.
Unfortunately, that movie ended up being The Ninth Gate, and while Johnny Depp has never been more attractive to me, because I like shabby bastards, the movie was sort of not remotely good.
Even the trailer makes me sad, because Johnny Depp is looking very hot, and Roman Polanski is a brilliant director, and the book is fantastic. But skip the movie, which makes very little sense at all, and I have to wonder if the screenplay simply didn't translate from Spanish, or to Spanish, or something, because really WHERE DID THIS COME FROM?
The book is about a terribly immoral, duplicitous rare book dealer who gets mixed up in a bizarre retelling of The Three Musketeers while searching for a book that will supposedly raise the devil. Lucas Corso is a twisted, fucked-up shell of a man, and one of my very favorite characters.
And I may own a copy of The Ninth Gate, but for SCIENCE AND RESEARCH, people. I am a student of the human condition. And Johnny Depp as a chain-smoking rare-books dealer is a very happy idea.
Edit: Is this book out of print? IS IT? I can't seem to find it on Amazon, and that is worrisome, because it is in my opinion Perez-Reverte's best book, and I don't want it to be out of print, DAMMIT.
Edit 2: It's not out of print, so go buy it, quick, before it TOTALLY IS.
* Phineas Poe, by Will Christopher Baer: OK, this is a cheat, because it's really three books in one big-ass volume of insane brilliance. You get Kiss Me Judas, Penny Dreadful, and Hell's Half-Acre, which make up the Phineas Poe trilogy, and Phineas Poe is one of the best names ever, right? He's a fucked-up former detective, maybe, whose wife was possibly murdered, but she's definitely dead, we think. And there are assassins and crooked cops and snuff films and drugs and sex and violence and true love and botched surgeries and games where the losers end up dead.
I wish I could accurately describe these books, but they are a surreal, beautiful, acid trip. The writing is gorgeous and disgusting. Just when you think the book is delving into the macabre solely for the shock factor, Baer will deliver a line that is so funny or heartbreaking - or both - that you're tempted to go back to the beginning to revisit every exquisitely painful moment.
Another one of my favorite last lines, which I don't think is in the original publication of Hell's Half Acre, and in my opinion it makes the book.
PS Baer's next novel, Godspeed, was supposed to come out in 2006. I remember. I was working at Barnes & Nobles, where I later got into trouble for suggesting every single customer buy Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis. Especially children.
Anyway, it is 2010, and Godspeed still has not come out, and nobody will tell me why, and I waited for MONTHS and called the company we ordered from so many times that they refused to answer my extension, and I JUST WANT TO READ MORE OF HIS WORDS, WHAT THE HELL? DANIELLE STEELE HAS BOOKS FALLING OUT OF HER ASS (no offense to Ms. Steele, I wish I was as prolific/successful as her, and anyway I haven't read one of her books, um, ever), AND HIS LAST BOOK WAS IN 2005. LOOK HOW ANGRY THIS MAKES ME. I WILL WRECK THIS BLOG WITH MY ANGER. METAPHORICALLY.
PPSS I love you, Mr. Baer, and do not blame you, unless this is your doing, in which case I blame you a LOT.
PPPSSS OK, Phineas Poe is unavailable on Amazon, but is available for a disgustingly cheap price on Deep Discount, and you should buy it. Read this:
I must be dead for there is nothing but blue snow and the furious silence of a gunshot. Two birds crash blindly against the glass surface of a lake. I'm cold, religiously cold.
That's just the first fucking LINES, MAN. I think I need to go read it again.
- LV
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