The Girl Who Drank Too Much Coffee

I just finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, that Swedish mystery/thriller by Stieg Larsson that everyone was raving about last year. Currently, everyone’s raving about the second Larsson book that just came out, The Girl Who Played with Fire.

By “everyone,” I guess I mean the book blogs I read.

Despite all the hype though, or maybe because of it, I didn’t really dig it too much. I don’t think this was just me being a literary fiction snob, either. I’ve been reading a decent amount of mysteries and crime fiction lately, but this one strained my tolerance for cheesiness at times.

For one, the dialogue read pretty stilted to me, though I guess you could blame that on the translator. I’m also thinking of the Lisbeth Salander character, a twenty-something punk girl who can hack into anyone’s computer she chooses (don’t get me started on how computer hackers are treated like magicians in books like this), and of course falls in love with the hero, a middle-aged journalist who never does one unlikable thing throughout the whole kinda-too-long novel.

Mainly, though, I’m thinking about the coffee. I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing, or just a quirk of Larsson’s writing, but everyone is drinking coffee in this novel. All the time. Either drinking coffee, or putting on water for coffee, or talking about putting on water for coffee. I’m willing to bet that, on average, the word “coffee” shows up every five pages. Somebody get a Kindle and verify that for me.

And as a coffee fan myself, I’m trying to figure out how they were all preparing the coffee. French press? Moka pot? Drip? Sometimes the coffee seems to appear instantly, and sometimes a person “puts on the water” and then takes a shower while waiting.

And what variety of coffee? When two characters sit down and have a beer together, Larsson specifies that they’re drinking pilseners. But does Mikael Blomkvist enjoy Colombian coffee, or Ethiopian?

Yeah, sure, there was a disappearance of a young girl, and a series of murders, blah blah blah, but this was the mystery that kept me up at night. The coffee.

Zygote in my Coffee

I’ve got two poems published in the most recent print edition of Zygote in my Coffee, a lit journal with a great name.

I haven’t actually received my copy yet, but here’s the link to order your own. It’s just $6, shipping included. Buy it!

This is apparently a special flipbook edition, one side being Zygote in my Coffee #7, featuring yours truly and a bunch of other writers, and the other side being a chapbook by somebody named Ross Vassilev.

Sounds like it might be cool, eh? You should probably buy it.

I examine things

Last month or so, I started writing a column of sorts for examiner.com, this news and entertainment website. I’m still not entirely sure what the point of it is, but I thought I’d link to it anyway.

I’m the official “Albany Literary Scene Examiner” (as they say, that and $2 will buy me a cup of coffee). I’ve been posting short articles and notices about upcoming readings and events in the area, and other news like that.

If you live in the Albany area and want to find out about all things literary in the region, you might find it useful. If you like clicking on sponsored ads, then you’ll definitely like it.

New site is up

I’ve been wanting to change my site’s design for a while now, and finally got around to it. Go check it out if you haven’t already. It’s fancy, and has cool little icons all over the place. I think I like it.

It’s better than the old design, I think, which was supposed to look like facebook, except facebook kept changing its layout.

Anyway, I’ll have some other news coming up soon, but for now just go stare at my fancy new website.

Reading this Saturday

I’m headed back to Long Island this Saturday for one last reading as part of that Young Poets project that I got involved in a while back. Live on Long Island? You should come.

It’s the release party for the last chapbook in the series; there will be a reading with that guy and the other “young poets,” me included. All the books will be available, I assume. I’ll bring a bunch of copies of Lemons and see if I can’t pawn off a copy or two.

The reading will be held this Saturday afternoon at Best Bargain Books in Centereach, NY. Here’s the easy-to-digest version of things:

Saturday, July 11, 2008
2 – 4 pm
Best Bargain Books
Walmart Shopping Center
217 Middle Country Road
Centereach, NY 11720

Should be interesting. At the very least, the bookstore is supposed to have pretty good prices (with a name like that it had better). Swing by if you can.

Also, at the last reading at Suffolk a few months ago, I cursed in a few poems and got the feeling it wasn’t too appreciated. I’ll try to clean up my act this time around.

Asinine Poetry

I’ve got a new poem published in the June edition of Asinine Poetry. Yes, Asinine Poetry. An online poetry mag for all things…asinine. Their definition of asinine: “Not necessarily bad; mostly kinda funny.” Sounds like a lot of my stuff, no?

Anyway, the poem is “Snakes on a Poet” which, if you’ve heard me do it at readings, you know fits the bill.

Go check it out, either by clicking here for the site, here to go directly to the poem, or here to read the “asinine bio” they put together about me. Do it now!

Lowell, MA

We did a little traveling this weekend and checked out Lowell, MA. It’s about 20 minutes north of Boston. A former mill-town, and birthplace of Jack Kerouac. (Yes, I’m talking about Kerouac again.) Thought I’d share some pictures.

They have a memorial park named for Kerouac there, with these strange granite pillars inscribed with quotations from his various books. According to a sign at the entrance of the park, the pillars are in a mandala pattern, “which symbolizes the universe.” Really, they reminded me of the obelisks from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but that’s me.

What really surprised me about Lowell was that we didn’t see any corny Kerouac-tourist stuff. We passed a Barnes and Noble that had t-shirts for sale with his face on them, but that was it. There’s no cheesy Kerouac Cafe. No Kerouac Car Wash.  There are supposedly some bars in the town with signs inside claiming “Jack drank here,” but that’s about it.

Then again, maybe it’s an untapped market. Note to self: Move to Lowell and open the Kerouac Car Wash; become millionaire.