What we're reading: Drinking Coffee Elsewhere: Stories by ZZ Packer

Sometimes I judge books by their covers.

I was checking out the new DeWitt Community Library. It's lighter and airier, a lot more space now. Wandering the aisles, I came across this book, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Drinking coffee elsewhere, I thought, it's kind of what I do.

And the cover had a photo of an old-fashioned empty booze bottle (capped) on an empty street, under a gray sky with a haze of blurred-out buildings in the back.

Have I said the word bleak lately around these parts?

I totally missed the word "Stories," and so was surprised when I opened up the book. I didn't read the jacket, didn't notice the author's photo.

I don't look like an "other." This has its advantages. Middle class white maleness is the norm in the U.S. (even if it's not the majority, or even plurality, probably). I have to go pretty far out of my way to have people look at me funny.

This also has what some might consider its disadvantages. I don't look like an "other," but being Jewish, I am definitely an "other." I was at a hockey game with a couple of friends not too long ago, a husband-and-wife couple. I'd known the husband well, and gradually got to know his wife.

Anyway, knowing that my family and I live in different places, she asked what I was doing for Easter. I tend to forget that not everyone knows I'm Jewish, so when I looked at her blankly and said, "uh, nothing?" and she looked back at me blankly, I realized we had a little disconnect there.

I explained. She was embarrassed. We're over it. I'm going over there for Easter dinner. It gets me out of the house, and it gives them an excuse not to drive four hours for a family affair. Everybody wins.

Ummm, Josh, tangent much?

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is very much about black experiences. I had to get all the way through the opening story, "Brownies," before I felt like I was welcome to read the book. As I started the book, I felt like I was intruding on something. On someone else's world. And I didn't know if they wanted me there.

I learned a lot from the book, I think. I don't care, really, whether these stories are entirely fictional, based in fact, or at all autobiographical. Packer's writing connects what we'd like to think are abstractions – race, gender, sexuality, religion – with tangible, real-world experiences. She describes her characters as, say, having the complexion of "a good scotch," rather than describing a light-skinned black woman.

Have I gained any actual knowledge, any true insight, into the experience of someone who looks like an "other"? I don't know. It's something I've been conscious of for several years, but I still don't really know how people think I see them. Have I been given some new insights into perspective? I hope so.

This book, by the way, is the first in a very long time that's made me want to read anything about the author. Here's an in-depth interview she did with indentitytheory.com after the release of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere.

What we're reading: You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore

Let's back up minute. From where? Well, here. I guess if I'm going to write a brief review of a sequel, I need to mention the original.

In Bloodsucking Fiends, we meet C Thomas Flood, a recent high school grad from Indiana who drives to San Francisco for romance and a writing career. His car burns to the ground the second he parks it in San Fran, and he winds up finding work as a night manager in a grocery store.

We also meet Jody, a 24-year-old professional hanger-on. She jumps from relationship to relationship for co-habitation purposes. Except this time, we meet Jody under a Dumpster, where an 800-year-old vampire has left her after he turned her into a, well, bloodsucking fiend, entirely against her will.

Short version: Jody and Tommy hook up, Tommy and his night crew find the old vampire and destroy his boat, and Tommy has both the old vampire and Jody bronzed while he thinks about what to do with them.

Thing is, he drills holes in bronzed Jody's ears so that she can hear him, and one night, while he's asleep, she turns to mist and seeps out of one of the holes.

And so we open You Suck with Jody having just turned Tommy into a vampire, quite against his will. "You killed me. You suck!" Tommy yells.

Moore's got himself a series of repeated characters – Rivera and Cavuto, detectives; the Emperor of San Francisco with his intrepid pooches; and he brings back Charlie Asher, Abby Normal and Lily from A Dirty Job.

Wait, let's back up again. You Suck wasn't an intended sequel. People liked Bloodsucking Fiends so much that they asked him for the sequel.

Now that's an author who's in touch with his fans.

The genius of You Suck isn't in Moore's storytelling – I've already expressed my love for his cheesy B-grade horror-romance fiction. The genius is in his writing of the Abby Normal character.

Abby is a 16-year-old caffeine-addicted anorexic goth chick who is in love with the idea of vampires. And Moore writes her narrative as a diary. And he nails the high-school-fantasy-romance-love-of-the-dark thing. Down to the flannel and the Chucks.

Also, this book includes a blue hooker, people who spend $600,000 on her (Eliot Spitzer, you got nothin'), a micturated-upon running suit, and a geeky Asian dude who builds floodlights into overcoats.

What more could you ask for?

What we're reading: The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess is best known for A Clockwork Orange. The Wanting Seed also falls into the dystopic category – my favorite – and it's just as bleak.

Overpopulated futuristic world? Check. Government have an eye on – and a hand in – everything you do? Check. Love triangle? Check. Population limitation by killing all the stupid people? Check. Really smart main character who figures everything out and gets the girl? Check.

Really, it's almost too perfect. I feel like giving you actual plot points would take away something. Like really, you should run out and read this book. Keep a dictionary and a glass of wine handy.

Also, be paranoid. Be very paranoid.

What we're reading: Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore

It's no secret. I'm a big fan of Christopher Moore. The man writes cheesy horror wrapped in a romance package.

I mean, look at that cover. How middle school is that?

Anyway...

Meet Catch. He's a demon. Most of the time, he's invisible, unless he's eating people.

Meet Travis. Travis is a nonogenarian who has looked 20ish since he was a physically and emotionally abused seminary student who accidentally called Catch up from the pit of Hell.

When he called Catch up, he hopped a train to try to run away, and wound up exchanging a set of candlesticks for the kindness of a stranger, and when he figures out after all these years he needs those candlesticks to send Catch back, he tracks them to Pine Cove, California, a one-horse town full of one-horse town characters.

Anyway, I'm going on the assumption that demons, interesting characters, and the fact that this is a Chris Moore novel are all you really need to hear. Go read it.

What we're reading: Factotum by Charles Bukowski

I'm going to ruin the end for you right this second. If you're not OK with that, skip the next paragraph.

The novel ends with Charles Bukowski's alter-ego, Henry Chinaski, getting drunk while waiting online for a shot at a temp job. He gets kicked out of agency, goes to a strip show in a theater with a live band, and he can't get an erection. The end.

Bukowski was clearly drinking when he wrote the book: the grammar errors pile up near the end of the book, a sure sign that someone's brain is degenerating as the writing goes on.

In case you're wondering about the editors: Some publishing houses have a short list of authors whose work is untouchable. If you've read Jack Kerouac or William S. Burroughs, you understand why – they intentionally twist the language so much, that you wouldn't dare correct what you think is an error in the prose.

By 1975, Bukowski had certainly become one of those writers.

Bukowski's prose tastes like cheap whiskey and stale cigarettes. His characters are wholly unlikable assholes. You don't feel good at the end of his books. So why do I read him?

Well, because it's damn cold outside and if the prose burns going down, maybe nothing else has to.

Or maybe it's because Chinaski just makes me feel better about myself. Nobody's perfect, but most people aren't that much of a fuck-up into their 40s.

This book did, by the way, provide the inspiration for one of my favorite recurring characters in fiction: the Emperor of San Francisco, who appears in some of Christopher Moore's novels. He gets a passing mention in Factotum, but in Moore's work, he is a homeless man with a scepter and two dogs. Everybody knows him, and he and his pups frequently save the city.

What we're reading, what we're not reading

What we are reading: 52 Pickup by Elmore Leonard

Yeah, yeah, I know. I've finished books three of the last four days. Yes, I'm still going out and being social. I'm just picking good books. Mostly.

Elmore Leonard, in combination with Charles Bukowski, has me wondering if writers give characters all their bad habits, or if they just want to live vicariously through their characters.

Leonard's protagonist, Henry Mitchell, drinks too much, smokes too much, shot down two allied planes during World War II (and got off because he said they fired on him), and runs his own manufacturing company.

He also single-handedly busts up an extortion ring that was trying to get him for $105,000 after he cheated on his wife.

Henry Mitchell is basically superman in a gray suit.

52 Pickup is a wild ride. I'm just not going to get too into it because, well, you should be reading Leonard's work. At this point, I've blown through at least a half dozen of his books, and all are quick, enjoyable reads.

What we're not reading: I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max

Tucker Max describes himself as an asshole. Specifically, he's a drunken, womanizing asshole, who also, through most of the episodes in the book, is a law student at Duke. So they were training him to be an entirely different kind of asshole.

I was assured by a clerk at a reputable shop that I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is a fantastically funny read. She even called me, "my friend," in making her recommendation. That's usually a good sign.

I got through three chapters. There's not enough frat boy in me for those three chapters to be funny. At all. There are also enough writing errors to make me think that thanking his editor in the acknowledgments is just Max being an asshole again.

If you're entirely unlike me – that is, frequently truant punctuation doesn't bother you and you find waking up in your car without your pants and still over the legal blood alcohol content level somewhere between endearing and admirable – you'll probably like this book. I have a copy here with your name on it.

What we're reading: The Post Office by Charles Bukowski

Mike, you're a fucker, man.

Growing up, my brother wasn't really a reader. That started changing when he hit high school.

We never really shared the same taste in books, until Chuck Palahniuk came along, and even among Palahniuk's novels, we have our differences.

And I know better by now than to pick up something Mike has enjoyed.

Burroughs gave me just about the worst sun-stroke-and-paperback-novel trip in the history of mankind. Kerouac made me vomit and lost me two friends to the Pacific northwest. Hunter Thompson invigorated my pen but turned a landlord against me.

And now whenever we talk, Mike is reading something by Bukowski.

Thing is, I've read Bukowski. At least short stories and poetry. I've read Bukowski because every now and then, I'm into self-immolation, and books don't require fire department assistance (except that one collection of his that had me pacing the roof of my office building yelling to the masses below...).

With all the reading I've been doing, I needed a little torture. So I picked up a copy of Bukowski seminal novel The Post Office.

Here's the scene. It's 6 a.m. Friday. Fast forward to 10 a.m. Saturday. I'll save you the math: 28 hours.

- 8 hours at work
- 1 hour at lunch with a colleague
- 8 hours of sleep
- 6 hours at a party
- 1 hour commuting

Figure in general hygiene, cooking a couple of warm breakfasts, and general stretching, pacing and resting, that doesn't leave me much time to have knocked down this novel.

But I did. And I think I enjoyed it.

Crap.

Worse, I think I enjoyed it for the same reasons I enjoy Palahniuk. Conversational prose – even if it tastes like cheap whiskey and stale cigars. Sympathetic protagonists who really are unlikeable people.

Henry Chimanski is a womanizing drunk, rotting away on the night shift at the post office for 12 years. He doesn't like his job, he's not good at it, he hates his co-workers, and nobody likes him for more than a few months at a time.

Why should we care?

But we do.

Mike, you're a fucker, man.

Fictional difficulties

I have lots of trouble writing fiction.

It's not for lack of imagination. It's for my lack of ability to quit rambling and get to the point.

If you've ever had a verbal conversation with me, this probably surprises the crap out of you.

The thing is, I write great characters. Fantastic characters, even. People you'd want to drive cross-country with. People you'd want to hitchhike across Europe with. The kind of people you want to surround yourself with.

I give them great back stories. They're super-interesting people. And they do awesome things.

Thing is, I can't get them to meet in scenarios that aren't clearly contrived.

After plowing through Thomas Harris' Hannibal Rising, which gives us Hannibal Lecter's full back story (awesome, quick read), I picked up Elmore Leonard's Freaky Deaky.

I'm not a Westerns fan, but Leonard's done some really fine work. I got hooked on him with Be Cool, and totally hopped on board with Pagan Babies.

Freaky Deaky is a bit over 400 pages long, and is a clearly contrived situation by the time you get to the meat of the plot.

But in the first 100 pages, you get to meet all the major characters (a couple of fairly important supporting characters are introduced later), learn where they came from, and you understand how their paths are all going to cross.

In a very natural progression, all things considered.

Black Panthers, ex-hippies, ridiculously wealthy alcoholics, explosives experts and actors, all coming together in a way you understand.

I'm jealous.