Miscellany.

A few things.

Good LORD. Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings! This video is brilliant, this girl can sing and a fun fact is that the Dap Kings were the band on Amy Winehouse’s record. Wonderful. Watch this. It’s great.

Also, please read some of these books that I have suggested. I like reading. Reading is fun, exciting and also helpful. Here’s a few books that have galvanized me recently.

1. Steve Almond’s entire ouevre, but especially his first book My Life in Heavy Metal and his last book Not That You Asked. I discovered this excellent man over the summer and I have been moved, transformed, transfigured, taken to a higher plane of consciousness, whatever. So good. He writes about sex and relationships in an entirely refreshing and completely real way that I have yet to find in any other book by an author writing about the awkward, delicate time post college and pre-marriage/babies/adulthood. He’s funny. Sex scenes in his books are not the fumbling, wordy experiences you find in other books. They are clear, simple and involve all the foibles, mishaps and humor that make up the act itself. This is key. Just read his shit. It’s worth it.

*Note: I saw Steve Almond speak today with Shalom Auslander at the SF Jewish Bookfest. So, so SO good. Intelligent men, both of them, and witty and extremely erudite. I had Steve autograph 2 of my books and gushed like a simpering fangirl about my passion for his writing and muttered something about Emerson and how he taught there. Entirely embarassing. Mr. Auslander and I also discussed the Hudson Valley. He is a very angry man. More on him another day.

2. Read any Joan Didion you can get your hands on. Joan Didion’s writing on California are so good I can’t even put it into words. She captures the weirdness of the landscape and the people with clarity and intelligence. Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a good start.

3. The Collected Short Stories of Amy Hempel will teach you how to read close. Her stories are handfuls of events, brief minutes of time out of a person’s life, a quick interaction in a paragraph or two. She makes the most excellent word choices ever. She always picks the right words and they are sharp. It’s pretty amazing.

As to not make this didactic, here’s a picture of a polar bear. I also really like polar bears.