Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Books Wish List

Just throwing it out to the universe--it wouldn't suck if the following books somehow fell into my lap:


If ever a book was written just for me, this is it: Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians, by Justin Martin. Great review, here:


STFU & take my money!  Ireland's Pirate Queen: The True Story of Grace
O'Malley, by Anne Chambers.


Yes, please. Rimbaud: A Biography, by Graham Robb.



I adore Phyllis Barber. She's on the faculty at my alma mater, Vermont College of Fine Arts, and I was lucky to spend some time with her in a writing residency in Slovenia back in 2007. She's the only other person I know who's also been to Tibet (I was there in 2010). Anyway, I want to read her latest, To the Mountain: One Mormon Woman's Search for Spirit.  According to her website, this is "the story of the author's twenty-year hiatus from Mormonism and her visits with shamans in Peru and Ecuador; Tibetan Buddhist monks in North India and Tibet; a variety of Baptist congregations in Arkansas, Missouri, Utah, and South Carolina; megachurches; charismatic Christian congregations, travels with godddess worshipers in the Yucatan, and much more. The book's purpose is to demonstrate how we can not only tolerate a variety of ideas in the spiritual realm, but can learn from their wisdom." Right up my alley! You can also watch the official book trailer.


This looks interesting, too: Strange Big Moon: The Japan and India Journals: 1960 - 1964, by Joanne Kyger. According to the Goodreads synopsis: "Hungry to explore Zen and make the discoveries that would shape a lifetime of poetry, Joanne Kyger left for Japan in her twenties and returned four years later ready to carve out a substantial niche in San Francisco's Beat poetry movement. Whether she is studying under Zen teacher Ruth Fuller Sakaki or meeting with the Dalai Lama (who at 27 'lounged on a velvet couch like a gawky adolescent in red robes'), her journals are witty, amusing, and intelligent, in this fascinating look at the art of poetry and portrait of the counterculture abroad." Another, right up my alley.

Finally, a couple of shout-outs to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, by Tom Stoppard, and Grendel, by John Gardner, two books I've been trying to read for years. I'm visiting the Foreign Language Bookstore in Shanghai later this week, so let's hope I can find even ONE of the above. If not, I'll see if I can order them online and have them shipped. Anyway, that's what's on my TBR (to-be-read) List at the moment. Cheers, Lauren

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