Top Ten Books

So there's that rash spreading on Facebook wherein you tag some friends and force them to tag other friends...and it's all about your ten most "influential" books. I'm doing it in a blog so I can describe why I like the books without the overstimulation of Facebook churning in the background. My, that site can be distracting...

I choose to interpret "influential" as being the books that changed something about the way I think. They are in order of appearance into my life:

1) Drawing Blood // Poppy Z Brite -- This is probably my favorite book of all time and I cannot separate how much of this is because of the quality of the work itself versus the impression I made of it when I first read it. This is a book about wayward youth and the listless darkness of the goth soul. If that sounds laughable, perhaps you're not a real goth. Poseur! Poppy's prose is exquisite and I still reread this book at least once every couple of years. It's like a comfy cardigan that's never too frayed as far as you're concerned, thankyouverymuch.

Fun Fact: The copy my bff Kim and I first read still resides at the original library in which I checked it out for the first time. That very book has been read by all the tortured goth kids of Joplin over the last two decades.

2. The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching // Thich Nhat Hanh -- I spent a lot of my teenage years searching through spirituality and religion for something that "fit". I researched absolutely everything from Satanism to Astrology. This is the first book about Buddhism I ever read and I was hooked. The tenants of Buddhism are still important to me and if I ever need to refocus on a way of thinking that really centers me, I go back to Buddhist texts. This is the book that taught me drishta dharma sukha viharin, a phrase I've never forgotten and might get tattooed on my body someday which means "dwelling happily in the present moment".

3. Queen of the Damned // Anne Rice -- Rice is maligned pretty much everywhere these days, but I buy her version of vampires. I like 'em verbose, beautiful, and full of religious guilt. This book truly celebrates Akasha, the baddest villainess in all vampire popular mythology. The book outlines the birth of vampires in Rice's world, the most compelling vampire origin tale I've ever read (and I've read a LOT of vampire books). I have a very beat up paperback copy of this book. If that doesn't say, "Book, you are good enough, you are smart enough, and gosh darnit people LIKE you!" I don't know what does.

4. High Fidelity // Nick Hornby -- I like my fictional characters in three simple varieties: a) a music-obsessed weirdo, b) a gay or gender-confused weirdo, and c) a goth and/or supernatural in a dark way weirdo. This book fulfills category A. I'm not sure what else to say about it. You've seen the movie...the book is better, but the movie is my favorite movie of all time...so, it's pretty fucking good. Now I want to read it...

5. Hardcore Zen // Brad Warner -- This is my second favorite book about Buddhism told from the POV of a straight edge punk that loves Japanese monster movies and sitting zazen. If Warner hadn't pointed out how punk Buddhism is in this book, I might have had to do it...'cause Buddhism is soooo punk, yo. This book talks about Buddhism in plain language.

6. Love is a Mixtape // Rob Sheffield -- My favorite kind of nonfiction is a music memoir and this is the ULTIMATE music memoir.

7. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies // Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith -- Ultimately, what I love about this book is the Austen part of it, but I have to admit that before this book caught my attention, I hadn't read Jane Austen. I know! Despicable, but true. I've since read the real "Pride and Prejudice" several times and damn if that isn't a classic!

8. How Not to Write, by Someone Who Doesn't // Delilah Des Anges -- Del is a dear friend I met in a vampire chat room back in the '90s. This book is the most frank and to the point writing guide ever and I really appreciate it. Just shut up and write, bitch! My output has been slightly larger because of reading this book. Go buy it.

9. Hunger Games trilogy // Suzanne Collins -- These books are probably the most powerful fiction I've ever read. I read them during the winter of 2011 after the tornado and I cried SOOO much while reading them. I'm not a big fan of tragedy, usually ever, but Collins' dystopia seemed so real that I couldn't walk away. Katniss is the character I relate to most of any fiction character I've ever met...except the bow and arrow stuff.

10. Ready Player One // Ernest Cline -- This book is just the most fun dystopia of all time.

comfort culture.

You know how you eat macaroni and cheese when you’ve had a bad day at work, or maybe drink a beer? Of course you know, because comfort FOODS are often mentioned in America’s vocabulary. But what about comfort culture? What’s your personal pizza of television, the mashed potatoes of movies, and the fish sticks of sound? While you’re contemplating the dark chocolate paperback that calms your addled mind after a stressful day, I’ll share with you some of my pop culture comforts.

*TV series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer — It’s no secret that Buffy is my favorite nugget of pop culture ever. Joss Whedon’s vision of girl superpowers has entertained my eyes, ears and soul since 1998. The Slayer has lulled me to sleep through some of the darkest evenings of my life, quite possibly the only reason nightmares didn’t engulf me in my early ‘20s. If you’ve avoided this show because of the title’s cheesiness alone, stop denying yourself one of the most influential shows of the 20th century. Buffy could change your life.

Get it: Netflix, Hulu, video stores

Me today celebrating National Library Workers
Week. I'm part Vulcan, you know.

*TV franchise: Star Trek — For the past 4 years or so, Star Trek has been my before-bed ritual. Not every night, but at least a couple of nights per week. If the plot is peaceful, I might fall asleep to the gentle hum of the starship. The DVD menu screen of “The Next Generation” is like white noise bliss to me. Don’t misinterpret, falling asleep to Star Trek isn’t a diss. I LOVE the franchise, but I have this calm and familiar relationship with it. I know I will rewatch each series of Star Trek over and over until I die of really old age, so there’s no sense of loss if I dream through episodes here and there.

Get it: Netflix, video stores

*Album: Air // Talkie Walkie — This album used to be my study soundtrack in college. When I hear the first notes of “Venus” I am instantly transformed back to that space of settling in for a quiet night with books, coffee, and gritty knowledge. Yeah, thinking about studying chills me out. Obviously, I’m a nerd.

Get it: Spotify, iTunes, Google Music, music stores

*Movie: Bandits — Not many people realize the brilliance of the 2001 film starring Cate Blanchett, Bruce Willis, and Billy Bob Thornton. The performances are buzzing with anxiety, emotion, and genuine crazy, an aspect of pop culture that always soothes me…to see others fraying onscreen makes me feel less nuts. Plus, this movie is hilarious if you like understated David Letterman-type humor.

Get it: Netflix, video stores

*Book: Drawing Blood // Poppy Z Brite — In the summer, my brain turns to a soupy-slosh of jumbled thoughts and baking grey matter. It is my least favorite season. To get through the sizzling flames of August, I usually end up reading this lurid tale of two young lovers surviving a summer in New Orleans. The pages are filled with ghosts/psychological demons, children of the night, and early ‘90s-style computer hacking.

Get it: the Joplin Public Library (the very copy I first read in high school!), bookstores

Email me your comfort culture items: mixtressrae@yahoo.com

Drawing Blood, reflection two.

Just read the first sex scene between Trevor and Zach and whew....hawt.

It made me realize that Brite is largely responsible for the positive aspects of my budding sexuality. At the time I first read this book (again, 14 or 15) I hadn't had experiences with men yet, apart from a couple of makeout sessions. Poppy's taste in men is very similar to my own (again, goth, tortured, pale, awkward) and writes of them and their sexuality in terms of beauty and body-worship. In our culture, we're just not used to thinking of men as beautiful, but Poppy compares certain *blush* body parts with rose petals and genuinely relishes their expressions of desire and pleasure in a very visceral way. Further, when hesitation is expressed on the part of Trevor, Zach slows, stops, and talks things through with him. There is clear, verbalized consent present. Despite the violence in this relationship in and out of the bedroom, everything is consensual. Upon pure happenstance, I experienced erotic literature with body-positive imagery (towards the sex that I'm primarily attracted to), consent, with gender and sexual ambiguity. And the ambiguousness was portrayed as ok, just a part of adolescence/life. I was on my way to becoming a sexual adult that might just have turned out ok, despite my culture. I was on my way to appreciating men's bodies even though I was mostly unfamiliar with them. That's pretty cool.

Upon this realization, if you happen to know a goth kid, whose primary interest is boys, who also might be experiencing sexy things sometime in the near-ish future, I recommend this book. Some of it is not necessarily healthy (violence, blood, etc) in the relationships therein, but it only helped my angsty teenage soul.

Drawing Blood, reflection one.

Part of my "read-everything-on-my-bookshelf" project. Book two:

Drawing Blood // Poppy Z Brite

This is my first. The first book I ever fell in love with. The first book I ever read with gay protagonists. The first Poppy Z Brite book, of whom I would become obsessed. I picked this book up after a suggestion from my BFF Kim somewhere around the age of 14 or 15, at the Joplin Public Library. Fun fact: the library's copy I read then is still there! I can barely believe it! It's a historical artifact in my life!

So, I read this book probably once every three years or so. It's a tale of a tortured boy (thin artist-type with ginger hair) who confronts his dark past (his dad killed himself and his mom and brother with a freakin' hammer when he was like 5, but kept him alive) and falls in love with another tortured boy (thin hacker-type with blue-black hair) in the process. Sound cheesy? It is. Sound freakin' summer-read-FLUFF-amazing? It is that too.

So I'm rereading it again (started on my vacation, reading by creeks and in deserts and weird Tucumcari motel rooms) for like the 6th time. This is serious for me. When I reread a book, I might reread it once, mayyyyybe twice. But this book. This book keeps me coming back like crack. I can't get enough of Brite's prose. She makes ugly sound so textural and thick and smelly and wonderful, somehow.

This reread I'm feeling the fluff more than ever; this book is not serious, despite all the gore. This is a coming-of-age story, and it came for me at the perfect time. I needed to see goth kids in fiction at 14, because I was just getting into Shirley Manson and "The Long Kiss Goodnight". I needed to see gay men in fiction because there was nothing I was into more than skinny pale boys with a side of tortured-past. Broken beautiful boys like wounded birds. Yep, that was my thing. I still enjoy a little whimper here and there, but I like to keep that to myself, mostly. Anyway, so fluff. This is probably the most erotic book I like. Most of the time I don't do erotica unless there's something off about it. Off about the people, not off about the act.

I love all the characters in Brite's earlier works (for me her cheesiness didn't translate to her Ricky and G-Man characters in the aughts). They're all strange and interesting and....did I mention tortured? Angsty? I just eat that shit UP, I tell ya.

I'm enjoying it immensely, if you were confused. ;) This is my familiar blanket book. I like to revisit the relationship of Trevor and Zach the same way I like to relive Jim and Pam, Buffy and Spike, and yes, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet. I feel love too! I just like it when it's tortured. Have I said tortured enough times in this blog?

I want to buy the hardcover again (lost in the you-know-what of 2011) because my paperback is beginning to resist my multiple attempts at gluing it back together. So, I'm just to the part where Trevor has gone back into the house and the lamp worked after 20 years and Zach is going to show up ANY minute. Then things get real weird. Stay tuned!