*or muppets.Being poor is sad.
Lack of funds means you can't spend money on copious amounts of crap that you'll get rid of in a few months. Luckily, there are plenty of things that you can do as a human that don't involve consuming goods. One thing I've been doing these past couple decades to beat the recession-blahs is going to my local library to browse the shelves, pray that my idle scanning of literature will one day lead me to fame and fortune on Jeopardy, and cast furtive glances at the bespectacled, bearded babe in the 900s. (heh. just a little Dewey Decimal System humor.)
Some of the books I've picked up in the last few months and would recommend to you:
Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azzerad. Could not put this down. From Henry Rollins to Calvin Johnson, and everything that mattered in between. Wow. Worth the read for the chapter on the Butthole Surfers alone.
Girls Like Us by Sheila Weller. Perhaps a little too embarrassing to read in certain public places, this was pretty damn riveting, in that guilt-laden, voyeuristic way.
Will You Take Me As I Am: Joni Mitchell's Blue Period by Michelle Mercer. This book had almost no point except to extrapolate on the genius of Joni Mitchell, which is alright with me.
Across the Great Divide: The Band and America by Barney Hoskyns-- Music journalism by British people is a delectable treat indeed. And this book does a great job of making that case that The Band is the only band that has ever made music worth listening to.
Can't get enough of music bios. Like reading US Weekly about actually interesting humans, who also don't deny rampant sex with other famous people and cocaine use.
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates. Do not read when you're "pondering the deep questions about life in Amerika."
Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, Jon Lee Anderson. Didn't actually finish this, it's like 600 pages. Stick to Che's own "Motorcycle Diaries" instead. All the drama and none of the bulk.
What I Talk about When I talk About Running, Haruki Murakami. This book is like the center of the Venn diagram for running and writing, which you'll like if you're into either or both of those.
A Wanderer in the Perfect City- Lawrence Weschler. This man is a prince among cultural "critics." This book chronicles numerous talented artistic individuals who perpetually exist on the fringe of breaking through into the cultural conscience, and is a very enjoyable read. Also, if you're interested in art or anything else, run, don't walk to pick up a copy of Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences. Put out by McSweeney's, and is incredibly smart and fun at the same time.
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace. What can you say about this (late) guy that hasn't been said? It's hard to read words written by anyone else after reading DFW, but probably not as hard as it will be to watch the movie version of this book starring that guy from "The Office."
Another book that I've spent the past two or so years mulling over is Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. It chronicles various forms of resistance to the capitalist tendency to commodify everything in it's path since World War I. It's exhaustively researched and full of fascinating parallels like the one Marcus draws between Johnny Rotten and a 16th century German tyrant. It's been ruining my life since I picked it up but I can't put it down. What more could you want from a read?
Just picked up The Interrogation by J.M.G. Le Clezio, the winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize, and Memoirs of Hecate County by Edmund Wilson, he of the same esteemed college preparatory school as yours truly. It was on the list of banned books, and as this is Banned Books Week, I thought I'd celebrate the freedom of the read.
Other fun things to do when you're poor include "getting back to nature" by walking around a park or otherwise outside space, riding your bike really fast down hills, working on your memoir, and having your friends buy you beer.
And remember, stealing toilet paper from work is a right.
No comments:
Post a Comment