The Stack is a fairly innocuous pile of books that sits beside the tricycle awaiting to be read. It gets added to as we purchase more (which is almost weekly).
The Stack is like the proverbial bottomless whiskey jug— no matter how much we drink, there's always more to consume.
The Stack will grow and shrink depending on the strictures of Common hygiene.
The Stack can become like a coral reef and have it's own eco-system with golden and white spotted eagle rays, jacks, wahoo, red-tailed and dog snappers, and sea fans. OK, maybe not wahoo.
The Stack has been said to run our lives. Indirectly.
The Stack is inanimate but does seethe on occasion.
The Stack is not to be ignored.

My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist by Mark Leyner. “Mordant wit, surreal juxtapositions, hip irreverence, offhand techno-jargon, darkly comic pop-cultural references and self-conscious irony. All make up the fabric of Mark Leyner's frenzied, hilarious and, at times, psychotic book, My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist. Leyner has been called the author for the MTV generation, and for good reason.” - taken from here.

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. “Koushun Takami's notorious high-octane thriller is based on an irresistible premise: a class of junior high school students is taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are provided arms and forced to kill one another until only one survivor is left standing. Criticized as violent exploitation when first published in Japan - where it then proceeded to become a runaway bestseller - Battle Royale is a Lord of the Flies for the 21st century, a potent allegory of what it means to be young and (barely) alive in a dog-eat-dog world. Made into a controversial hit movie of the same name, Battle Royale is already a contemporary Japanese pulp classic, now available for the first time in the English language.” - taken from the jacket copy.

Hobo: A Young Man's Thoughts on Trains and Tramping in America by Eddy Joe Cotton. “On a cold, gray day in 1991, a kid named Eddy Joe Cotton left home with nothing but a warm jacket, some well-worn boots, and a few crumpled dollar bills. His father had just fired him, not for the first time, but for the last. He didn’t see his father again for two years. But this is not the story of a runaway—it is a tale of an unorthodox road to adulthood. By taking to the trains, Eddy Joe Cotton learned the difficulty of life lived on the margins, the fading importance of a once-celebrated American folk hero, and the ultimate meaning of freedom.” - taken from the jacket copy.

The Best Short Stories of William Kittredge by William Kittredge. “A master storyteller and essayist, William Kittredge is best known for his unflinching vision of the hardscrabble landscape of the West and the people who survive and die in it. His stories are stripped down but bristle with life to offer a dusty, relentless landscape; the smell of freshly turned dirt; the blunt conversations about work that needs doing; and the rare, quiet moment of reflection that amounts to nothing less than poetry. This volume represents the best of Kittredge’s stories, available together in a handsome edition.” - taken from the jacket copy.

Super Flat Times by Matthew Derby. “With a heightened sense of the boundless possibility and lurking doom that Orwell and Huxley once envisioned, Matthew Derby's stories provide a glimpse into an intricately imagined world-a world in which clouds are treated with behavioral serum, children are handicapped by their ability to float, and all food (including Popsicles) is made of meat. The stories parody our contemporary notions of family, government, and science with razor-sharp wit and explore the darkest of human longings with heartbreaking sincerity. The result: a book that is both a brilliant satire and an assault on the senses.”- taken from here.

Dogrun by Arthur Nersesian. “Mary Bellanova came home to her east village apartment, cooked dinner, and fought with her boyfriend, Primo. But soon mary realized that Primo’s silence in front of the tv set was more than just one of his bad moods: Primo was actually dead. Other guys had abandoned Mary before, but Primo’s exit was by far the most unique. And suddenly Mary’s life -- defined so far by a string of temp jobs and unfinished short stories -- takes off on a tantalizing adventure as she follows a trail of Primo’s ex-lovers. Arthur Nersesian, who created a howling new york odyssey in his smash hit the Fuck-Up, captures the spirit of the city itself -- jolting and full of surprise -- in this powerful new novel edged with black humor and poignancy.” - taken from the jacket copy.

The Serial Killer’s Diet Book by Kevin Postupack. “Fred Orbis is fat. Very fat, and he wants to be thin. He is editor of Feast Magazine, the magazine devoted to over-eating, but he dreams of being Federico Orbisini, internationally known novelist, existential philosopher, raconteur, and lover of women. Darby Montana is heiress to the massive Polk’s Peanut Roll fortune and one of the world's richest women, but her face and body have the indifferent plainness of a rectangle. Her deepest desire is to be beautiful. Elizabeth Aphelion is a young poet, who in an impetuous night of passion surrenders her body and will to Jacqueline Jimson-Weed, her imperious college professor, for the promise of her book being published. Mr. Monde is the refined older gentleman in the modest brownstone on 54th St., who may or may not be the Devil in the market for a soul or two. And Devon DeGroot is a New York City homicide detective, who just may be the reincarnation of George Washington, readying himself for a final showdown with evil on the streets of Manhattan. ” - taken from the jacket copy.

Little Boy Blue by Edward Bunker. “Young Alex Hamilton is intelligent and independent but given to sudden fits of violent rage. Rebellious since his parents split up, Alex is constantly absconding from foster homes and institutions to be with his father, a broken man who can't give his son the home he desperately needs. Surrounded by well-meaning, over-worked social workers, vicious and cruel authority figures but always by no good peers, Alex is on a collision course with the law and himself.” - taken from the here.

Dog Eat Dog by Edward Bunker. “Dog Eat Dog is the tale of three unremorseful criminals with two felony convictions apiece and no more chances. Under California's `Three Strikes’ law, one more conviction - even for shoplifting - carries a mandatory life sentence with no prospect of remission. But a law intended to deter career criminals has the opposite effect on these three. Combined they have spent a lifetime behind bars and have no idea, or intention, of leading a straight life under rules set by a system they have never belonged to.
Troy, the gang’s leader and the brains of the operation, is an unrepentant thief who is `irrevocably committed to being the criminal outsider. He had nothing vested in society. It had turned him out and expected him to be satisfied as a menial worker as the price for staying out of prison. Real freedom has choices attached; without money there is none'. And with that in mind, Troy and his partners, Diesel Carson and the truly rabid Mad Dog McCain, set about planning a last big heist which will set them up for life. But even a perfectly planned and flawlessly executed robbery is not enough to prevent a denouement which has a grim inevitability about it.” - taken from here.

After Nature by W.G. Sebald. "After Nature is published posthumously and while it is not entirely representative of his oeuvre, it does provide some interesting insights into his development as a writer. A semi-autobiographical poem, it was written before any of his major works, and foreshadows many of the themes and techniques he would later explore more fully without the training wheels of blank verse.
The poem is split into a tripartite structure, each dealing with a biographical subject. The first section centres on Grunewald, a famous medieval painter, the second on Georg Steller, a German naturalist and 18th-century Arctic explorer, and the final section takes up the life of Sebald himself.
It opens with Grunewald’s altarpiece at Isenheim. Noted for its carnality and the vividness of its depiction of suffering, the altarpiece serves as a springboard for Sebald’'s treatment of the artist’s world – a world that massacres defenceless peasants, where a good Christian cannot marry a Jew – a world of pus and blood and the intimation of horrors to come that Grunewald, in the author’s seductive imagination, must literally blindfold himself to endure.
Steller, a German émigré to Russia during the Enlightenment, is presented as a self-imposed exile, a tortured stoic who takes refuge in the solitude of an Arctic voyage. Again the future intrudes, but only to presage extinction. Before leaving Steller's frozen corpse “to lie in the snow/like a fox clubbed to death”, Sebald reminds us of his zoological masterpiece De Bestiis Marinis, and of all the wonders, now gone, that used to crowd the polar seas." - taken from here.

Portrait of the Walrus by a Young Artist by Laurie Foos. "...dark and brooding...rather surreal. Frances, 18, is grieving the recent loss of her wildman, 400-pound sculptor father, whom she (a sculptor, too, though closeted) idolized. Her mother, long disgusted by the art madness her mate foisted on the household, takes up bowling, meets the wealthy owner of a string of bowling alleys, and relocates Frances and their live-in companion-buddy, Bessie, to Florida. Seeing the Sea World walruses mating jars Frances' psyche and unleashes the turbulent demands of art. She sequesters herself in her room, writing walrus poetry and spurning baths and her new stepfather's salads. Eventually, herds of walruses pursue her, blocking traffic and causing problems for the police when Frances and Bessie flee back home, where her father had lived with his clay and kiln in the basement. A thought-provoking concoction, perhaps too murky for some. - taken from here.

His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem. "In His Master's Voice, the point is strongly made that aliens may be more alien than we can guess. Lem's alien message is not easy to decode, and perhaps isn't meant to be easily decoded; in fact, we really don't know why they even sent the message. Some small portions are in fact successfully decoded by the scientists, but a strong case is made that these portions may be incorrectly decoded and may have nothing to do with the real message." - taken from here.

Wormholes: Essays and Occasional Writings by John Fowles. "As a novelist, John Fowles needs no introduction. His popularity and his place in the English literary canon have been assured for several decades. His novels The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman became instant classics upon publication. But his nonfiction writings are less well known, in part because their appearance has been scattered in ephemeral periodicals, academic journals, or as forewords or introductions to other authors' work. Wormholes is the first representative gathering of Fowles's fugitive and intensely personal writings: essays, literary criticism, commentaries, autobiographical statements, memoirs, and musings." - taken from here.

Martin Sloane by Michael Redhill. "Martin Sloane is an Irish-Canadian artist haunted by his past, who retells his stories (both true and embellished) by creating magical boxes and dioramas. Jolene Iolas, a typically lost college freshman, first falls in love with the art and then with the older man behind them. They begin a passionate, 10-year affair that follows the heightening of both of their careers, and ends abruptly when Martin suddenly vanishes in the middle of the night after a strange visit from Jolene's college roommate. Jolene mourns, sinking in and out of depression, as she tries to reassemble the scraps of her life, and she tries to love again, still wondering what happened to Martin, questioning herself, feeding her guilt, and still, after all this time, searching for him. When a trace of him appears years later, she is forced to confront her loss directly all over again." - taken from here.

The Roaches Have No King by Daniel Evan Weiss. "When Ira Fishblatt's girlfriend, Ruth Grubstein, moves into his apartment, he has the kitchen renovated She is tickled pink, but hundreds of other houseguests aren't - the cockroaches who'd been living high on the hog before they were starved out. Famine slowly drives them into a frenzy until one, named Numbers, comes up with a diabolical plan: they'll encourage a romance between Ira and the pretty neighbor, Elizabeth, and rid themselves forever of Ruth and her damnable tidiness" - taken from the jacket copy.

The Swine's Wedding by Daniel Evan Weiss. "When Alison Pennybarker and Solomon Beneviste announce their engagement, the trouble begins: the Pennybarkers plan a church wedding they can't afford, while Solomon's mother traces the Beneviste genealogy all the way back to the Spanish Inquisition. Both sides take determined, unwitting steps to promote disaster. In darkly comic mode, Daniel Evan Weiss once again voices profound truths about the human condition." - taken from the jacket copy

Carpenter's Gothic by William Gaddis. "The novel describes the last few months in the life of Elizabeth Booth. Elizabeth and her husband Paul have rented a house from a mysterious ex-CIA man and writer, McCandless. Paul is working as a media consultant to a religious demagogue, the Reverend Ude and cynically attempts to turn the accidental drowning of a child into a miracle that can be trumpeted around the globe for profit. Carpenter’s Gothic, like J R before it, is largely composed of dialogue, by now Gaddis’s chosen form of narration. Elizabeth lives in a house built in the architectural style that gives its name to the novel. "Carpenter’s gothic"mimics the grand Victorian style, but is built from wood rather than from the expensive wrought iron and stone called for in the original. It is impressive from a distance, but when viewed close up, it is what the novel calls "a patchwork of conceits, borrowings, deceptions." - taken from here.

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. "With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man - also named Jonathan Safran Foer - sets out to find the woman who might or might not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war, an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past." - taken from here

The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey. His 1975 novel, a "comic extravaganza." I heard about this book through an interview I saw with Chuck Palahniuk. Chuck mentioned it in relation to his own books. Now, I've wanted to read Abbey for quite a while as Charles Bowden mentions him kindly. Together this all appeals to my "6 degrees of seperation," some sort of wierd triad is formed as two of my favourite authors both point at this Abbey. Yeah, right. Anyway, it looks interesting and I'll give it a go. Another Abbey book I've wanted to read is for a while is Desert Solitaire.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind by Chuck Barris. "Meet Roscoe Baragon–crack reporter at a major (well, maybe not that major) metropolitan newspaper. Baragon covers what is affectionately called the Kook Beat–where the loonies call and tell him in meticulously deranged detail what it’s like to live in their bizarre and lonely world. Lately Baragon’s been writing stories about voodoo" - taken from here

Civilwarland in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella by George Saunders. "George Saunders' first collection arrives with ecstatic blurbs from Thomas Pynchon, Tobias Wolff, and Garrison Keillor, and what the hell, the guy actually deserves it. The author, a geophysical engineer, specializes in pitch-black satire. His stories take place sometime in the near future, and many of them feature entrepreneurial concepts to die for. One character runs the Burn 'n' Learn franchise, with "a fully stocked library on the premises and as you tan you call out the name of any book you want to these high-school girls on roller skates." Others work in virtual-reality theme parks, which offer shabby duplications of the Civil War or a Day at the Beach. Saunders has a great ear for professional jargon, and his descriptions of these dystopian Disneylands invariably ring true." - taken from here

The Buzzing by James Knipfel. "Meet Roscoe Baragon–crack reporter at a major (well, maybe not that major) metropolitan newspaper. Baragon covers what is affectionately called the Kook Beat–where the loonies call and tell him in meticulously deranged detail what it’s like to live in their bizarre and lonely world. Lately Baragon’s been writing stories about voodoo" - taken from here

Working Class Zero by Rob Payne. "From the individual production modules (a.k.a. cubicles), to KGB-style receptionists and inept bosses, life has never been easy at HMS Trust's head office. But now, things are about to get worse. Thanks to his "high accuracy assessment", Jay Thompson lands the biggest promotion-without-pay of his career: managing a call centre full of temps during the busiest season of the year." - taken from here

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. "Released by Louisiana State University Press in April 1980, A Confederacy of Dunces is nothing short of a publishing phenomenon. Turned down by countless publishers and submitted by the author’s mother years after his suicide, the book won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Today there are over 1.5 million copies in print worldwide in eighteen different languages.
Toole’s lunatic and sage novel introduces one of the most memorable characters in American literature, Ignatius Reilly, whom Walker Percy dubs “slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one who is in violent revolt against the entire modern age.” Ignatius’s ire explodes when his mother backs into an automobile. The owner of the damaged vehicle insists on payment; Mrs. Reilly demands that her son cease watching television and writing in his Big Chief tablet and get a job." - taken from here

Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut. "The fascinating concept [of this novel] is this: On Feb. 13, 2001, a cosmic quirk zaps the universe back to Feb. 17, 1991. Everyone must then live the next 10 years in a "rerun," fully aware of the events to come but powerless to change them.
It's a mass deja vu with limitless, hellish possibilities. The dead who live again know exactly how and when they're going to die, people must make all their mistakes again, experience all their joys, sorrows, triumphs and horrors a second time. Free will becomes obsolete. Or maybe it already was.
Vonnegut states that Timequake is his last novel, which would be a shame. Interesting as it is, it may leave you wanting more. On the bright side, the door is now fully open for a Kilgore Trout comeback. He still seems to be in fine form. " - taken from here

Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters, 1978-1994 by Charles Bukowski. This is the third volume of Bukowski's letters (the other two were Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970 and Living on Luck: Selected Letters 1960s-1970s). I can say it was the two earlier books that started my love of letter writing and, more specifically, Author's correspondences (i.e. Fante, Mencken, Hunter S. Thompson, et alia). This volume is a more difficult read than the rest as it deals with the time up to when he dies. It's dificult as we know Hank died on March 9, 1994, at a hospital in San Pedro, California, after an almost year-long bout with acute gramulocytic leukemia. During my reading of this book I became aware of really liking the old curmudgeon, then he begins to show the first signs of the sickness (which in the beginning he is unaware of), just not feeling well, but we know. We know and weep in the knowledge of what is to come.

The Franchiser by Stanley Elkin. "The Franchiser [is] about a man who gains a strange inheritance from his wealthy godfather. He is given the right to borrow money at the prime rate in perpetuity. This lucky legatee, Ben Flesh by name, uses the leverage to buy franchises: Burger Kings, Travel Inns, Texaco service stations, all the roadside's hideous familiarity. He spends his days driving from one franchise to another, a man with nothing but names, none of which is his own and all of which he owns. It's a Great American Novel." - taken from here

Black Coffee Blues by Henry Rollins. Considered by many to be the "classic" Rollins book, Black Coffee Blues is a collection of writings by Henry Rollins from 1989-1991 and includes "124 Worlds," "Invisible Woman Blues," "Exhaustion Blues," "Black Coffee Blues," "Monster," "61 Dreams," and "I Know You." In his inimitable unflinching way, Henry Rollins shares with readers a hard-edged look into his world through poetry, prose and journals. This new edition features a Preface by the author. - taken from the jacket copy

45 by Bill Drummond. He's "a wayward genius, art terrorist, a hoaxer with integrity, an ex-pop star who broke up his band, the KLF, at the height of its success to wage an idiosyncratic war against the art world. He reveals his thoughts and opinions, and his enthusiasm for mischief." - taken from here. ** Not really in the Stack now as it has been lent away.

Gunfighter by John Wesley Hardin, introduction by Mark Manning. Texas, 1868. Outlawed by his first kill at age fifteen, John Wesley Hardin assumed the life of an itinerant cattle drover, gambler, and exterminator of men.
His bloody trespass through Southern states ravaged by the American Civil War found him alongside such legendary figures as Wild Bill Hickok, as well as the Texas Rangers and the nascent Ku Klux Klan. Pursued by lynch mobs, bounty hunters and assassins, Hardin became the archetypal wanted man.

In the only authentic autobiography of a gunfighter, Hardin reveals the mesh of psychology and circumstance that made him the most dreaded killer in Texas, admitting to at least 40 fatal shootings during his homicidal trajectory from Fannin County to Huntsville prison, where the manuscript ends.- taken from the jacket copy

Welcome to the book section, again. I came into this year running, as far as reading is concerned anyway. I'm writing this at the beginning of February, part way through Nicholson Baker's new book and loving it. Aside from the Vachss book it's been a terrific year for reading. This year will see a couple of releases by Chuck Palahniuk that I'm looking forward to, his Fugitives and Refugees and Diary, as well as Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, you know that book with the ridiculous cover that I've muttered about on the homepage? Don Delillo's new book Cosmopolos, will also be released this year (see the homepage's Up & Coming section). Other than these books it seems it'll be a free for all year of reading. This in complete contrast to last year which had me stalking my local bookshops searching for those new releases I had be waiting so patiently for. Now I can work my way comfortably through the Stack, taking it easy, taking it as it comes.

Enjoy,
Paul