>Over the weekend I read
>
>Against Gravity, by Farnoosh Moshiri
>This one was okay but not great. I don't recommend it. I
>don't think it added anything to my understanding of people or
>mental illness or emotions or refugees or any of the other
>subjects it purports to deal with.
>
>Stranger Than Fiction : True Stories by Chuck Palahniuk
>I was surprised by how much I liked this one. His essays are
>kind of like David Foster Wallace's crossed with Joan Didion's
>but then crossed with his own kind of peculiar hand.
>
>a sizeable chunk of The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
>Palahniuk raves about Hempel's writing in a way I have only
>rarely seen a writer rave about another writer. So I went out
>and got her recently published collected works. They're
>really intense and beautiful and my only problem with them is
>that they're so short. I really don't like short stories and
>these are really really REALLY short stories. But beautiful
>writing.
>
>The Black Veil by Rick Moody
>This was lovely and peculiar and many different things all at
>once. I really appreciated the fact that it is a memoir of
>his drug/alcohol addiction without being self serving or
>grotesque and also that the metaphor he chose and the
>Nathanial Hawthorne short story that reveals it are so apt
>without being stridently blatant.
>
>and started A Border Passage : From Cairo to America--A
>Woman's Journey by Leila Ahmed
>Just started this, so I can't really comment as yet. I'm
>wondering whether my favorite Egyptian book reviewer reviewed
>it. I can't wait to get home to find out.
>
>
>
>
>~~~~~
>
>Breathe and know you're breathing