We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order to Live, collected nonfiction of Joan Didion
-- Miami
-- Political Fictions
I'm pretty late to the Joan Didion party, and I can't say that I was too impressed by "Play As It Lays," but I had pretty high expectations. Her book "The Year of Magical Thinking" got me a lot more interested in her nonfiction stuff. I couldn't put Miami and Political Fictions down. (Interestingly, when she was young, Didion was quite the Goldwater Conservative, but has drifted toward the left politically over the years.)
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, by Chris Anderson. Interesting, not the kind of book I usually read.
I just picked up Night Life, by Laurie Anderson, a fine book of illustrations with very short narrative descriptions. In an introduction to the book, she writes: "In 2005, I was on tour traveling alone and performing a solo show "The End of the Moon." Over many months my dreams gradually became extremely vivid and relentless: headless singing squirrels, cavernous spaces, disasters, a series of unstoppable stories. I began to draw my dreams literally out of self-defense." This book really inspires me to pull out my sketch pad and get to work. I also just noticed -- the book is dedicated "to Lou."