READING IS FUCKINMENTAL / Jason Matthew Smith

ON DECK

What’s stacked on my nightstand (next to the empty beer bottles, soft-core porn, and bag of beef jerky) and next in line to be read.

Just for shits and giggles, here’s a look at what’s in the batter’s circle for the coming weeks. These are books I just picked up at a local used book store. I won’t blog about all of them, but here’s a peek at some of what I’ll be reading (as soon as I finish plowing through David Brooks’ On Paradise Drive, a defense of the ’burbs. It’s hellishly slow, people, but I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna give up on it.

The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye, by Jonathan Lethem

Lethem has quickly become one of my favorite novelists. His tales are inventive and engaging, without being overly coy. Some writers try too damned hard to be “post-modern” and it really chaps my ass. Lethem spins a good yarn and knows when to let the line go taut, and when to let out some slack. 

Amnesia Moon, by Jonathan Lethem

Can’t believe I’ve never read this one.

Shalimar the Clown, by Salman Rushdie

You remember Rushdie. Back in the late 1980s the Ayatollah Khomeini called for his death after Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses (which I’ve been meaning to re-read.) Shalimar is supposed to be damned good. If it’s not, I’ll issue my own fatwa and demand that the head of every critic who praised the novel be ground into dime-sized pieces and sprinkled liberally over the dry patches in my shitty lawn. Yeah. Right there next to the Dodge Dart up on blocks. 

Jason Matthew Smith is a Texan who never developed an accent, thanks to a steady diet of television reruns during his formative years. He now lives in Utah, where everyone thinks he sounds just like John Astin, the original Gomez Addams.