i always feel weird telling people what i think they should read, but i'll try to come up with a few of my own personal favorites.
linda barry's cruddy
by the time i was halfway through this book i was convinced that filthy hippies had soaked the pages in blotter acid and that it was slowly soaking its way through the skin of my thumbs. it scared me. but it's still one of my top five favorite books.
excerpt:
They didn't find him. They didn't find his body, but I was thinking it was still there. I was thinking that if I really wanted to, I could take the money I have hidden and I could buy myself a Trailways ticket and I could go check on him. See if he is petrified like the shiny beef jerky man called Sylvester at Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe who is on display beside actual shrunken heads with sewn-up eyes and lips. Or maybe he is all skeleton now, picked clean and bleached out like the displayed bone with WHALE PENIS written underneath it. Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe is a good place to go when you are left wondering what finally became of the person you stabbed and then left in the sun.
On the anniversary of the fifth year I was thinking, What was the point? If it could all end with such a nothing feeling. If it could end with a nothing but the mother's squint, what was the point of getting away with it? The father would have called me an idiot for asking that question. He would have said, "Clyde, sometimes I'm not entirely sure you are my son."
Clyde is what he called me. He wanted a son to pass his wisdom to. Me being born a girl was just a technicality. The world spun a lot smoother once you understood what you were bound to live by and what you weren't. "Clyde," he said. "Your average man thinks he needs to grab the world by the balls. That's why your average man will never get ahead. He grabs at what only wants a tickle and a kiss. Hell. Try it on a bull sometime. See for yourself."
The father came from meat people. Generations of them that could be traced all the way back to the time of the monkey. "The monkey with the most meat wins," said the father.
I said, "I thought they just ate fruit."
He said, "Oh no, hell no. Look at their teeth. Fangs like that? If one bit you, you'd know it. Meat people run things, Clyde. Always have and always will."
It's in my blood. I know it is. Meat person. I am hell with a knife and there is nothing I can really do about it but try and keep my mouth shut and try not to let it show.
Vicky Talluso came toward me across the empty track field and she was walking too fast. I didn't really know her but she was in one of my classes and I had seen her around in the halls. It was hard not to notice Vicky. She had extravagant ways, too much makeup and very bright clothes and sort of a burnt-rubber smell she tried to cover-up with Chantilly. People automatically turned away from her. No one could really stand to look. In the Navy they call it dazzle camouflage. It was the Navy that figured out you could paint something with confusions so horror-bright that the eyeballs would get upset to where they refused to see. Battleships were painted this way and the bomber planes just passed them by. Dazzle camouflage is Navy. The father was Navy too. "Navy all the way, Clyde. Every goddamned inch right down to the end of my pecker."
It was lunch, and I was sitting in my usual place up in the weeds on the embankment near the track field. Passing time there. Some people would call it hiding there. My school is a violent place. People need people to knock over or sock in the gut. I stand out to them for some reason.
During my first days in the weeds I was not disturbed or even noticed by anyone. And then Vicky Talluso came walking right toward me, staring straight at me, wearing shocking-yellow crinkle-vinyl knee boots with super-stacked heels and twisted purple stockings and a pink and orange psychedelic shirtdress with a lime green collar. Her long hair was swinging and she was wearing a kind of hat called a tam, a tam made out of hypnotizing red velvet and she was moving so confidently and so fast and she was flipping me out completely, freaking me extremely. I could not think of one reason why a person like her would be walking so rapidly toward a person like me. Because I am her opposite in every single way. I am about as detailed as a shadow.
THEN, i would recommend love and death:the murder of kurt cobain by max wallace.
i don't like to sound like i'm that easily influenced by what i read, but this guy seriously stirs up some shit. his evidence comes off as extremely well researched and valid. and what the fuck WAS courtney doing with that sheet of paper in her purse where she is clearly practicing forging kurt's handwriting?
another good kurt book is heavier than heaven by charles r. cross.
you can't read the last chapter without tears. seriously. it's ridiculous.
read white oleander by janet fitch instead of seeing the film.
i really liked anita shreve's the weight of water.
the tao of pooh and the te of piglet by benjamin hoff is fun stuff.
also, you can't go wrong with anything by joyce carol oates.
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