How to Read

Saw a note on Facebook - Marc Grossberg wanting folks to buy his book & it aint easy to get a review at NY Times. I'd read a few pages on Amazon's look inside, and thought it was pretty good. So I suggested he send a copy to Levi Asher - and if he likes it, well yeah, it just might get reviewed at NY Times. Years ago, Asher used to review the Times book reviews and offer his opinion of theirs. And constantly bitch about the high price of hardbound books which he had to buy in order to review the reviewers. But he goes to PEN World Voices and knows all those people. 

I've even sent him a couple of my books but never heard back, which I mentioned to Grossberg - contact him first, cuz he didn't like my books. Quick response from Levi Asher "please don't send me any more books! I don't have time to read them. And Mike, it wasn't that I didn't like your books, just too busy." Which tickled me. I said to Grossberg "okay, that was a bad idea" and to Asher "just teasing - don't be so serious." People always so serious alla time. We all gonna hit the big clicker some day, might's well have some fun in the meantime.

I still get reveiw copies now and then; and recently an email from a publicist "what you think of the book." Damn, better read the thing first. So I start in, and it's pretty good - Home Making by Lee Matalone - the debut novel of the year. Coulda used that blurb for my book. Maybe change it a little - the debut novel of ten years ago! Sounds okay. Meanwhile I'm looking around the house for cousin Bill's book about the family homesteading in Canada, which is almighty interesting to me cuz them's my kinfolk, my progenitors. Who I am is what they were, to me anyway.

So I go up to the third floor, look around and find Images of Canada. But that's a pictorial history, similar to Dakota 125, an amazing book given to me by the author. Who's also publisher and former speaker of the house. Anyway, still looking looking around, I come across Tony O'Neill's book Sick City, which I'd also been reading on Amazon's look inside.

Geez, did I buy that; or did Tony send me a copy. I dunno, oughtta read that too. But then the library calls and says my copy of Losing My Cool by Thomas Chatterton Williams, has come in through interlibrary loan. So I fire up the old station wagon in the cold wind and snow, and go pick it up. So why not read all three books together, and see how that goes. Can't hurt. Next day, I get the mail, and there's a book by my friend William Trent Pancoast. Multi-tasking just got easier.

So I’m reading the four books, cleaning up the music room, trying to write and record a song, and watching Trump be impeached on TV, when on the ‘puter comes Buffy Sainte Marie singing Neil Young’s song Helpless. Stop everything. Listen to that amazing voice hitting those notes of that amazing song; and the marvellous musicians backing her. Wow, that’ll knock you off yer feet, even fifty years later. Music can captivate and hold better than any other form of communication when it’s done like that.