The last 2 books I completed were The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers and Deary Diary by Lesley Arfin. Here is a little about each:
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is possibly the best thing ever written, or at least the best thing I have ever read. Keep in mind, I am a complete sucker for a story about a group of lonely misfits so perhaps my opinion is slightly swayed. In any case, Carson McCullers is a phenomenon. I can hardly believe she wrote this at the age of 23 and the book was originally published in 1940, it is timeless. McCullers writes with such compassion for her characters and without even a bit or pretension. She's the kind of person I could not imagine uttering a word like "exquisite", let alone forcing her characters to. This is basically my favorite kind of author. If reading is not your thing, check out the film. The story is too wonderfully sad and sweet to miss.
The other book I just completed was Dear Diary by Lesly Arfin. This was published in conjunction with Vice, so I kind of thought from the get go that it would be lame. Turned out to be okay, slightly better than meh. Meh plus. It's basically Arfin's memoir, chronicling her adolescence and early twenties complete with heroin addiction and rehab. What I primarily enjoyed about it were the pop culture references. Reminded me a lot of high school, and how I liked punk and my favorite band was ALL. Or that time I cut my shoulder length "girl, you'll be a woman soon" hair off by grabbing a pair of scissors and half-hazardly snipping off chunks of it. Turned out kind of cute. Or how many of you had a JanSport backpack that you wrote all over with a Sharpie? I remember having an SST records sticker on mine.
Wow, I wish I was even half as cool as all that now sounds. Really, I was just a silly geek who was lucky enough to find some really good friends. Some things change and some things stay exactly the same.
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