Tag: books

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My Friends’ Books

The best gift you can give is a book. There’s just no denying it. 

Books are: 

  • Practical; easy to carry, kill time, transport you to magical dimensions. 
  • Intimate; they reveal themselves to you and in turn reveal you to yourself. 
  • Sensual; smell good, feel good, look good.
  • Ecclectic; sci-fi and lo-fi, comic and horny, autofiction and automobile repair, oratory and auditory, self-help and self-destruction and self-indulgent, Marxist and Maoist, revolutionary and revelation, etc, etc. 

What’s a cooler gift than a book though? A book by someone you know. I’m not just saying that because I’m someone you know who’s written books. It’s just a fact. It’s punk rock to slide a book into someone’s hands that they’ve never heard of before. It becomes a secret just for the two of you. And when the book blows up, you can brag about being a trendsetter.

don’t be boring

With that in mind, here’s a few books by my friends.


Beside Myself, Ashley Farmer—flash fiction beauties. I have an original, a most prized possession!

Boxcutters, John Chrostek—John is the master of the final line. These stories are fan-freaking-tastic!

Mari Murdock—Mari is one of my favorite creative minds. She has too many cool projects to list, just check out her goodreads page.

M O 月 N, Chengru He—playful, energetic, amazing poetry. Whenever I feel down about my own place in the world as a writer, I remind myself I was in a graduate program with Chengru. She’s an unparalleled genius!

The Reincarnations, Nathan Elias—Montag Press homie. These stories are a blast. Meditations, examinations, and ruminations on the stormy brilliance of living.

Gridlock, Brett Biebel—these sentences will melt your face. Glorious, snappy stories.

The Lengest Neoi, Stephanie Choi—seeing Stephanie’s work in an experimental forms class was when I first realized the folks in my MFA were serious fucking business.

In Transit, Nicholas Pierce—whenever I try to write sonnets I turn to Nick’s book. His control and comfort in the sonnet is otherworldly to me.

Avail, Erin O’Luanaigh—Erin wrote a sestina that fundamentally changed the way I understand poetry. Check her out!

Don’t be boring. Buy these books. Then buy them again and gift them to all your friends.

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Don Quixote

Books are powerful objects. Magical, even. In the right moments, with the right book, time and space upends. This doesn’t always happen. Sometimes you must read as thief — scour your Joyces and Woolfs for inspiration.

As I read “Don Quixote” time folded in. It’s not that I found myself in the land of Sancho and Rocinante, rather, I was in the company of my grandfather. Clifford — I called him Pa, others called him Angel — has been skiing on the other side for some time, yet, as clear as day, he roamed the pages of Cervantes’ great two-parter. Sometimes as Sancho, sometimes as Quixote. Occasionally, he just sat with me and delighted in the courage and missteps of our hero, Alonso.

Two scenes come to mind, the most romantic in that most romantic book. When Sancho buried his face in the curls of his trusted Dapple after facing the harsh realities of mankind’s brutal unkindness, I felt Pa’s guidance. A tender directive. Why govern a city if you have cheap whiskey (or ginger ale) and the kinship of friends and lovers?

And of course, Quixote’s insistence on fighting a lion. The beauty in stubbornness, something my bloodline is full of. In these moments Pa made sure I looked closer and remembered that everyone’s lions are different. I suppose mine is writing. Everyday I look at this thing and beg it to devour me.

Reading can confront us with our own mortality, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, confuse that finality.

Read books and remember loved ones are there even when they’re not.

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Moby Dick

I read the first few pages walking home from the library. An uncommon, welcome, summer rain followed me as I read. It’s a beautiful book. If you’re not ready to dive in Tilda Swinton will read you the first chapter. If that doesn’t excite you then we probably won’t see eye-to-eye on most things.

Melville’s prose has the power to overwhelm you. He stretches it to its complete limit and then a little farther. It’s biblical and thumping — rhythmic and prophetic. I’d read that McCarthy was influenced by Melville and it’s clear in Blood Meridian. The color and breath of the words, the impossible characterizations. Yes, I think overwhelming is the right word.

I fell in love with Queequeg as I was falling in love with my fiancée. She suggested it, took me to see an opera based on it. Her and the Pequod are inseparable — knotted together in my memories. Often, when I feel that “drizzly November in my soul” I think back to the beauty of that book and the magic circumstances that brought me to it. Moby Dick will always be a wonderful place for me to visit.

Read it.