Josh's Staff Picks

The eponymous poem is the best new poem you have read in 3-5 years. It's on page 13. Read it. Collect yourself. Walk to the register. Be consoled that Brian Turner survived to write this book. Finish your day.

--?--When--in all considerations of human history and the advancements of--as in, of course, the making of advances upon humanity--humanity was the first post-modern (O! sway the great branches of modernity to which our braying asses are tied) novel written? You could argue--and truly what greater and more enlightened activity can there be than projecting your opinions against an equally unresponsive receptor--that it was between the years 1759 and 1766.

The style of Tristram Shandy is convoluted, digressive, obtuse, tangential, illusive, allusive, non-sequitorial, and hysterical. A brilliant mockery of narrative form, British society and human existence, Tristram Shandy breaks literary ground that won't be laid for another hundred years or so. Sit with the style. It's worth the effort.

The cover claims it's the best-selling cookbook in Italy (and if it's good enough for ancient Italian grandmothers to use, it's good enough for me) but then book covers say lots of things. I can say that I messed up one of the recipes about three different ways and still had the best pork chops of my life. There are recipes for all skill levels presented with straightforward instructions (and without the American obsession with time: prep time, cook time, total time) for every ingredient you could imagine and quite a few you probably couldn't. With three recipes for wild boar and a list of fish and game not seen outside a forest ranger's guidebook, The Silver Spoon adds the flip-through appeal of a coffee table book to the delicious recipes.

This book is a radical, agricultural, exuberant, expose of the American character, filled with boiling prose, brain-erupting humor, and barn-disintegrating political intrigue, and starring one of American literature's new heros; John Kaltenbrunner. More than any other work I've read, this book shows how the traits like perserverence or ingenuity can contribute to both the best and the worst of American culture. Furthermore, it is one of the few works of literary fiction that embraces the role agriculture played in the development of the American identity. A predatory Methodist organization, a garbage collector strike, an indominable ewe, a bar called the Bloody Bucket, and what might be the greatest riot in contemporary fiction, all contribute to Lord of the Barnyard's greatness.
Josh

At .9 cents a page, the 10th anniversary edition of this classic American novel is one of the best bargains in the store. This massive, funny, intelligent story explores entertainment, drugs, tennis, optics, families, addiction, film-making, commercialism, and radical Quebecois separatism, while testing the limits of the novel and establishing a benchmark of the form in America. Unforgettable characters, contemporary heroics, and exquisite speculation make this mind and muscle work out worth every nine-tenths of a penny.
Josh

There were phrases in this book that stopped me in my tracks. I had to close the book. Catch my breath. Wonder what the point of reading anything else would be. Literature can turn the mundane, the ugly, the evil into the extraordinary, the beautiful, and the saintly. That transformation is one of the reasons we read and no other work I've ever read has produced so much beauty from so much filth. The content is graphic and the narrator is despicable, but the fundamental act of writing is the placing of one word after the other and few authors have done so with as much beauty and genius as Genet did in Our Lady of the Flowers.

The reissuing of The Unfortunates, Johnson's unbound novel is a major moment in publishing. The narrator's sports writing job brings him to a semi-familiar city, triggering memories of his friend who died of cancer. Because the chapters can be read in any order, many story-telling techniques are unavailable, but this challenge goes unnoticed because every word is perfect. Johnson creates a powerful statement about grudging employment from the composition of an article about a boring soccer match. His images are so brilliant, they seem to radiate from the reader's life. This is the book to read for lovers of literature.
Josh