Poignant, Powerful, Perfect Lowercase Poetry for the Soul

Titles: milk and honey and the sun and her flowers
Author: Rupi Kaur
Years Written: 2015 and 2017
Length: 204 and 248 pages
Why I chose these books: I saw pages of these books reposted so frequently on social media that I felt like I'd read them already. But I hadn't given it my full attention, and I wanted to.

Rupi Kaur's poetry is the kind of poetry that can exist independently of any context at all and still knock the wind out of you consistently. She was originally self-published! And she was born 3 years after me, in 1992. She is simultaneously intimidating and inspiring, but so tiny (I've seen her on Instagram). Her poetic voice is poignant beyond her physical years. There's not enough I can say about her art. It's never too much, and I couldn't get enough.

She has said that she writes her poetry in all lowercase letters, with minimal punctuation, as homage to her mother tongue, Punjabi. Though she can read and understand Punjabi, she doesn't have the ability to write in Punjabi, which uses the Gurmukhi script, sans uppercase letters and most punctuation.

Rupi writes about sexual abuse, toxic relationships, passionate romance and chemistry, and other topics that are easy to do the wrong way. The graceful bravery of her writing helps the reader swallow the hard pills, washing it down with the beauty and creativity of the simple pictures she paints.

Both milk and honey and the sun and her flowers are divided into chapters, but overall, they are fluid as a set. I read them back to back, and got plenty of emotion and inspiration from the things Rupi Kaur has written.

Rating: 10/10

A Quick, Troubling, Hilarious Memoir

Title: The Last Black Unicorn
Author: Tiffany Haddish
Length: 288 pages
Year Written: 2017
Why I chose this book: I needed reading material for a recent work trip and this was on the New Releases table at the airport bookstore.

When I started reading comedienne Tiffany Haddish’s new book, The Last Black Unicorn, I knew generally what to expect. I’d seen her Showtime comedy special, She Ready, and had also seen her in the movie Girls Trip and the very prematurely cancelled The Carmichael Show on TBS. Like The Rock and Leonardo DiCaprio, she’s always struck me as the type that can only play slight variations of the same character. But luckily for her, herself is a great person to play, and more entertaining and naturally charming than a lot of characters that are concocted.

I finished reading The Last Black Unicorn in two days. It was not at all a challenging read – it is obviously written for maximum ease of digestion. Tiffany Haddish has stories to tell, some of which she examines for a moral or educational takeaway, many of which she does not. Mostly, it appears as though her intent is to share the makings of her: surviving the foster care system, moonlighting as a pimp, hosting bar mitzvahs, living in her car while doing comedy, and so on. Some of these stories you’ve heard before, in standup and in interviews. As soon as you open the book, it is obvious she is an open book. The Last Black Unicorn rehashes several stories from She Ready, often with a bit more detail and introspection.

Anyway, the book was hilarious, written completely in her own voice, which I immediately admired. I analyzed all of this quickly. The grammar of the writing was edited per Tiffany’s speaking standards, often at conflict with traditional stylistic standards. As I read, I was like “Wow” – not just at the content, but at the whole concept. Haddish was illiterate until high school, and now she’d written an entire hardback book. At the same time, it wasn’t perfect English – she has a very distinct voice and personality, so editors probably wanted to keep that intact. The result is a book that is more like the transcribed version of a very long, personal, and painfully honest comedy routine than a story meant to be written. Through an upbeat overtone, powerfully dark tidbits poke through: she was beaten and molested in the foster system; her mother berated and abused her constantly; her history of relationships is full of jealousy and dysfunction.

And then I realized the book really was a transcribed version of a Tiffany Haddish comedy routine, in the most literal sense.

When the book ends, there is a page for Tiffany’s acknowledgments. After hers is a section for Tucker Max’s acknowledgments. Tucker Max? I recognized the name from a book a friend let me borrow in college, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. I quickly scanned the book again. I checked the cover, the inner flaps, the copyright page, searching for the name Tucker Max. Did I miss something – was he the co-author? In his acknowledgments, he thanked the team at Book in a Box. Then I remembered reading about this before: a company that writes your book for you. He co-founded Book in a Box, and Tiffany Haddish was a client. This damn near blew my mind. I realized at that point that Tiffany didn’t write this book at all. And I guess it made sense. She’s not a writer. She’s famous, she’s busy, she has $25,000 to spend on a team of professional ghostwriters. I checked the company’s website. It only takes 50 hours of phone conversations over the course of 7 months. They create the manuscript and develop your marketing plan. And most importantly, they write your story with your words and in your voice. If anything, I can say Tucker Max and his team did a convincing job of writing like you’d think Tiffany Haddish would write.

Anyway, this seemingly unimportant detail caused me to examine my relationship with literature, what I really liked about books, and why I probably have preferred leisurely fiction reading for as long as I can remember. I love a good story, but I’m more interested in the words a writer strings together to tell it. It doesn’t matter if the story is real or not – I am interested in the author’s style and creativity, their descriptiveness versus their brevity. Reading this book, I felt connected to Tiffany and her words, and admired her courage in being open enough to share those stories. In the end, that admiration is still strong, but I feel a little less impressed by the book altogether. It is still entertaining enough that I'd recommend it to anyone who likes to laugh, or wants a quick, engaging read.

Rating: 8.2/10

A Slow Ride Through the Complexities of Infidelity

Title: Adultery
Author: Paulo Coelho
Length: 272 pages
Year Written: 2014
Why I chose this book: I love Paulo Coelho and picked this book up at the airport on a trip.

I love Paulo Coelho. Who didn't love The Alchemist? He is a wizard with words and even more so with feelings. His personality permeates even through fiction. He is clearly a peaceful, happy man who understands what it's like to not be peaceful or happy. Not only do we battle a perceived emptiness of wealth and success (like Santiago in search of his treasure), we second guess ourselves in many ways when we consider how the realities of our happiness and fulfillment match up with expectations. There is often a circular yet treacherous journey associated with our search for these elusive goals in life. Money. Love. Satisfaction.

Adultery was not The Alchemist. It was modern, it was specific, and the protagonist was a woman. I hate to say that the representation of the female narrator was a bit unnatural coming from Coelho, but some of it may have to do with cultural and language translations. The main character in Adultery takes us through her daily life as a successful businesswoman with loving husband and two kids. Nothing is amiss until she has a run-in with an old boyfriend from high school. You can probably tell by the name of the book how the rest of the story goes.

This book is somewhat of a slow read, but has some great moments that make it worth it. As with anything you read by Coelho, you will definitely feel something along the way.

Rating: 8/10

My 2016 in Books

Three years ago, I had a lofty reading goal: to finish 50 books by year's end. I knew I wanted to spend 2014 perpetually behind the pages of a book. I was working at Whole Foods with mostly immigrant adults and teens with no clue as to what LinkedIn is. Every day on my lunch break, I'd rip through novel after novel. I was failing an attempt at grad school, which was mostly to compensate for the fact that I was a degree-holding Whole Foods cashier. So, in retrospect, maybe I read so many books because I wanted to escape, but mostly, I wanted to be better than I was. I have always been a writer, and the best way to improve your writing (other than writing, of course) is to read other writers' writing. 

A far cry from my grand total of reading 30 of 50 books in 2014, I completed a whopping TWO in 2016. That was down from five the year before. Furthermore, it's taken me months to write about them. 

These were both great books. 'But What If We're Wrong?' by Chuck Klosterman came at a great time for me. Sparing you the mind-blowing details, in the past year I've changed my outlook almost entirely. Outlook on what? Politics, religion, entertainment, news media, LIFE. I've experienced enough cognitive dissonance to fill a possibly simulated Grand Canyon. Basically, I am now open to the possibility that a huge chunk of what I thought I knew (about everything) is actually wrong. The least interesting section was about music, but Klosterman writes about a little bit of everything, so you'll no doubt be entertained by something he says. 

'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' by Rebecca Skloot is actually a book I was assigned to read in my Science and Environmental Journalism class five years ago. I never read it until late last year, and it was so much more captivating than I expected. It is about a black woman from 1950s Baltimore named Henrietta Lacks, whose cancer cells were taken from her by a doctor and used to make medical history and financial gain that was never extended to her living family. The books raises lots of questions about modern medical practices and the racist, often unethical foundation from which they sprang. If you know anything about the beginnings of modern day gynecology, you have some idea of what I'm talking about. Skloot is a great writer, and spent many years of her life researching for this book and spending time with the Lacks family, which is apparent when reading. 

My 2016 in books was a special one, because I wrote and published my first. 

'Men' was my way of wrapping eight years of love and relationships into a slim yellow booklet of passionate prose. I have read it four or five times since it came out last April. I don't want to read too closely because I'm afraid I may find a typo. I'm also scared for the time I read it and my feelings have changed, or I feel stupid for putting something in writing that no longer holds true. The book isn't like a blog I can rescind or switch to private. Nope, it is much more bold and immovable than that. It is print! It is my attempt at timeless while being utterly bound by time. I have gotten uplifting feedback from the people who have read it, and using that momentum to create my next book, which should happen in 2017. 

Stay tuned!

Non-Fictional Fiction About An Old Guy's Crazy Sex Life

Title: Women
Author: Charles Bukowski
Length: 304 pages
Year Written: 1978
Why I chose this book: This was a contender for my book club a few years back, and I'd always been curious about it.

Charles Bukowski's Women follows a specific recipe: introduce a woman, describe her affair with the main character Henry Chinaski, then get rid of her before the next woman comes along. There are really many, many women in Women.

Chinaski is 50 years old, having recently left his job at the post office to become an author. He reaches a decent level of fame with his fiction and poetry, most notably in the number of women who shamelessly throw themselves at him, through rotary phone calls and snail mail, mostly. It is an autobiographical tale with a the label "fiction" loosely veiling it. The entire premise of Women is that Chinaski is fucking a slew of women as research for his writing. This is not without moments of self-reflection, mild epiphanies, and varied human emotion, but for the most part, it is about fucking. His sexual escapades with women, who are generally half his age, are usually ridiculous and often unsavory. But they are realistic, they are entertaining.

After watching a show about Bukowski on Netflix, and seeing him scream at his wife that she's a whore for going out to dance every night, I wanted to read his fiction and compare it to my shallowly-built perception of him. It all checks out. He is tall, fat, drunk, and charmingly chauvinistic, if there is such a thing. As a writer, he is honest if nothing else. His style of fiction writing is in some ways inspirational and other ways directionless. Personally, I prefer his poetry—I bought his collection of poems Love Is A Dog From Hell at the same time as this book and found it more enjoyable overall.

Rating: 7.7/10

A Scientifically Sound, Emotionally Disconnected Guide To Surviving On Mars Alone

Title: The Martian
Author: Andy Weir
Length: 369 pages
Year Written: 2011
Why I chose this book: The Martian was adapted into a film and released last Thursday. My friend Marianna highly recommended the book and I decided to read it before going to see the movie.

The Martian is the novel you would expect from a longtime programmer/space nerd/first-time author. Andy Weir writes about astronaut Mark Watney, who is stranded on Mars after an accident that his crewmates assumed killed him. He survives mostly on the strength of his ingenuity and background as a skilled botanist. This book is interesting, very well-researched and actually quite brilliant in regards to the space travel scenarios it illustrates. That said, it has all the elements of a great movie, but in a literary respect, is lacking certain depths.

The plot itself was interesting: it involves a lot of creative science, and innovative solutions to problems astronauts have yet to face. My problem was that I could never form a genuine connection with Watney. After learning his background and interests (which I could naturally have assumed, anyway), I realized Andy Weir is Mark Watney. This is all I could really think while reading: “shut up, you’re not funny, you’re stuck on Mars” or “Oh, Andy. You WISH you were Mark Watney (or Matt Damon).” In fact, at the end of the book there is an interview with Weir, and this was one of the questions:

"Do you have anything in common with your wisecracking hero Mark Watney?
I'm the same level of smart-ass that he is. It was a really easy book to write; I just had him say what I would say. However, he's smarter than I am and considerably more brave. I guess he's who I wish I were."

This tidbit is evident throughout the entire novel.

Watney is a quintessential wise-ass, often unrealistically flippant in response to life-threatening situations. I don't buy the fact that he was so lighthearted and sarcastic during an experience that was marked by painstaking work, putrid smells, and pure isolation. As a reader, I want more focus on his mental state, especially considering a large portion of the book is formatted as journal entries from Watney. The idea of being stranded alone on a planet for more than a year has so many more possible avenues than this story decided to embark upon (think the movies I Am Legend or Gravity). The story line of The Martian could go much deeper but instead ends up being a surficial semi-sci-fi novel that just happens to be jam packed with legitimate science that Weir actually worked out himself.

This is not to take away from the pure brilliance that seeps through the pages of The Martian. It’s just very clear he wrote it as a way to flex his science smarts and perhaps as a creative resume for a job at NASA.

Rating: 7.5/10

Seriously, The Most Practical And Uplifting Book I've Ever Read

Title: The Power of Now

Author: Eckhart Tolle

Length: 229 pages

Year Written: 1999

Why I chose this book: My friend Buddha introduced me to the concept of the 'pain body,' and through intensive Googling, I came across this book that I'd already heard of before in passing.

The first thing I will say is that everyone should read this book. The second thing I will say is that this is one of very few non-fiction books I have read for pleasure in several years. The third thing I will say is that this book is deeply powerful and highly practical. I'll stop counting the things I'm saying now. I can't believe it existed for 16 years without my having read it, but I’m glad I read it at this particular point in my life. I can admit that the very essence of me is skeptical of and resistant to terms like "spiritual enlightenment." Even the title, The Power of Now, initially strikes me as corny and barf-able. I immediately conjure mental images of preachers that wear pop star mics. As soon as I started reading, though, all my preconceived notions were shattered into a trillion pieces.

There are several chapters, all relevant to one another and the larger theme of being fully present in the moment without basking in the illusions of the past or worrying about the future. My favorite chapter was ‘Enlightened Relationships,’ which had genuine gems I was able to put into practice immediately. One of the biggest pieces that I identified with very closely was about our past pain and the way we lay back in it, unconsciously perpetuating more of the same for our lives. Tolle spells it out this way: “As long as you make an identity for yourself out of the pain, you cannot become free of it.” Having been single for the better part of the year, after being in a five-year relationship, this chapter reaffirmed my peace in my solitude. I realized that most “love” relationships are addictions, a vain search for wholeness in a secondary source, and largely and unknowingly operated by the ego. 

While I was reading, I checked hashtags on Instagram to see who was also reading this book. And then I talked to them about it. Surprisingly, a few people mentioned that the concepts in the book were difficult to grasp at first, and that they needed to reread multiple times. For me, it was more of a natural absorption, like the muted voice in my subconscious had gained confidence and volume. Overall, this is an excellent book—one that isn’t guaranteed to help you (at least not immediately), but it sure won’t hurt you.  

Rating: 9.8/10