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Hey everyone,
How was your July?
I had a pretty Tarantino-y month. I rewatched five of his movies, read his new 400-page book (review below), read a couple of his formative books (one review below), listened to every podcast he’s been on, and fell into a lot of three-hour YouTube rabbit holes. I felt nervous leading up to the interview – like losing sleep and texting friends at three in the morning kind of nervous.
All that to say: I worked myself into a tizzy. It happens. I kind of like the occasional tizzy. Anyway, I’ve been told it’s my best interview. Yes, that was by my wife, and yes, I may have been fishing for a compliment. Listen yourself and let me know. Here are links for Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. (If you want to read a lot people trashing me -- which is always lots of fun -- I'd recommend YouTube!)
Also, one last housekeeping item: last month you’ll remember we sent all orders for my favorite writing book A Swim In A Pond In The Rainby George Saunders to indie bookstore Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee. Thank you! You sold them out many times over so this month I thought we’d shower some indie love on Nowhere Bookshop. They’re a San Antonio indie bookstore run by blogger and author Jenny Lawson. (Here’s my chat with Jenny.) If you want to buy any of the books below and would like them shipped to you from an indie bookshop, just click the title and you'll end up there. Btw, I take no cuts -- all profits just go to a bookstore we love. (PS. This is all an experiment! Let me know if it's working and also if you want to suggest another indie bookstore with a great site that carries widely and ships far, far away!)
Okay, are you ready to spend some of your Sunday afternoon or Monday morning together? I am! Grab a seat on the closest sofa, beach chair, or toilet and let's talk about books...
Neil
1. Once Upon A Time in Hollywoodby Quentin Tarantino. I have so much to say about this book I don’t know where to start. I will resist my urge to talk about the story and instead tell you three other things. First: the reading setting. The setting? Yeah, I mean where you are when you’re reading. This is a 400-page drugstore paperback movie novelization of an R-rated movie. So I have to say when I read it I felt like a teenager in the 70s reading something exciting and vulgar and thrilling and sultry and wild in the wee hours before turning off the nightlight. Because can I ask: When was the last time you read a drugstore paperback movie novelization? Forty years ago? Never? And yet: it totally worked to mentally transport me on another plane. (For those of you in bookselling or publishing you get the gall and gumption required in putting a book in this format at $9.99.) It felt so classic Tarantino to reinvent yet another form. I think we can add movie novelizations to the list of gangster movies, Blaxploitation films, Kung Fu sagas, and spaghetti westerns. Might this book singlehandedly lift up an entire genre? Could we all be buying movie novelizations of our favorite films in December? Maybe! Second: No moralizing. It seems like these days we often see morals placed above story. Was the person good? Did they do the right thing? Or can they become good? Can they learn to do the right thing? We live in such a “you gotta do it this way” society that if you say the wrong thing you’re quickly outcast. Well, there’s no moralizing here! And it’s so refreshing. Tarantino is a master storyteller writing in service of story alone. Characters say horrible things, character do horrible things, and they don’t necessarily grow at all – or, at least, in the ways you might expect. Some scenes may make you wince, others cause your heart to fly, but if you’re like me you’ll keep flipping because the story is just so propulsive. The swerves and curves feel like riding a waterslide. Third thing: Total geekfest. Are you a bit of nerd? Do your friends think of you as the person who could easily geek out on some inane topic for twenty minutes at the party? I feel like the answer is yes since you’re 389 words into a book review right now that you're presumably reading just for fun. (Who does that?) Well, if I'm right, you will love this book for the sheer quantity of lore. I’ve always considered myself a movie fan but after reading this book I feel I can elevate that label a little notch towards aficionado. Quentin manages to share a wobbly mirrored mix of factual and revisionist history of cinema and half the fun is trying to spot the difference. It might feel like you're being read Trivial Pursuit questions by Vladimir Nabokov. For those who’ve seen the movie, the book is different. For those who haven’t, you don’t need to. And for both, I’m going to come right out and say that, in my view, the book is better. (Don't worry: You can still picture Brad Pitt if you want to -- and he gets a lot more than topless in the book.) This is a fun and wild book I highly recommend. And I just feel so excited as a reader and book lover that Quentin Tarantino says he will spend his time after making his tenth and final film "becoming a man of letters... that's how I want to spend my twilight years." This was a very long review but if you want even more, I share my five favorite quotes from the book and get Quentin’s live reaction on them here.
2.What It’s Like To Be A Bird: From Flying To Nesting, Eating To Singing, What Birds Are Doing And Whyby David Sibley. A Northern Mockingbird swooped near my head a couple times while I was writing on a park bench this spring. It was a tough first day but I kept writing on the same bench and our friendship deepened. He walked up to my feet, performed incredible songs, and, after the first few visits, came to say hi on a low branch near me whenever I sat down. I wasn’t sure if this relationship was just in my head until I read in this book that Northern Mockingbirds actually recognize individual humans! Wow, I thought, what we had was real. Longtime readers may remember three years ago when I shared the Jonathan Franzen National Geographic cover story “Why Birds Matter.” Since then my love has deepened and David Sibley has become my birding friend. I carry his wonderful Sibley Birds East in my backpack and now I have this big, beautiful hardcover to flip through. There are so many delights in this incredible feast. Birders and aspiring birders, hear my song: Grab this book and let yourself fall even deeper in love with birds.
3. Monaby Pola Oloixarac. (Translated from Spanish by Adam Morris). I picked up this book because of the cover and then read the first paragraph on the inside front flap and got interested: “Mona, a Peruvian writer living in California, presents a tough and sardonic exterior. She likes drugs and cigarettes, and when she learns that she is something of an anthropological curiosity – a woman writer of color treasured at her university for the flourish of rarefied diversity she brings – she pokes fun at American academic culture and its fixation on identity.” I really, really loved the first half of this book and recommend it for that alone. The story motors, the writing is gorgeous, and we follow and relate and root for the cynical and cerebral Mona as she travels to a snooty literary festival in Sweden. A great first half! Sometimes that’s what a book offers and you know what? Sometimes that’s enough. We don't always need a good ending. Sure, I personally felt like the final act of this book finds the gushing plot starting to splinter into all kinds of little brooks and streams in different directions and a lot of the power was lost. But, again, it was a killer opening half and that's more than good enough. I'm excited to read other books by Pola Oloixarac which, I might add, is a pretty killer name.
4. This Is My Bookstore. This isn’t a book but rather a collection of 100 postcards of bookstores. I bought it in a bookstore because I missed bookstores and wanted to feel like I was travelling around the world hanging out in bookstores. About a quarter of the cards aren’t great – just boring exterior shots or weird close-ups of a random bookshelf – but the rest were so immersive. If you love bookshops, buy this and leave it somewhere in your house for a mental escape. I think if I was locked up in prison and could only take a sackful of items, I’d throw this in my sack. Allow your mind to wander the shelves of many magical bookshops around the world. (PS. I’m not mailing these to anyone. Purely for flip-through travelling.)
5. When The Lights Go Downby Pauline Kael. Pauline Kael was the ‘witty, biting, highly opinionated’ movie critic for The New Yorker from the late 60s to the early 90s. This book is a dense 600-page collection of all her reviews from 1975 to 1980. (She’s got a pile of other books with her other reviews.) When Quentin Tarantino was a little kid he’d go to the movies by himself and then head to the B. Dalton’s bookstore to flip open The New Yorker and see what she thought. “At the end of the day Pauline Kael is my favorite writer,” he told me. “I find her voice completely captivating … I kind of adopted her view as my own.” In an obituary for Pauline Kael (she died in 2001), Roger Ebert wrote that she "had a more positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person over the last three decades." There is something addictive about her reviews and many of them made me want to rush out to watch or rewatch classics from forty years ago. Hundreds of movies are reviewed in this book including biggies like Carrie, Rocky, Taxi Driver, Jaws, and Star Wars.
6. Kusama: The Graphic Novelby Elissa Macellari. (Translated from Italian by Edward Fortes.) A few years ago the art exhibit “Infinity Mirrors” by Yayoi Kusama came to a downtown Toronto art gallery and generated massive buzz. Like, lineups down the street at the crack of dawn every day kind of buzz. I went to see what the fuss was about and was blown away. (Here are a few pics.) I didn’t know much more about the artist until picking up this graphic novel. On one hand, it’s a wonderfully accessible way to get to know Yayoi (currently age 92!) and learn the history of her art in relation to her mental health challenges. She reveals, "I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieved my illness is to keep creating art. I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live." It also details her rise to prominence in the 1960s New York City avant-garde scene. (Avant-garde as in she painted naked hippies with polka dots and ran away from the police a bunch of times.) But, on the other hand, the book only left me wanting more – the book is too light and is presented in a non-linear way with big gaps so I was left reading her Wikipedia profile afterwards and hoping for another travelling exhibition one day.
7. Fox 8by George Saunders. This is a tiny 49-page short story presented in a little hardcover for George Saunders completists. A dark, comic little fable told in first-fox by Fox 8 who has learned to speak “Yuman” and goes on an epic quest to save his pack after the “danjer” of a new shopping mall threatens to cut off his food supply. The joy of this book is the writing. How would you write a book as a fox? Well, you’d open it like this: “Deer Reeder: First may I say, sorry for any werds I spel rong. Because I am a fox! So don’t rite or spel perfect.” Short dose of magic.
8. The Prophetby Kahlil Gibran. I was simply not prepared for the sheer weight of this book. Yes, I’d heard about it forever. Yes, it’s been on my wife’s bookshelf for years. Yes, I sort of assumed that a book that’s been in print for a hundred years straight has gotta be a pretty good book. But still the “density of wisdom” in here was nearly unbelievable. A collection of twenty-six prose poems on topics like love, marriage, friendship, and time, all (fairly poorly) folded into a plotline something like “A prophet is getting on a boat to leave his hometown and a group of villagers corner him before getting on to ask him his views on twenty-six things.” Not all the poems are gems but many are and the ones that hit you will probably require you to reread them immediately. And then maybe reread them again. (If you get my Neil.blog email, you may remember I sent out a poem about parenting recently. If you don't, sign up here.) The book isn’t religious per se but it sort of feels religious and – for interest sake – when I read up on Gibran, I learned he was broadly influenced by Sufism, Islam, Baha’ism, and Maronism.
9. Beezus and Ramonaby Beverly Cleary. Did you know Beverly Cleary died this year ... at age 104!? Did you know she wrote for 50 years? Sure, Ramona only aged four years in that timespan but she holds up. I can’t say the same for the new cartoonish drawings, though. (What’s wrong with the 1950s? There’s no way Ramona’s mom has a trendy bob cut!) Don’t buy the new version for your kid like I did. It’s worth sifting through the used bookstores for a classic dog-eared version with the original drawings. So like, this version over this version is what I'm saying. And now I suddenly feel like I am book shaming people who like movie or new cartoon covers and that's kind of the opposite of our first core value so now I have no idea what to tell you.
10. Birds of Instagramedited by David Sibley. I probably wouldn’t have bought this book if my boyfriend David Sibley hadn’t written the Introduction and edited it. But, despite the title, I’m glad I did. A sumptuous feast of bird photos for people who prefer to stay off small screens. Wonderfully organized and arranged by David and a great gift for someone who’s just getting into birds. I will also point out that this book is much more global than What It’s Like To Be A Bird which focuses on birds of North America only. So prepare to be visually stunned by many of the pics.
11.The Handbook to Lazy Parentingby Guy Delisle. I’ve recommended a couple of graphic novels by Guy Delisle before, including Jerusalem and Pyongyang, but I had no idea he’s been putting out a smaller series of cartoons that can best be described as “honest tales from the front lines of parenting.” I really don’t like the title of the book but if you’re a parent, or married to a parent, who is feeling overspent, overworked, and overtired right now, grab them this book. Little cartoons include tales like when he forgot his daughter in a store, when he interrupted their homework to make them watch something on TV, or when he took over his kid's class field trip with his relentless questions. You will feel seen. (If you’re interested in talking parenting a bit more, check out Chapter 32 with Cat and Nat or Chapter 46 with Dr. Laura Markham.
