16. Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker. Page 45 of 220.  Clearly a work of genius, this one was suggested to me by my local used bookseller and framer of pictures at “A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words.”  Sorry, John.  I’ll have the book back to you shortly, when you finish framing the Coltrane poster (joking).  We talk books often, and this one surfaced in a discussion of McCarthy’s The Road....

Let me explain.  Raccoons, we presume,  are mischievous creatures: they get into our trash with dextrous little hands; they wear masks; they could be friendly or rabid; we make hats out of them.  Squirrels, on the other hand–though they too are no doubt responsible for domestic mischief, especially for you bird lovers–are, shall we say, less symbolically charged beyond their general mysteriousness as living creatures. So when...

I came to Arctic Monkeys late–probably because so many critics were telling me I would love them. Witty, caustic, frenetic British post-punk alterna-pop–what’s not to love? I couldn’t imagine, however, what would separate them from their counterparts–from Bloc Party, or Babyshambles, or The Kaiser Chiefs, or Foals, for instance?  Simply put, what these bands all have in common, in contrast to Arctic Monkeys,...

Of course, my shrink was two tables over watching me through the whole dinner. Not that he meant to. In fact, he probably was trying to avoid looking at me, as I was him. I did feel a bit like putting on a show, though, so I laughed often and tried to contribute as much conversation as I could with my friends. We talked about the word schnitzel. How attractive it was and how someone had to order the pork schnitzel just to say it. And...

Last night my wife and I held our dog Boo one last time. I kissed her on the head as her heart slowed to stop. We’d been at this same emergency  hospital, staffed with wonderful people, just six months before with our thirteen -year old Italian Greyhound Teddy after a cancerous tumor hemorrhaged in his abdomen.  We would decide the next day to end his suffering.  Boo came as an unexpected gift into our lives while we were...

Son Lux is the classically trained musician Ryan Lott.  Unlike his first album At War with Walls and Mazes, which took three years of tinkering to create an unclassifiable mix of hip-hop chamber pop with an indie sensibility,  We Are Rising was composed and recorded, as part of The RPM Challenge, in exactly four weeks.  What strikes me is that the new album sounds equally, if not more, meticulous in its arrangements.  Lush string...

A recent collaboration I was commissioned by Mark DeCarteret to do for his as-yet-unpublished novel, Off-Season. This extraordinary novel, set in the gaudy squalor of Seatown, can be found excerpted at Word Riot.  Where are the brave publishers out there willing to take on literature that does more than attempt a “deceptive simplicity?”   Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio...

It’s after a couple sets of tennis. My friend Peter says he believes that Big Foot exists, something about how Jane Goodall thought so too. We’re sitting down on a bench, and I’m not ready for this. He hates the middle class. That’s his big one. That and physics. How everything is motion and anyone who says otherwise is full of crap. Anyway, the Big Foot thing caught me a little. Something keeps me from asking if he’s...

It starts at the local Walgreens. I am buying toothpaste and some bottled water to drink on my walk home. Waiting in line, I see these mini-pens, the kind that would fit perfectly in a shirt pocket with a small notepad, a little writerly touch to make me feel better about things. I put it on the counter with the water and toothpaste. “Oops, someone left a pen,” the cashier says. “Oh no,” I say. “I intend to make that mine.” ...

11. David Abram’s Becoming Animal:An Earthly Cosmology. Pg. 37 of 313. I bought this one for the cover. Not always a good start, but I’ve had luck with this before.  The interesting thing is that what I did read of this book had a profound effect on my worldview, and this, I think, was the root of its inevitable undoing.  Once I grasped the thesis, which was an affirmation of my own stirring discontent with metaphysics, I...