

a woman’s life
is too tenuous
delicate
billowy
spider web
close call on I-75
in preterm labor
on the way to the
Paris airport
in the rain
fragile
beautiful
precious
sacrosanct
finite
for bad friends
bad family
bad coffee
bad shoes
bad mattresses
bad jobs
bad husbands
bad debt
and bad dick
learn this by 30 for maximum
enjoyment
future
female
conquerors
of a dying planet
Books are my drug of choice. That being the case, my friends tend to appreciate my book recommendations and devour my reading lists. The following is the sum of a year of literary indulgence, not ranked in any particular order. The only books on the list I would not advise reading are Go Set a Watchman and I Wrote This for You and Only You. For the sake of analysis, devout Harper Lee fans should read Go Set a Watchman, but you will be left bored and disenchanted by the protracted end. All sociological qualms aside, it’s a rough, poorly written story, understandably rejected by her publishers. The juxtaposition of this poor cousin to To Kill a Mockingbird is that of the sacred to the profane. The book of poetry, I Wrote This for You and Only You, is a mawkish, lazy attempt of a book. I would like to give special recognition to Haruki Murakami, whose incomparable opus, 1Q84, restored my faith in contemporary literature when I read it in 2014. I would also point out that Natasha Pulley’s The Watchmaker of Filigree Street was the most underrated and overlooked work of genius of the 2015 new releases.
…she said
she wants you to stop
using her as an excuse
for being an asshole…
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
Dirty Pretty Things by Michael Faudet
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
Lake by Banana Yoshimoto
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
Wind/Pinball by Haruki Murakami
Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh
The Bone People by Keri Hulme
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
The Soloist by Steve Lopez
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
Praying Drunk by Kyle Minor
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Othello by William Shakespeare
The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir
Mao II by Don DeLillo
Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
The Figured Wheel by Robert Pinsky
The Familiar by Mark Danielewski
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clark
The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clark
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut
The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
Poems of Humor & Protest by Kenneth Patchen
Poetry as Insurgent Art by Lawrence Ferlinghetti