Book of the Day Archive

“Are you comfortable, Reggie?” “Yep.” Reggie Shaw lies on a medical bed, his head inches from the mouth of a smooth white tube, an MRI machine. He’s comfortable, but nervous. He doesn’t love the idea of people peering into his brain.

I came into the world during the Tet Offensive, in the early days of the Year of the Monkey, when the long chains of firecrackers draped in front of houses exploded polyphonically along with the sound of machine guns.

“So you see…nature has always looked like a horrible mess. But as we go along we discover patterns and come up with theories. The result? The mess I’m gonna show you is smaller than the mess I would’ve had to show you ten years ago.”

You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.

Having just died, I shouldn’t be starting my afterlife with a chicken sandwich, no matter what, especially one served up by nuns.

There was an Indian head, the head of an Indian, the drawing of the head of a headdressed, long-haired Indian depicted, drawn by an unknown artist in 1939, broadcast until the late 1970s to American TVs everywhere after all the shows ran out. It’s called the Indian Head test pattern. If you left the TV on, you’d hear a tone of 440 hertz–the tone used to tune instruments–and you’d see that Indian, surrounded by circles that looked like sights through riflescopes. There was what looked like a bull’s eye in the middle of the screen, with numbers like coordinates.

We called him Old Yeller. The name had a sort of double meaning.

This book was born as I was hungry.

My dear Marwan, in the summers of childhood, when I was a boy the age you are now, your uncles and I spread our mattress on the roof of your grandfather’s farmhouse outside of Homs.

Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

One bright and starry night, the gods, the goddesses, the demons, and the spirits gathered together in heaven for a dinner party. Their music and the scent of their wine drifted down…down…down where flowers bloomed year round and fruits hung heavy with nectar and monkeys frolicked under the watchful eye of the magical monkey king.

When we were young my little brother Phil and I shared the same bed. “SHARED” is the sugar coated way of saying we were TRAPPED in the same bed, as we were children and had no say in the matter.

I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.

9 p.m. on a November Saturday. Joni, Tony and I are out on the town. Tony is from the next town over and he needs to get out. His parents are extremely religious. It doesn’t even matter which religion–they’re all the same at a certain point, and few of them want a gay boy cruising around with his friends on a Saturday night.

At the far end of town where the Grickle-grass grows and the wind smells slow-and-sour when it blows and no birds ever sing excepting old crows… is the street of the Lifted Lorax.

Spring 1889 stretched a blanket of wildflowers over Shelbyville, Tennessee, but William “Doc” Key barely noticed.

What’s surprised me most about seeing my sister dead is the lingering smirk on her face. Her pale lips are turned up ever so slightly, and someone has filled in her patchy eyebrows with a black pencil. The top half of her face is angry–like she’s ready to stab someone–and the bottom half is almost smug. This is not the Olga I knew. Olga was as meek and fragile as a baby bird.

Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids.

Nix has spent her entire life aboard her father’s ship, sailing across the centuries, across the world, across myth and imagination.

It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.

Two households, both alike in dignity,

in fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

from ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

Don’t nobody believe nothing these days, which is why I haven’t told nobody the story I’m about to tell you. And, truth is, you probably ain’t gon’ believe it either, gon’ think I’m lying, or I’m losing it, but I’m telling you, this story is true. It happened to me. Really. It did. It so did.

On the boat we were mostly virgins. We had long black hair and flat wide feet and we were not very tall. Some of us had eaten nothing but rice gruel as young girls and had slightly bowed legs, and some of us were only fourteen years old and were still young girls ourselves.

Dreadlock Man, with his fierce fists and suspect jump shot, sets his stuff ($1.45 sandals, key to bike lock, extra T-shirt) on the bleachers and holds his hands out for the ball.

All children, except one, grow up.

First of all, let me get something straight: This is a JOURNAL, not a diary.

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress.

It does no good to write autobiographical fiction cause the minute the book hits the stand here comes your mama screamin how could you and sighin death where is thy sting and she snatches you up out your bed to grill you about was was going down back there in Brooklyn when she was working three jobs and trying to improve the quality of your life and come to find on this page that you were messin around with that nasty boy up the block and breaks into sobs and quite naturally your family strolls in all sleepy-eyed to catch the floor show at 5:00 AM but as far as your mama is concerned, it is nineteen-forty-and-something and you ain’t too grown to have your ass whipped.

They took me in my nightgown. Thinking back, the signs were there–the family photographs burned in the fireplace, mother sewing her best silver and jewelry into the lining of her coat late at night, and Papa not returning from work.

On a morning in mid-April, 1687, the brigantine Dolphin left the open sea, sailed briskly across the Sound to the wide mouth of the Connecticut River and into Saybrook Harbor. Kit Tyler had been on the forecastle deck since daybreak, standing close to the rail, staring hungrily at the first sight of land for five weeks.