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Pajama Party-A-No-No OR What Fresh Hell is This?

Scene of non-eating women from Martyrs at La Mama Experimental Theatre.

My limit for the theatre of bad taste was well and truly tested the other night at a performance of Martyrs at La Mama Experimental Theatre Club. I hadn’t realized my threshold was so low. I thought after the 1970’s and watching Pink Flamingosand Joe Dellasandro movies I was used to it. I was wrong. After the scene where 10…

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Beauty: Is It for the Birds? X-RATED Explicit Sexual Content

Alright, so I ‘ve taken more than a year off from the Brooklyn Bookworm. First my beloved dad

died. Then I broke my shoulder, a side effect of a surgery. On the heels of that I shattered my elbow. My daughter became ill. But life goes on. I found a therapist. My only granddaughter is going off to college in the fall. Occasionally, I considered blogging but was I really having fun? I thought that…

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Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Commonwealth means “belonging to all,” or a loose government in which everyone has a say or a shared loyalty. It’s all that and more in Commonwealth by Ann Patchett. More specifically it refers to the commonwealth of Virginia where a fierce tribal loyalty is forged among a blended band of six siblings of the Keating and the Cousins families. I didn’t anticipate that this coming-0f-age story of a…

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#Ann Patchett #Commonwealth

Hatchet Man

Hatchet man must be one the few American idioms that can be traced back to Chinese American origins. According to Disappearing Idioms.com, a hatchet man was the actual hatchet-toting assassin of the Chinese tong wars of the early 1900s that beset major American cities and Chinatowns. My grandfather was a member of On Leong during that time and although he’s not mentioned in Scott D. Seligman’s…

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#Tong Wars

In Gratitude by Jenny Diski

“‘So we’d better get cooking the meth,’ I said . . . “ This was Jenny Diski’s response to the doctor and nurse who told her about her inoperable lung cancer. In return, their faces were blank. Obviously they weren’t “Breaking Bad” fans. With that joke I thought Diski started In Gratitude on a high note. You’ve got to admit the woman was a quick wit. A joke wasn’t my first thought when my husband…

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Hogs Wild by Ian Frazier

I’m such a fangirl. I would have loved Hogs Wild anyway, Ian Frazier’s new collection of “selected reporting pieces,” even without the story on horseshoe crabs. He’s never been funnier or more poignant and trenchant. Did you know that: Charles Manson is only five foot two? (My doctor told me I’m “a little under five feet” so maybe . . . if only Manson weren’t serving nine concurrent life…

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#Hogs Wild #Ian Frazier

The Soundtrack of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

I discovered The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle through Patty Smith’s memoir M Train, in which Haruki Murakami she cites the book as one of her favorites. I often find new titles in this way, coming across intriguing references from something else I’m reading. How do you find your books? Like Patty Smith, I too loved the book. In the 19 years since The Wind-Up Bird was published, a lot has been written…

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#Haruki Murakami #The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

“But stories are like people, Atticus. Loving them doesn’t make them perfect. You try to cherish their virtues and overlook their flaws. The flaws are still there, though.” Any title with Lovecraft in it I had to read. The Eldritch Ones had me hooked at an early age. Shoggoths, Cthulhu: what could be creepier or campier. So it was with great surprise that I discovered Lovecraft Country was told…

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Dragonfish by Vu Tran

Dragonfish is a crime novel wrapped around a literary novel about Vietnamese refugees’ harrowing escape in a boat. Either way it is a welcome debut by first-time author Vu Tran, a new voice for the Vietnamese immigrant experience. The Dragonfish opens with the failed marriage of Los Angeles policeman Robert Ruen and a mysterious Vietnamese woman named Suzy. When Robert hears Suzy is abused by her…

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#Dragonfish #Vu Tran

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

Mine is a family of carnivores, unrepentant and unbowed. Save for my mother and father, each of us daughters may have briefly considered giving up meat and then, just as quickly, dismissed the notion. We are addicts of the mouth-feel of meat. Our body’s cells crave fat, so unctuous and richly satisfying. We are like the family of Yeong-hye in The Vegetarian. Her husband reminisced: I couldn’t…

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A Sampler: Paris in Winter by David Coggins

Below is a sampler of excerpts from Paris in Winter by David Coggins. The memoir, kept company by the author’s whimsical watercolors, is drawn from 13 years of pilgrimages made by him to Paris, evoking its art, food, and people. David Coggins is an author, artist and designer for theater and dance in the U.S. and abroad. ________________________________ Red, especially dark red, is a color I…

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Bagging It with Margaret Chin and Ian Frazier

NYC Councilman Margaret Chin upon passage of the Bring Your Own Bag Bill. Photo from @CM_Margaret Chin Congratulations New York City Councilman Margaret Chin and co-sponsor Brad Lander on the May 5 passage of the plastic bag bill, also known as Bag It NYC or BYOBag. The aim of Bill 209A is to reduce the use of disposable bags in New York City by placing a minimum five-cent fee to be paid by the…

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#Councilman Margaret Chin #Plastic Bag Bill

The Vegetarian

Dear vegetarian pals: you probably think this post is about you. Surprise! It’s about The Vegetarian, winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize, announced just yesterday. Han Kang’s slim volume nudged past Elena Ferrante’s four-volume door stoppers, the Neapolitan Quartet, to take the prize. It’s now moving to the top of my to-be-read heap. P.S. Vegetarians, I will get back to you as to…

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On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee

Science fiction and dystopian novels: my shoulders slump sadly at the negative reactions of many of my peers to these wonderful genres. Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games; Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass; Lois Lowry’s The Giver: I love them. This fervor spills over to adult dystopias and post-apocalyptics such as Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood; Zone One by Colson Whitehead which are very…

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M Train by Patti Smith

I am listening to Patti Smith’s cover of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit while I review her achievements: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2007; National Book Award, 2010; Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, 2005. Her brash voice swaggers and croons through the song. Her National Book Award-winning memoir, Just Kids, recounts the story of her lifelong friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe…

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#M Train Review #Patti Smith

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

‘”Reading makes you beautiful, reading makes you rich, reading makes you slim!”‘ So proclaims this enchanting tale, The Little Paris Bookshop, where reading takes on near-magical proportions. This is one of many things author Nina George extols as she transports you on a lush journey from cozy literary Paris to the turquoise skies of Provence. If you like reading, this book will charm your pants…

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#Nina George #The Little Paris Bookshop review

The Ibis Trilogy by Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh effortlessly unfolds the Ibis Trilogy like Scheherezade, one spell-binding tale after another with vivid twists and turns. Set amidst the Opium War, the story Amitav Ghosh is a renowned writer. Sea of Poppies was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and he was a finalist for the 2015 Man Booker International Prize. follows the fates of a clutch of escapees fleeing the tyranny of…

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#Amitav Ghosh #Ibis Trilogy

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