Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

1972, Rolling Stone Magazine, a suitcase full of potent drugs, a red convertible, the willingness to journey into the American Dream unrelentlessly and the complete disregard for an authoritative power , mix together in a dark basement and cook over an open flame ; the ending result is the autobiographical novel authored by the notorious drug user Hunter S. Thompson.  The novel is sporadic, told through a stream of consciousness, avoidance of law enforcement and zany antecedents that pepper the novel, giving it unique flavor never seen before or after its initial publication. Definitely a zeitgeist piece of literature and look into the culture of the 1970s without all the tarnish of trying too hard to impress others, rather just written as the events unfolded before them.  Gonzo journalism was the heart of the novel and pumped life into the drug counterculture of the early 1970s; Thompson’s novel is a must read for anyone seeking an adventure that has no set destination or a joy ride through Death Valley and Las Vegas compressed into a compact portable form.  

Care to Make Love In That Gross Little Space Between Cars

Sarcasm run amok in this collection of misconstrued “Dear ________” letters answered by leading comedic identities, peppered with mundane questions and irrelevant answers this is a lighthearted read that is a beach bound. Filled with stagnant humor and one too many tongue-in-cheek jokes this edition to the Believer magazines repertoire of books lacks the pizzazz the first one had; this collection did not seem to have the zip or order to the letters that the previous book had. Maybe the Believer should just believe in the publication of magazines for the next couple of months and really put effort into the publication of their third book.   

The Hunger Games

A vile tyrannical dictator ruling over 12 districts that reap the land for sheer survival and in return the “beloved” capitol reaps each district ever year for one female and male to fight to death in an arena for entertainment/a reminder about the uprising that split the country almost a hundred years ago.  Enter an obstinate female Katniss, who along with her male counterparts Peeta, Gale, Haymitch set the country of Panem “ablaze” both figuratively and literally. The subsequent volumes in the series follow the uprising of the Panem districts and the inevitable outcomes of action based on Katniss and company’s antics.  Add a smidge of father issues, a web of tangles love, confused feelings and heavy doses of morphiling, poverty, starvation, destruction, breaking of the human spirit, a flash of color and attempting to find you under the microscope of an entire country, this is the true Hunger Games.  Looking to fuel the “hunger” for an entertaining read, look no further than the worldwide phenomena of the enchanting, structured world of Panem.

May Day

Picturesque background, ball gowns, liquor bottles strewn across the floor, men in uniform, crushing socialites and socialists, add together and stir with a the historical truth of the May Day Riots of 1919 and in about 100 pages you have the novella penned by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This novella is a thematic mash up of stagnation of a nation and a polarized society that precedes the “Jazz Age” of the 1920s, where decadence and opulence ran the country. Mingling the storylines of the principle players as Fitzgerald does through vigilantly choreographed prose, the story is given life.  Memory is treated as a central character cautioning the audience not to forget the reasons why the events in the story unfold in the manner that they do. Edith and Gordon are the lay man and woman that can be identified by a vast populous of people, thus the basis for the appeal to read this novella. A clear narrative tone and a surprise ending, this is a must read for any Fitzgerald fan or someone just looking for a poignant read depicting a historical hiccup in the timeline of humanity.    

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

Cereal, cigarettes, slight pillow talk, a VHS of the Real World and Lisa Loeb’s cat glasses lying on the bedside table next to a picture of Zack Morris, the ideal setting for a satirical portrayal of a society run by the cultural components that dictate what is important and what is not. A collection of essays ranging in various topics is at the heart of the novel depicting a brief time in American cultural history; Klosterman unearths questions such as “what is culture and why does it have such an immense impact on the lives of millions?”, the ambiguity of American society, living amongst the cultural impaired or uncultured populous and how ubiquity seems to run the young American life. Using vernacular and cultural references, Klosteman captures all of the aforementioned themes into a witty, sometimes sardonic, musings about the current state of people’s lives and what is important to them as a people.  The prose harkens back to the James Joyce theory of writing in a stream of consciousness, connecting the dots vaguely and having high reaching points that take a few moments to sink into the gray matter called a brain to fully understand what the actual point of the essay is. Playfully constructed using the now foreign concept of a tape cassette playlist as a way to add some structure to a mixture of music, drugs, heartthrobs and fashion to create the ultimate cultural sampler platter available at the local bookseller or chain store. Anecdotal and highly relatable, this cocktail of customs is an interesting read and one that makes the reader look at society as a whole through something other than rose tinted glasses, a bong filter or a purple haze of an illicit drug and think for themselves about the state of life and society.

Girl, Interrupted

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest depicts the life of a mental institution from the perspective of a man albeit fiction but nonetheless the only depiction until the groundbreaking memoir from Susanna Kaysen; this seminal memoir relaying actual occurrences of a mental health facility in the 1960s gave the masses a view of the harrowing world clouded with the stigma of mental illness from the perspective of an adolescent woman.  A collection of thoughts, feelings and essays about the mental health system, when patients were considered sub-human;  Kaysen  gives invaluable  insight into her own issues, giving the reader knowledge into the mind of a severely depressed woman and society’s reaction to people with afflictions that were internal rather than external.  Raises the question what is reality and how can one define it for another, what credentials must one person have to decide which is the correct reality? The memoir was provocative for its time and still is a gem into the mind of a psychiatric patient, one that has yet to be contested.  An indelible mark left on your life, a label that can never be scrubbed away is the mark a mentally ill person carries with them through the duration of life despite being “cured” or not. A must read for anyone working in the field of psychology or mental health; and thought provoking look into the psychiatric world from the perspective of a client. Ambiguity between the real and the surreal drives the memoir forward, keeping the reader wanting more and more as the audience trudges into unknown territory into the mind of “unstable individual”. A memoir filled with “the muzak of self-hatred themes”.  “Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or maybe life is… Crazy isn’t being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever. They were not perfect, but they were my friends.”~ Susanna Kaysen

 Reading this memoir was a different for me because the nature of my current working environment and how countless things that occurred within the confines of the covers I have either personally witnessed or had eerily similar experiences; however, this is a marvelous piece of written word that must be experienced by all people no matter where they are in life’s journey because it truly is one novel that let others experience life through the eyes of someone else different from your own individual experience and truly brings together the idea of experiencing dissimilar lives through unconventional ways.