Merry Wanderer of the Night [Search results for chuck klosterman] 

Ah I feel like whenever I put this list in writing I want to go back and change something. So perhaps this isn't a perfected list of all-time favorite books but I will try my best.

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I just really love this book and every time I read it I find something new. The main reason I love Jane Eyre is that it's a book that grows with you. Every time I've read it's been a different experience, my focus changes and I read a different story.
2. On the Road by Jack Kerouc. This was my favorite book through most of high school. I have wanderlust and I was always attracted to Kerouac's free, uncaring attitude.
3. Notes From No Man's Land by Eula Biss. Okay, I'm really going to shut up about this book soon, but I just love these essays. It's a wonderful collection and I remember reading the essays in it multiple times and still not wanting to put the book down.
4. Middlemarch by George Eliot. I read this last year for class and one look at the size of it made me want to run away. It's actually a really engaging multiplot Victorian novel that made me experience an array of emotions.
5. Moments of Being by Virginia Woolf. Woolf's personal essays and stories. I think this was actually the first book I read for my Virginia Woolf class and I loved learning about this famous author in such a personal way.
6. A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby. I read a ton of Nick Hornby in high school but this book has always been the one that stood out to me. It chronicles a group of people who met on the top of a building, all intending to kill themselves. They decide to wait a year and then see if they still want to die.
7. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Every time I sit down with this graphic novel I want to read it from cover-to-cover. I love the simple images because they say so much about what the characters feel and it's amazing how many actions she can show in just a few panels.
8. Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman. Chuck Klosterman is another author I was really into in high school and I just recently got a newer book by him since I haven't been keeping up since I got out of high school. Not really sure why that was because Killing Yourself to Live is a fantastic book about rock stars and how they are more successful in death. He talks about a ton of music I hate in this book and I still loved it. So there you go.
9. Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery. This was a childhood favorite of mine. Anne was weird and kind of magical almost. Not that she had magical powers but she just had a special personality. This is one of the few books that has really stuck with me through my whole life. I need to reread it soon.
10. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I'll be honest, I still have 100 pages left in this book but I honestly think it is one of my favorite books of all-time. I would move it higher up on the list but I feel that would be unfair since I still haven't finished it. When I picked up Middlesex I thought it was going to be a bit of a chore, but I've been surprised by how excited I got with this book.

Honestly though, I don't think some of these books are my favorite books of all-time because I just haven't read ten books that made me go WOW! yet. There are a lot of books I love but when I think of favorite books of all-time I think of books that made a serious imprint on my life and that I really enjoyed. I think maybe I've read six books like that. Time will tell what my favorites really are. What are some of your favorites? You can join the conversation at The Broke and the Bookish!

Today I got the Honest Scrap award from one of my favorite blogs, Sasha & the Silverfish. This my first time with the Honest Scrap (or any award/meme) so I am very excited! There are a few rules for this award, they are as follows:

1. The Honest Scrap Blogger Award must be shared.
2. The recipient has to tell 10 (true) things about themselves that no one else knows.
3. The recipient has to pass on the award to 7 more bloggers.
4. Those 7 bloggers should link back to the blog that awarded them.

Okay so ten true things about myself. Hmm, I'm sorry to say that I am not very interesting but I will do my very best to wow you with tales of my exciting life.

1. My Grandma taught me how to read and therefore jump started my entire life. She is my idol and we share the same birthday. She also got me started on a couple of my other obsessions: baking and crossword puzzles. One of my favorite books she read to me when I was a kid was The Three Little Pigs. She read to me first and eventually when I caught on I would read it to her while she made breakfast.
2. My favorite part about elementary school was book borders. My parents gave me a limit and I would go insane trying to figure out which books I wanted. Not much has changed since then, except now they're not called bookorders they're called BarnesandNoble.com and Amazon.com. Yeah...
3. When Harry Potter came out I swore it was a crappy book. I read the first ten pages and didn't like it. A couple years later I started the first one again and became addicted to it. I then became a bigger Harry Potter fan than any of my friends. Just another tidbit, I was in Europe when the last book came out, so I have the British copy. Very exciting.
4. The scenario in #3 was repeated with Jane Austen. I spent all of high school hating Jane Austen, then I read Sense and Sensibility last year and now I am obsessed with her.
5. I have read On The Road by Jack Kerouac seven times. It's the first book I've ever read that mentions Iowa, and I think this might contribute to my obsession with it. Somehow seeing the name in print makes the place I live seem more legitimate. Kind of like the movie Adventureland and the six summers I worked at an amusement park called Adventureland (but that is a story for another day).
6. Last year I lived in this community at Iowa called the Iowa Writers Learning Community. It was basically two floors of freshman who qualified themselves as writers or did lots of drugs. It was pretty fun, but I didn't do that much writing until I took my first writing class second semester. It's kind of amazing how many different kinds of people lived there.
7. I thought I wanted to be an English teacher until my senior year in high school when I realized that I couldn't spend every day in a high school since I'd spent all of high school waiting to get out. Still, people like me were generally my favorite teachers in high school. But still... no.
8. The books I gave my boyfriend to read so he could understand me were On the Road, Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby, How to Be Good by Nick Hornby, and Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman.
9. Chuck Klosterman was the speaker during Iowa's welcome week last year and he signed my copy of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. He told me he liked my shirt, but I don't remember which shirt I was wearing.
10. Iowa City is a UNESCO City of Literature, and that's where I live if you didn't know. Because of this we have lots of readings every week. My favorite reading I have ever been to was a woman named Eula Biss. If you haven't read her essay collection Notes From No Man's Land you really should. It's fabulous.

So now I'm going to pass this on to seven other blogs.
Helen Loves Books
Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before
Chasing Empty Pavements
A Bookshelf Monstrosity
Laura's Reviews
Bookishly Fabulous
Jenny Loves To Read

This week at the Broke and Bookish the list is top ten books I can't believe I've never read. Up until last night The Catcher in the Rye would have made the top of my list, but I finished it last night! Finally I can stop pretending I've read that book!

1. 1984 by George Orwell. I've read tons of other dystopian novels but I just haven't read this one. Most people read it in high school but we had three choices and I chose a different book. Must read this within the next year.
2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I just haven't given much thought to this book but I'd like to read it someday.
3. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. I started this book and got about 100 pages in, and just stopped. It's not that I didn't enjoy it I just don't think it was the right time for me to read it.
4. Anything by Ian McEwan. I keep hearing his praises and haven't read anything by him. I guess I'm really missing out!
5. Anything by Charles Dickens. I've taken three Victorian Lit classes and still no Dickens! How am I supposed to get through one of those things without the support of a classroom?
6. Oranges by John McPhee. Basically I just need to read more John McPhee. Because he is amazing.
7. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. A die hard Jane Eyre fan like me?!? And this book is super short, must read it!
8. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. I've tried reading this book several times and just haven't been able to get into it yet. But I want to read it so badly!
9. IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas by Chuck Klosterman. I was amazingly excited when this book came out and I still haven't even bought it... four years later. And I love Chuck Klosterman. What kind of fan am I?
10. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins! Okay, so it didn't come out until today, but why am I blogging and not reading it right now?!?!

The Best American 2009 series just came out this month, so in honor of that I thought I would say a bit about The Best American Travel Writing 2009 and in contrast The Best Travel Writing 2009. It's getting a bit cold in Iowa so I have travel on the brain right now anyway, although I do like the cold weather.

The Best American Travel Writing 2009
Edited by Simon Winchester

This is one of the better essay collections I have read. The transitions between the essays are quite good, I never felt like anything was out of place. There is a negative said that though, sometimes a few essays seemed like one really long boring essay just because I was disinterested. The best thing about essay collections though: you can pick and choose what you want to read.

My top three favorite pieces from this book were:
1. The Mecca of the Mouse by Seth Stevenson. The narrator traps himself on Disney property for five days and analyzes everything from Disney to American culture to architecture. It is quite funny, especially in regards to animatronics. "I'm sure 'audio-animatronic' creatures were nifty when Disney pioneered them in the 1960s."
2. A Mind Dismembered by Frank Bures. The piece takes place in Africa and is all about penis snatching. For those of you who don't know what that is (I sure didn't before I read this), there is an epidemic in Nigeria and other parts of Africa where men believe that people on the street, witches of some kind, steal their penises, but then when they go to the doctor the penis is still there. It's a really fascinating example of regional illness.
3. Who is America? by Chuck Klosterman. I am probably choosing this one out of bias, but this is generally the type of essay that I like. I am fairly certain that I would like this piece even if I hadn't know it was written by Klosterman (who I saw speak at my campus last year, he is even funnier in person). Klosterman was teaching a seminar on U.S. consumer culture in Germany. To get into the class he required the students to write about the most interesting 20th Century American. I won't give away who was chosen, but if you've read Klosterman before you know exactly how this is essay if functioning. (And if you haven't read him before, I suggest Killing Yourself to Live)

The Best Travel Writing 2009
Eidited by James O'Reilly, Larry Habegger, and Sean O'Reilly

While it is a less popular series I will admit that I enjoyed this essay collection more than The Best American one. These essays are less research essays and more travel narratives which was more enjoyable. If you're only going to read one of these books, I would suggest The Best Travel Writing.

My top three favorite pieces from this book were:
1. The Bamenda Syndrome by David Torrey Peters. This essay is a really fascinating account about psychological syndromes that travelers get. It questions if we can really trust what we see when we are traveling. Two such syndromes are the Florence Syndrome and The Jerusalem Syndrome. To find out more about the three syndromes mentioned in the piece, you should read the piece.
2. Officially a Woman by Stephanie Elizondo Griest. This takes place in Mexico and is a really honest account of quinceaneras, or a sort of coming of age party. My favorite part is when the daughter who is having the party is getting her nails done even though she has to take an exam the next day. "Yet her new nails are so unwieldy, she can barely grasp a pencil. No one seems to fret about this except me. What is an exam compared to womanhood?"
3. A Vast Difference by Deborah Fryer. The subtitle to his essay is, "Summer Camp is the first adventure for many a traveler" which kind of turned me off at first. Believe me, after you read the first paragraph you will not be able to stop. Deborah's summer camp experience is like no other, she is at a Jewish summer camp and her camp counselor has the children perform a pretend burial. If that isn't a hook, I don't know what is.

Top Ten Tuesday is a new meme at The Broke and Bookish. This week's top ten is top ten desert island picks, or what books would you take if you were stranded on a desert island.

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I've read this book three times and I could read again and again never getting sick of it. Definitely desert island worthy. (I'd actually bring the illustrated version with pictures by Dame Darcy)
2. The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. I love this and I think it'd be nice to have at least one graphic novel with my while I was stranded, in case I decided to start drawing in a cave or something.
3. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman. This collection isn't my favorite by Klosterman but it is hilarious and I know I'd be laughing out loud the whole time I was reading it, which I'd probably need if I was stranded. I mean, who else is going to make me laugh? Plus my copy is signed, so if I crazed Klosterman fan with a boat appeared I might be able to use it to barter.
4. The Next American Essay Ed. by John D'Agata. I've actually had to read several selections from this for two classes but there is so much to explore in it. It's a whopper of essays, some I love, some I hate, and all of them I'd like to get to know better.
5. Middlemarch by George Eliot. This novel is huge and I read it last fall for a class. I loved the book then, but since I was reading so many other things for school I don't think I really gave it the attention it deserved.
6. Notes From No Man's Land by Eula Biss. Favorite essay collection. Ever. Will read it until I die.
7. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. I figure a lot of her poems are about being alone so maybe I'd find some solace in this book.
8. Moments of Being by Virginia Woolf. I have read a lot of Woolf but for me nothing is better than her autobiographical works.
9. Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby. I haven't actually read this but I'm a huge fan of Nick Hornby and his (returned!) column. He always delivers laughs and deep thinking so I'm sure I would enjoy this one.
10. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Okay, I really gave a lot of thought to this one, but it's so romantic and depressing I think I'd just have to take it with me. You know something to keep you one your toes on a desert island. Besides snakes and sharks and the like.

So what would you pick? Join in at The Broke and Bookish!

I do like a nice book cover, but I don't give them nearly as much thought as Jana at the Broke and Bookish so my list won't be as in-depth or interesting as hers. Mine aren't in any order either because I'm just putting them in as I think of them basically.

There were times when I was reading The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova where I just couldn't help but stop reading and look at the cover. This is truly one of the most beautiful covers I've ever seen. I love the darkness of the background and how the image changes for you as you read the book and find out more about the story. The text is great as well, kind of a mix between old and new, which is something the book plays with a lot. Also, I know this isn't part of the cover and I don't know what the books that have been released look like, but on my ARC the binding is gold and looks quite nice on my shelf.

One of the most effective ways to sell books is probably to have them cover out instead of binding out. If it wasn't for that, I never would have seen The Impostor's Daughter by Laurie Sandell this weekend. I was attracted to this cover because of the bright colors, fun font style, and the mystery about why she's covering her face with a picture of her dad. I picked up the book and read the back cover, thought it looked interesting so I opened it up to find it was a graphic novel! I was really excited to find a graphic novel in memoir form because I loved Persepolis so I bought it right away.

This cover is really simple and white, with a great brightly covered image that totally sums up the message of this book. It looks comicy, but still empowering. This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson is probably one of my favorite covers from books I've read this summer. Every time I see the librarian with her cape I smile and I realized something a little different about the picture every time I look at it. For instance, it took me awhile to realize that those were books she was flying out of.

I think part of the reason I read Sunflowers by Sheramy Bundrick was that every time I looked at it I said "Pretty!" I love Sunflowers and Vincent Van Gogh's art and I think it was really effective to do a close up of one painting rather than try to fill the cover with an entire painting. The white text allows the image to speak for itself, and those who know Van Gogh will be immediately attracted just by recognition. Plus I just love green and yellow.

I buy children's books all the time even though I have no children and I'm not a teacher nor do I want to be one. Part of it started when I was a reading tutor and it's just kind of carried on since then. One day I'll have kids to share some of these beautiful children's books with and one I can't wait to share is The Curious Garden by Peter Brown. This was a staff pick at a store once and the artwork is just beautiful. I was attracted by the little red haired boy who sticks out amongst the green and blue of the natural scene behind him.

I still haven't read Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman but every time I walk by the cover I get the urge to start it. It is so simple, most of his covers are, but it just looks interesting. The image reminds of a children's reference book about dinosaurs with all of the labels on it. I love dinosaurs so I'm attracted to that. And I like how the author's name and the title are the same size and sandwich the image.

I just had to add one more children's book to this list. Boris and Bella, authored by Carolyn Crimi and illustrated but Gris Grimly is just a great cover. It's Tim Burton-esque and creepy. Normally when you see a male and female name on a book you assume they are in love, but this is not the case with Boris and Bella. We can tell from the image that these ghouls obviously do not like each other. I also like the purple and black for a creepier story like this one, plus the text fits perfectly.

I haven't read Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart yet, but I intend to soon because the book sounds great to me. I love this cover because it combines and simple colorless photograph with a tiffany blue colored box for text, and then the box is topped with a bow like one from Tiffany would be. I just think that was a really cute idea and I love the simple color scheme of this book.

I read this book a week ago and I think it has a pretty neat cover. This cover of Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman really embodies Rita's personality. The orange and green are bright and fun, which is just like her attitude. I also like the map at the top of the cover that shows all the different places she goes to and how she's constantly traveling back and forth. Plus I like that they used a photograph for a travel narrative because it let's you feel like you're in on their trip a little bit.

My last cover is the 50th Anniversary edition of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It's beautiful. The color scheme is really unique, you don't see that deep, wine red on books very often, and it let's the green of the tree really pop. I have the older lavender version right now and I have been lusting after this book ever since I saw it. I also love the text they use on this cover, a slanted print that looks almost like a child's handwriting.

I actually learned a lot about myself by doing this, I appears that I'm really attracted to colors or white covers with a single image on them. Who knew! What are you attracted to in covers?

Do signed copies excite you? Tempt you? Delight you? Or does it not matter to you?

I have a few signed copies of books that I really love. My copy of Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs is signed by Chuck Klosterman, by copy of Angels and Airwaves is signed by Tony Kushner, and my copy of Notes From No Man's Land is signed my Eula Biss. I have other signed books, but the fact that these three are some of my favorite books in the world and they are signed means a lot to me. There are quite a few readings in Iowa City and if I have the author's book I will usually wait in line to get it signed, usually for no other reason than "I can so I will."

What about you? Do you love signed copies? Join in at Booking Through Thursday!

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I got If You Lived Here You'd Already Be Home

at the Twin Cites Book Festival for two reasons, it had an endorsement from Chuck Klosterman and the cover had stomach with random stuff in it.* Based on those two things I knew there would be something interesting in this book. Turns out it's a short story collection with story titles like Everyone Prank Calls the Clown, The Bog Body, and The Deadsitter. If you're not intrigued by any of those titles then there simply is no hope for you. The stories are mostly quick and quippy. The characters are most unlikeable, but relatable-- and the world they live in is our own, so when they get barnacles on their butts it's easy to believe. At times it is hysterical and other times pensive. Essentially these stories are the perfect balance of strange and realistic.

The story that sticks out in my mind the most is The Deadsitter. The premise is that a young boy died and his mother hires a boy who lives in her neighborhood to come to her house after school and pretend he is her son. Except the kid in this story isn't the first boy to do it, he's following in his brother's footsteps and he is getting a little old to play the part. His parents tell him he can't quit until he finds a replacement, and that is what he intends to do. Creepy, sad, bizarre, and kind of funny. I don't know why, but the image of a mother watching a child she knows is not her own but convinces herself is her child really resonated with me. I apologize for that confusing sentence.

That is just what John Jodzio's writing is like though (not confusing, the other thing). "Some forget that the sky is an easy option for violence, that the heavens can open upon you at a moment's notice. When it happens you'd like to think that God had something to do with it, that there is a plausible explanation, that if you looked up there would be someone there waving and yelling 'My fault!' (38)." This is a quotation from another of my favorite stories, Gravity, in which the main character finds dropping things on people's heads therapeutic. I had to stop and read this passage at least three times because it provided such great mental imagery and forced me to think about the humor of my own inevitable demise. So there you have it, Jodzio made me laugh about death.

*And the people who worked at Replacement Press were super nice and friendly.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

As someone who has taken a lot of nonfiction writing classes I've heard endless excitement over David Sedaris. In high school I was often given recommendations to read him because I loved authors like Chuck Klosterman and Nick Hornby. But for some reason I've never really felt that driven to read Sedaris, maybe because he gets so much attention and there are a lot of great nonfiction writers out there who don't. At a coffeeshop my friend talked about how much fun she had listening to Sedaris recordings after she finished one of his books, so I decided to take the Sedaris plunge but simply listening. I listened to Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

while at work last month and was often laughing out loud at his outrageousness.

Dress Your Family is really a memoir of Sedaris' family. They're all rather bizarre and he imitates them flawlessly-- particularly his brother who has a very thick Southern accent and is basically the epitome of "white trash." Sedaris acknowledges his family member's strangeness, but I think he manages to make us see them as real people and not just characters. What moves them beyond character and into the realm of real person is their relationship to Sedaris and their relationship to their family. Sedaris acknowledges his own quirks in this book as well, and is very self-deprecating. I particularly enjoyed his memories about being a teenager and wanting to be a total hippie, which was very funny, and also his stories about coming out as a gay man in a family that was proud of "manliness."

While the book was hilarious as a whole, I felt the last few essays didn't quite fit with the whole book. There was an essay about Santa Claus in the Netherlands, and while I could kind of make the connection to family I was a little put off by the whole thing. It was very frustrating because I really enjoyed several of the essays I didn't felt fit with the book, in fact I enjoyed some of them more than the essays I did think fit, but overall it was jarring and difficult to reconcile in the end. As an audiobook I thought this was a great listen, and something that was really hard to ignore. I feel like that is something a lot of people have said about audiobooks, they are easy to ignore. I have experienced that a little, but never with this one. A great choice for the reluctant audio listener.

I give this book a B.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday is favorite authors, much easier than last week's!

1. Charlotte Bronte
2. Jeffrey Eugenides
3. Eula Biss
4. Chuck Klosterman
5. Nick Hornby
6. Joan Didion
7. Virginia Woolf
8. J. K. Rowling
9. Bill Bryson
10. Anna Godbersen

Who are your favorites? Join in at The Broke and the Bookish!

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

My mom always asks me why I love essays so much. "I always hated essays when I was in school. I hated writing them and I certainly wasn't searching them out to read for fun." This seems to be the attitude a lot of people take towards essays.

It's unfortunate that creative essays share the word essay with academic essays, because they are completely different. I have to write academic essays for class. I have to read academic essays for class. I don't care much for either practice, even if I am a literary theory person. I mean, I like it as a form of study, but I don't search out academic essays to read on the weekends.

When you say essay to me, these are the things that come to mind. Joan Didion. Travel writing. Montaigne. Ryan Van Meter. Exploration. Narrative. Story. Dialogue. Chuck Klosterman. Michael Chabon. The Believer. Creative.

I'm beginning to realize that when I say essay to most other people this is what crosses their minds: boring.

This is what you make me do when you call essays boring.


I'm sure there are people out there who truly do hate creative essays and do find them boring. My guess, however, is that the majority of people do not. If you open your mind to the idea that a creative essay can be creative, interesting, innovative, you might be surprised by the amount of great writing out there you are missing. And it's all over the stupid name of the genre. This is why a lot of nonfiction enthusiasts have taken to calling it by different names. Creative Nonfiction. Literary nonfiction. Nonfiction writing. But to me these are good names for the practice of writing nonfiction creatively, and not so good for the practice of writing short creative nonfiction pieces. I suppose you could call it just that, short creative nonfiction, just like short stories.

In essence, however, short creative nonfiction pieces are short stories. The generally accepted layout is a little different, but they are essentially the same thing. I think if you explore some essays you will find writers you identify with, writers who thrill you, and writers who make you see things in a different way. At the core, this is what essays are to me: Pieces of writing which make me see things in a new way. And what is there to dislike about that?

If you're interested in reading more essays, please check out my weekly Saturday feature Awesome Essays, or if you looking for something more classical, check out my Montaigne Mondays to explore the father of the essay.

Do you already love essays? Are you thinking about giving them a try? What can I do to make you consider reading an essay?

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.