I opened up Patti Smith’s Just Kids last week and read it nonstop until it ended and left me flipping back through to my favorite parts. It was wonderful. I recommend it to anyone who is harboring an artistic spirit, or wondering what happened to theirs, or torturously pondering what to do next. It’s about her life with Robert Mapplethorp (both pictured above) as late teens-early 20s in NYC—so poor, so unknown, and yet eager to greet their future. Their belief in their artistic ability and the worthwhileness of  becoming artists, the joy they took in their city lives, the way they styled their working habits; it all inspired me to take firmer hold of my own artistic ambitions. It’s also an amazing primer on bohemian Greenwich Village, the Factory, the Chelsea Hotel….basically New York City in the ’60s.

I really didn’t know anything about Patti Smith, aside from her name, when I picked up the book, so don’t let that stop you. This isn’t a fangirl review.

Just Kids won the 2010 National Book Award for nonfiction. In her weepy acceptance speech she said,

Publishers: never abandon the book….There is nothing more beautiful, in our material world, than the book.

Next up: Netflixing the documentary Patti Smith: Dream of Life.

Photo by Katie Simon, 1979.

Rob Bell’s Love Wins is not making its way onto my reading list because I’ve read a few of his previous books and his style is not my style. But I’ve wasted enough time reading tweets about it the last couple of months that I did want to at least read a review. So how nice that the New York Times had Lauren Winner write up a little something this past Sunday. If there is one Christian writer I will article-stalk until I find everything she’s ever written, it’s Ms. Winner. I like her dependably smart, historically well read, and cheerful approach.

As for the future heaven, Bell does indeed question the teaching that only a select few will get there. He imagines a woman sitting in church crying because she realizes that “if what the pastor is saying about heaven is true, she will be separated from her mother and father, brothers and sisters . . . forever, with no chance of any reunion, ever.” Against that vision, Bell suggests “an exclusivity on the other side of inclusivity.”

Allie nicely proposed I return to these pages with an update about how David Sedaris’s new book and I got along. If you like grisly humor, heavily anthropomorphized  animals, and riffs on the absurdity of moral social structures, you’ll love it. I finished each chapter with a wrinkled nose and a faint, creeping sense of gagging. Take the story of the lamb and the crow. The crow chats the lamb up, suggests she try mediation to pass some time, and darts in for the lamb’s baby’s eyeballs while the ewe happily takes the crow’s advice. Not my type of visual.

David Sedaris has always hinted that he obsessives over the macabre – illustrated books of obscure anatomy, the fine art of taxidermy. So it’s really not a surprise that the “delightful” in his mind is more delightful grotesque than delightfully lovely. The stories also rely heavily on the idea that imagining animals doing really human things – like conniving or gossiping – is reliably funny.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk is a sold as a bestiary, an old word that means a collection of tales about beasts that is vaguely moralizing. They printed it to be a gift-save-it-for-the-grandchildren book (probably ironically), so the paper is heavy, it’s size-cute, full of illustrations by Ian Falconer (who illustrated the Olivia children’s series, if you’re wondering where you’ve seen that grayscale + one vivid color combo before) and the font is big. It sells for $21.99 (which is not a very ironic price, really, is it?).

I’ve been trudging though Light in August by William Faulkner (which sounds so nice, doesn’t it?) and had to put it down because I was getting depressed. I loved the new be-seen-reading novel Freedom by Jonathan Franzen and read it in a week. I was lucky enough to take a plane ride right after it came out and got to cradle it to myself the whole time and glared at the attendants when they interrupted me (“yes, I’ll take a bloody mary, please. *sigh* yes I have my ID.”). Franzen writes like John Updike did—attempting to sum up whole generations and complicated stories. His characters always stick with me. Next up: David Sedaris’ new book, and his first ever fiction, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk. I was getting a little sick of the “this is a true story” bit, and I’m looking forward to reading something unabashedly made up by him. And then (!) Nora Ephron’s memoir I Remember Nothing. I love the way she writes. I read I Feel Bad about My Neck like three times. She is my writing icon. Comes out November 9th.

Photo is an old Kate Spade ad, of course.