Books of 2010: "When You Are Engulfed In Flames"

A few days back, I was perusing the fella's bookshelf and came across David Sedaris' "When You Are Engulfed In Flames."

I picked it up, briefly leafed through it and immediately fell in love.
There are so many things to love about Sedaris:
- His wit.
- How utterly ridiculously brilliant he is.
- How honest - and neurotic - he is.

I have never laughed out loud to any book like I did reading this one.
From his catheter-like Stadium Pal, to his fascination with a spider he named April to - unbeknownst to her - racing an overweight woman with Down syndrome in his community pool, Sedaris is all sorts of wrong, which really means he's all sorts of fabulous and all sorts of fun.

I was so disappointed when I read the last page, but luckily, a friend is letting me borrow "Barrel Fever," which I immediately started reading.

While not as funny yet as "When You Are Engulfed In Flames," it's still brilliant.
I can't believe it took me this long to discover this author!

Books of 2010: "I Am Ozzy."

You may know Ozzy Osbourne for being Black Sabbath’s original vocalist, or maybe you know him from his successful solo career. Or perhaps your first thought is of him as one of the stars of the massively popular MTV reality show “The Osbournes.” But now people can know Osbourne as an author, thanks to his New York Times bestselling autobiography “I Am Ozzy.”

Co-written with Chris Ayres, “I Am Ozzy” recounts Osbourne’s life from his humble beginnings in Aston, England, to rock superstardom with and without Black Sabbath — and everything in between.

It was while working in a factory in Aston, and hating it, that Osbourne first heard The Beatles, and “a light went on in my head.” If those working-class kids could be in a band, “then maybe I could, too.”

Osbourne soon put up an ad in a record shop which led him to his Black Sabbath bandmates Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward. The foursome eventually went on to become one of the most significant heavy metal bands ever, selling more than 15 million records in the United States alone until Osbourne’s firing in 1979 for his drinking, drug use and “slagging off the band in the press.”

“I’m a lunatic by nature,” Osbourne writes, and readers get to see just how true that statement is. The singer has done just about every drug under the sun — including when he drugged himself with Rohypnol, the date-rape drug, while on tour in Germany: “F--k me, this stuff is real! … Then I was trapped between the bed and the wall, unable to move or talk, for about five hours. So I can’t say I recommend it.”

Anyone who’s watched “The Osbournes” knows Osbourne was often incoherent and indecipherable, but that’s only added to the Prince of Darkness’ charm, a charm that’s carried over into the book full of rambling storytelling. It’s also chockablock of delicious British words and phrases, like “bee up his arse” to describe someone who’s upset.

Obviously, it’s easy to wonder just how much of his life the perpetual alcoholic/addict actually does remember, but a disclaimer in the beginning of the book sums it up best: “Other people’s memories of the stuff in this book might not be the same as mine. … What you read here is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story. Nothing more, nothing less.” The tone is distinctly “Ozzy” and oftentimes laugh-out-loud funny — and oftentimes shocking. Forget Osbourne biting the head off a bat and a dove or relieving himself on The Alamo; they’re just the half of it. There’s the tragic plane crash that killed his guitarist Randy Rhoads, Osbourne’s attempted murder of his wife Sharon, scaring his children with drunken/doped-up antics, killing a whole flock of chickens, and so on.

While not as riveting a read as other rockers’ tomes, like Nikki Sixx’s “The Heroin Diaries,” “I Am Ozzy” is an amusing tale of the singer’s life of debauchery that he somehow miraculously survived, how Sharon ultimately saved his career — and saved him from himself, or tried to at least — and how he became a household name again to become “no longer famous for being a singer. I was famous for being that swearing bloke on the telly.”

Rating: W W W 1/2 (of 5 Ws)

* This review originally appeared in the Wednesday, March 17 issue of the Weekender with the headline "The madman writes"*

Books of 2010: "The Thorn Birds"

I finished my first Book of 2010 tonight.
I reread - probably for the fourth time since discovering it as a young teen on Mommalah's bookshelf - Colleen McCullough's "The Thorn Birds."

This tale of a priest - Father Ralph de Bricassart - who falls in love with Meggie Cleary, who he's known since she was a young girl in the early-1900s Australia is sordid, heartbreaking and one of those books that Takes You There.

The book spans 54 years - 1915-1969 - and three generations of the Cleary clan, and takes place in the continent's sheep country. It's a hard life for Meggie, as the only female aside from her emotionally unavailable mother Fee. Ralph is her one bright spot, her one talisman that keeps her going, even when he leaves her for the priesthood's big show: The Vatican.

Though she marries Luke, a slight doppelganger of Ralph, the real love of her life will always be Ralph, who eventually fathers her beloved son Dane, who goes into the priesthood himself and tragically drowns soon after becoming ordained.
{Luke fathered Justine, the daughter Meggie never got along with.}

McCullough's writing is effortless to read and even though you know the love and attraction between Ralph and Meggie is morally wrong, is true love ever really wrong?

I don't think so.

Especially when the cover image is from the ABC mini-series and features Richard Chamberlain as Ralph and Rachel Ward as Meggie.
{I mean, Richard Chamberlain as Ralph de Bricassart? Who wouldn't?}

The series aired in March 1983 and was the second highest-rated mini-series behind "Roots." I saw parts of it as a teen, but never in its entirety.

Now, of course, I desperately want to rent it, not only to see Richard as Ralph, but to see if the translation from page to screen was a worthy translation because the book is that stellar.

When Ralph and Meggie finally consummate their years of passion, your heart almost bursts for them because, really, is anything really as horrible as unrequited love?

No.
So when they finally are able to act on this love that has built and boiled under the surface, Ralph must leave to go back to Rome, never to be Meggie's again.

There's no happy ending for the two of them. Their passion-filled tryst at a beach side cabin is to be enough, no matter the pain that follows.

The book is brilliantly named after a mythical bird which is said to search from the moment it cracks through its egg for the perfect thorn to impale itself. Just before it dies, it sings the sweetest, most beautiful song.

"... One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain ... or so says the legend."

Like that bird, Meggie and Ralph had their one chance to sing their beautiful song, and that was it.

It'd be a horrible book because of how tragic it is ... if it wasn't such an incredible, breathtaking story.

"The Thorn Birds" by Colleen McCullough.
Copyright 1977.
692 pages, paperback.

Introducing the 'Books of 2010' segment.

Last night, as I nestled all snug in my Snuggie whilst rereading "The Thorn Birds," I decided I wanted to keep a running tally of the books I've read in the course of the coming 12 months.

I'm calling it, quite whimsically, the "Books of 2010" segment.
{What can I say? My creativity level was pretty high when I came up with it.}

I've always been an avid reader, but sadly, my book reading has been relegated to a few minutes before bed to relax me from my often hectic days. I've also been playing catch up with a bunch of magazines too, which I do also love, but kind of makes my book worm feel kind of dirty.

I would like to change that, broaden my reading horizons - as soon as I finish this tragic, saucy and sordid tale of improper love that makes me swoon.

Plus, it will certainly help me keep my resolution of writing something for me daily if I'm blogging about them! That's called teamwork methinks!

What books do you plan on reading this year, and do you have any recommendations for a fellow book worm?

A 'Fountainhead' of inspiration.

Not five minutes ago, I finished Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead."

When I got home tonight, I had 30 pages remaining, and it took me almost an hour to read them - a turtle's pace considering how swiftly I strode though this most amazing book.

I just had to read slowly, even going back to read aloud, some of those pages because I didn't want to reach page 694.
I didn't want finish.
I didn't want to have to think about how this book affected me.

I'm still digesting it.
I want to talk to an architect.
I want to have just finished this book in 1943 when it was first published, and not today, when so much is wrong in people.
I want to break free from the mold, from the steel beams that surround me and my mind sometimes.
I want to go to New York City right now, in this slow drizzle, and see it as Wynand saw it, as Roark saw it, as I've always seen it: one of the most beautiful, inspiring places I've ever seen.

Instead, I think.
I flip through the book because I don't want to part with it yet, going back to some of the many passages that moved me.
Not only moved, but changed me. Maybe.

Gail Wynand to Dominique Keating:
"Once you've felt what it means to love as you and I know it - the total passion for the total height - you're incapable of anything less."

Roark during his Cortlandt trial:
"Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unharmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plan his food or hunt it."

From Rand herself:
"Man - every man - is an end in himself, not a means to the end of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life."

and

"I am a Romantic in the sense that I present men as they ought to be. I am Realistic in the sense that I place them here and now and on this earth."

I feel empowered, but not in an annoying feminist bullshit kind of way, sakes alive no.
Just empowered in myself.
And knowing's half the battle right?

"I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion" (An ode to Jack)

Years ago, like a touristy sap, I read Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" the first time I went to visit my brother when he lived in California.
Before the vacation was over, the book was finished and re-read halfway.
It was the book that changed my life.
It was the book that made me decide to go back to school to become a writer.
When I read this passage,

it gave me goosebumps.
That lyrical tone, that imagery and that sheer genius of words.
My God, to be able to write like that!
To be able to completely change the course of someone's life with words.
With language.
It still gives me goosebumps.

This quote has been my screen saver for years - the first time I read it, I could not stop saying it out loud:

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."

My God.
How could someone capture that?
"I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."
Whenever I see it or pick up "On The Road" to leaf through for inspiration, I am blown away by how strong a feeling it still gives me.

That is this man named Jack Kerouac, what he does to you.

Probably right, maybe wrong.

Had a most thought-provoking night thus far.
Whiling away the evening on my porch with "The Fountainhead," my skull-covered journal and my orange haiku/tanka notebook, I watched my neighbor and landlord working in their yards - and realized some things about myself.

And, when I came in and looked at the mail sitting on my desk - a cable bill and a booklet entitled "Bridal Bells" from a local jeweler - I realized some more things as I leafed through the blue book with shiny diamonds and sweet little sayings like:

"The icing to this perfect day"

and

"Sometimes love begins with a glance"

- I'll probably never be someone who relishes the feel of my hands digging in cold, fresh dirt, no matter how much I adore the scent of freshly-churned earth.


- I'll probably never feel the cold metal of a one-carat emerald-cut bauble I won't settle for less for.


- I'll probably never understand how people have a home they take care of themselves because they own it. (Clearly the words of a perpetual renter who can just call her landlord she affectionately calls "Mr. Roper.") (Plus, sometimes they feed me. Pizza. And sometimes ice cream cake.)


- I'll probably never be a really good singer. (This has already been proven true.)


- I'll probably never dance in my newly cleaned and spacious attic like I say I want to, despite taking ballerina lessons when I was 5ish, and clearly being a star Sugar Plum. (Nor will I ever be as graceful.)


- I'll probably never not paint my nails like a 5-year old.


- I'll probably never get tired of savoring a nicely chilled glass of bourbon whilst in complete and utter solitude in the midst of the noises of my neighborhood.


- I'll probably ... but maybe I'm wrong.

Farewell, Mrs. Parker (Subtitle: Next on my reading list)

At long last, I finished "The Portable Dorothy Parker" this morning.
It's chockablock full of purple highlighted lines - many of them her razor-sharp and sometimes acerbic witty one-liners, many lines just absolutely brilliant I had to read them aloud and relish the way they rolled off my lips.

It took a long time to close the book on her, and I feel changed after reading her.
I wish I lived during that time when journalists were infamous celebrities - and not just because I am a journalist myself.

It seems so much better to ready splashy tabloids about drunken witty writers than whorish no-talent "actresses" and "actors," does it not?

Next on my nightstand:

- Finish the partially started "On the Road with Bob Dylan" by Larry "Ratso" Sloman.
- Follow that with "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand.

And with that, Mr. Dylan and I have a date on my freshly cleaned back porch.
I love spring Sundays at home!

Going under cover.

Did you ever have one of those days where you just don't want to play anymore?
I think I am at that point today.

It's only 2:45 p.m. and I would offer up my much-adored leopard print scarf that is ever so jauntily tied around my neck to the gods that would allow me to go home and crawl under the covers again.

I'm not saying that I would spend the rest of the day sleeping said day away, no, no, no!

I would like to go home and be under those covers with my curtains wide open letting in the deliciously brilliant sun and read. Just read allllll day, catch up with Dorothy Parker (which I am still trudging my way through) and feed my soul a little. Maybe even be so bold as to catch up my journal and write a few haiku about the sun.

I smell a necessary play day off, sooner than later!

Book worm.

I'm always a little sad when I read the very last page of a new favorite book.

It feels like such a let down, so "Now what?!" especially when I've been so invested in the words - and world - of a damn good book.

I flat-out wept when I finished "The Historian." Elizabeth Kostova beautifully ended her amazing, suspenseful and sometimes frightening book with a humane look at Dracula. I sometimes flip through to page 676 (smelling the book first, of course, as I fan the pages out), read that final page, and still get goosebumps from the image I can so clearly see. Kostova writes:

"He looks not at all like a man in constant peril - a leader whose death could occur at any hour, who should be pondering every moment the question of his salvation. He looks instead, the abbot thinks, as if all the world is before him."

Stunning.
To write like that is a quest of mine every time I pick up a pen or set my fingers on a keyboard.
I want people to see the setting sun's light shining through the windows as Dracula pensively looks out over his domain. I want them to feel its warmth on their face.

"The Historian" was the first book in a very, very long time that I finished and immediately began rereading. The next book that I did that with came this week.

I received "Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga" by Stephen Davis.



This delicious romp took me inside the world of my favorite band whose music I find so inspiring. They are so mythical and mystical, and I would give just about anything to have been able to roam the earth with them in their heyday.

Davis' style is fluid, and the tales he tells about the band's infamous lore runs the gamut from sex-laden escapades to Southern blues to black magic to the inevitable end.

Just like I knew the boat sank in "Titanic," I knew drummer John Bonham would die, and Led Zeppelin would be no more. But, again like "Titanic," I became invested in the band from a whole different plane.

Sure, I read the stories and even boast that I want to be the "mudshark girl" on my MySpace page, but as I read "Hammer of the Gods," Davis' writing tricked me into thinking that I wasn't reading about "the band that was," I was reading about a band that is.

I was there in the beginning, when Jimmy Page and Robert Plant sequestered themselves in Jimmy's house to get to know each other. I was on every American tour - more conquerings than tours, really. I was there when Jimmy met his 14-year-old concubine. I was there for every debauched step, every sip of booze and every cigarette inhale. Just like I walk in the foggy mystic and medieval world I picture when I hear the music, I was there with Led Zeppelin through every legendary step.

That's the beauty of a good writer - that's what makes a good writer - and that's the beauty of words.

"For such magic to succeed, it must tap the sources of magical energy,

and this can be dangerous."

William S. Burroughs "Rock Magic"

Oh, Dorothy, you have bewitched me so.

It's taking me a little longer than I thought it would to get through "The Portable Dorothy Parker." It is deliciously large - 613 pages of her short stories, poems, reviews, magazine articles and personal letters.

I've been reading it on and off for about a month and a half now, and have highlighted so many lines and entries already that it resembles a textbook. I identify with so many aspects of her writing: the drink, New York, the dark thoughts, the era.

I'm finding that her poems enthrall me the most. That's surprising because, while I can appreciate poetry, it's just not usually my bag.

Dorothy is so darkly humorous, such as in "Resume" from "Enough Rope:"

"Razors pain you;

Rivers are damp;

Acids stain you;

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren't lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live."

So simple, and just so adaptable to anyone who just feels tragic some days, you know? The list goes on - she could have written "Nocturne" or "Symptom Recital" from some of my journal entries over the years.

Just a few minutes ago, I finished reading the short story, "The Little Hours," whose narrator is an insomniac, a trait I share. There are too many little snippets of brilliance for me to share here, so I can only suggest that you read the story yourself.

(OK, here's just one:

"Solitude is the safeguard of mediocrity and the stern companion of genius."

That's all.)

I look forward to getting deeper into the works of Mrs. Parker, about whom writer / critic / Algonquin Round Table founder Alexander Woollcott said,

"That bird only sings when she's unhappy."

I'd like to think that she was happy with her stories and her poems and her booze and her dogs. I'm pretty happy most of the time with all those things (sans dog right now) regardless of how dark or bitchy I can be. (Not that I can be compared to someone so incomparable as Dorothy of course.)

Here's one final savory Parker-isms:

"I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending."

Well, I'd still like to strive for one, wouldn't you?

Thanks Liz Wakefield!

Tonight, I came across the beginning of one of my favorite movies, "Orange County."
I watched up until the part where the character Sean finds, buried in the sand next to him, the book that changed his life - the book that made him want to be a writer.

I wish I could say that my "I want to write" epiphany was as profound as Sean's, but sadly, it's not.

I wanted to be a writer because of Elizabeth "Liz" Wakefield.
Liz was one half of the "Sweet Valley Twins" book series that I couldn't get enough of as tween, and the thrill continued with the "Sweet Valley High" series as I got older. Both starred Liz and her twin sister Jessica, as well as their friends and sometimes foes in the fictional town of Sweet Valley in SoCal (at first, yes I did think it was our local Sweet Valley).

Both were blonde and beautiful, natch, but Jessica was the flirt, the fun one. Liz was studious, always writing and fiercely loyal to her sister no matter what trouble she got them both into. I loved how Liz would hole up in her favorite tree spot - something I had as well.

I lost myself in dozens of their books, and looked forward to going to Walden Books or Tudor Book Shop each month to pick out the new one to see what happened next to these friends of mine.

I would give anything to still have those books because I would definitely love to revisit Liz and Jess, and that innocent me who would take my notebook up into my tree and traipse away into a world of the characters of my mind.

Obviously, my inspirations have changed and grown in leaps and bounds. I'm into writers that I can only dare dream to emulate, but Liz will always hold a special place in my heart. After all, we're both 5'6" ...

P.S. - I'd like to think that Liz is a novelist, living in San Francisco or maybe London, perhaps moonlighting for the Chronicle or Daily Telegraph ...