Notes about books recently purchased and partially read:

PEE ON WATER, by Rachel B. Glaser - This book makes me happy. I read The Magic Umbrella aloud to my partner and we snickered and were rapt and then ate katsu chicken curry dinner while watching a episode from season five of THE WIRE. A sentence: "'I have two styles,' the stick man said, 'on fire, or just sticks.'"

YOUR TROUBLE IS BALLOONING, by Amber Nelson - Amber is my friend. I read this while it was being written. Other people should read it also. It's fantastic to read it in book form and not on my computer. Also there is DIARY OF WHEN BEING WITH FRIENDS IS LIKE WATCHING TV, by Amber Nelson, which has A-Team font on the cover, and will make you want to write poetry again, even if you have quit writing poetry.

LOOK! LOOK! FEATHERS, by Mike Young - I saw Mike Young read in Seattle at Pilot Books. The audience sat in a circle. Mike Young read from the title story which includes a miniature baby, Mt. Shasta, and pork chops. That description doesn't do the story justice. I recognize the PNW in these stories and enjoy the cumulative sentence energy. A sentence: "When you conk a mallard, I'm saying make sure it spins, because God spread a helluva backdrop for those birds to cameo around in, and if you're set to fuck with that shit, fuck well" (from The World Doesn't Smell Like You).

MADAME BOVARY, by Gustave Flaubert (as translated by Lydia Davis) - a sentence: "Because licentious or venal lips had murmured the same words to him, he had little faith in their truthfulness; one had to discount, he thought, exaggerated speeches that conceal mediocre affections; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest of metaphors, since none of us can ever express the exact measure of our needs, or our ideas, or our sorrows, and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when we long to move the stars to pity.