2014 has been a year of hopes and dreams and plans and schemes and fire and desire and eyes and sighs that fly high into the sky. And what a year of BOOKS. We all read. It is so good. Sometime when a TV show is too hard it is good to say "where is a book?" You find one and you read it and before you know it 2014 is a great time. So this is why our staff each pick a book for you. "What should I read?" everybody ask. DON'T ASK THAT AGAIN. Here are the book. The last one is the best book.
5. A Lamp of Boats by Jennifry Damtrich - This is a book that has maybe twelve of story in it. Most book have one story that is long. This book A Lamp of Boats has maybe twelve that are short. Writer Jennifry Damtrich busted onto the book scene last year with her book about herself call I Love Frosting: A New York Girl Eats Some Cakes: A True Story but now this time she make everything up. One story is about a girl with a job. Another story is about a girl with a sister. There is this one story that is all about how a girl took a drug. One story is so crazy, it is about a girl who imagine a cartoon monster destroying New York City, USA and this is like how all of us think "what is happening to this country anyway." It hit to the heart of what it mean to feel with a heart. As one character say on one of the pages in this book "That certainly was a lamp of boats."
4. The Digital Newspaper by Benjamint Joe-Tynx - You notice how in 2014 everyone is always looking on a computer? Well writer Benjamint Joe-Tynx notice it better. Three year ago Benjamint Joe-Tynx exploded the book news with his book Now Is A Time When The Past Is All We Forgot which was about how a guy go back to Germany and is like "man what was THAT all about." Now he BACK with a NEW BOOK this time about a man who is 25 or 26 or 27 or 28 or 29 and he is going to make a big amount of dollars off of digital. He want to digital everything. TV? Yes, digital. Movie? Of course yes, digital. Coffee? Even that? Yes, even coffee. Computers? He will make those completely digital. But not news reporting...right? Think again because yes. News will be digital and this is his big idea for money. Will his soul even be okay after all this? Great question. At the end of the book they say if it is.
3. Hat Town by Bigsby Gronting - A crime epic is a thing that make the page turn and when Bigsby Gronting have a new one you just go "Give me those pages, I want to turn they all night and into they morning sun!" Last time Bigsby Gronting wrote a book it was call The Crime Goat and it is a book about how a crime made by a criminal can have ripple like when you throw a table into a lake and that ripple go all over and make everything worse. This new one like that too. It take place in the 20 Century which is the biggest one yet and it have a town where crime go all over like a ripple. There is a corrupt sheriff who love the local woman but is she all she seem like? It will take fifty year to find out and along that time Sheriff Bank Timms will see Vietnam and Civil Rights and arcade games and Fight Club all the time he is trying to catch the killer name "The Santa Claus Killer" who is name that because every time he kill a guy he leave a note that say "I am Santa Claus." To take a childhood dream like that and kill people...Sheriff Bank Timms HAVE to find this guy. The prose of this book sparkle like a gas-power hot-rod car. It seriously does.
2. Fart Wizard by Tramvis Beckwarg - What if a wizard was real? That is the unbelievable idea of Fart Wizard, Tramvis Beckwarg's so funny but sad too first book about a grown guy who find out one day while he is working at the pizza store that he have always been wizard. His mailman tell him that and that fat grown guy who is a wizard say "how am I a wizard?" and the mailman go "You of always been one" and the grown guy go "oh man now how am I going to play Space Quest?" and then he put on his favorite music which is Crowded House. Later he listen to Danzig and The Runaways. Always he is a wizard. Plus the fart thing is funny and it is his identity in a way. There is a threat to the world too. The old mailman tell him "The world need any kind of hero even you." It is a classic sentence. So he eat pizzas and wonder if he is a loser. Can his interest in things bring him love. Will he ever grow up. Will he beat the threats. There is a talking dog that know all about TV that is his friend. The dog say "Hey you need to be a grown guy. You are a wizard now. Even Kevin Arnold from The Wonder Years had to grow up. So did Ms. Pac-Man." It is a speech for all of us. It is literature at its best. The Thunder Cats are in this too.
1. The Burlap Choir by Sangstrom Ordney - What would you do in a suburb? What if there was a different race near you? What if you have a neighbor who have super nice boobs? What if you have a teen who go bowling at night with friend? Is everything falling down? Is your life crazy? Is today society going to explode? All of these questions are asked by Sangstrom Ordney in a book. THIS book. It his first book in ten year. His last book was a great one. Did you read it? In this book our "protagonist," I don't even think he a hero to be honest with you, I mean think about it, make more money than most people but not as much as other people and the insight is amazing. "I can't let my teen bowl so much" he say to his great-boobed neighbor. "I feel like 'fast food' burgers are destroying us." It is the kind of writing that can make you think "That is my guts on the page. He shot my stomach and wrote a whole book with what came out." That is how good books are and this is the top one of all.
Thanks for the recommendations. I may have to download these on my Amazon KindleFire digital media e-reader, because for sheer convenience, ease of use, control and stability, not to mention prices that are out of this world, including subscription access to a library of at least 350 titles in over 4 different languages, nothing beats my Amazon KindleFire for exactly this purpose.
ReplyDeleteFor myself, the ten best reads of the year were in fact your very own postmodernistic crime-suspenser/meditation-on-how-we-live-now, Angels Live in Booze Bars. That's right. I read it ten times, trying to work out how you pulled it off. And frankly, I still don't know. But each time revealed more of its magical depths to me every time. And I'm sure it will do so for another ten times, making it my ten favorite books of 2015 too, no doubt.
Honorable mention should go to The Meth Lab in the Mountains, by New Hampshire native Cram Hardesty, a rough-hewn tale of grit, grimness, the hardscrabble lives of burnout yokels living and dying in hovels, and how we live now. Also a fine literary novel of how we live now, How They Died, in Their Furs, by W. Jake Otham, which through its unsentimental examination of the hard times that befall an immigrant family of apprentice woodcarvers squeaking by in the slums of northern Kentucky deftly intertwines the fates of America and her luckless progeny in a literal heartbreaker of the most distinguishedly like a fine wine and so forth.
I'm halfway through THE METH LAB IN THE MOUNTAINS right now! I'm reading it and going "this is like a news story from earlier this morning." Then when Russell fights the family of bears I thought "America: why is it like this?"
ReplyDeleteI wish I'd read it sooner! This list of 5 best would have swelled to a list of 6 best!
You guys crack me up!
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