This Book Will Change Your Life - Two Small Birds by the Dave Newman.

We could tell you how much we love Dave Newman's writing. That when we consumed his novel Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children we wrote, "Feelings are feelings. Anger is anger. Love is love. Friendship is friendship. Sex is sex. Great authors write about these things in ways that ring true to the reader. And Newman knows true. What it looks like. Its rhythm and flavor. All of it." And that we know its fucking grandstanding to quote ourselves, just as it is for us to write here, now, that Dave Newman just might be the best, mostly unknown writer, we can think of. We could also write that Two Small Birds is much of the same, though instead of truth, we might write knowing, because Dave Newman is that too. He knows what bars look like, and truck stops, and strip joints, and the people who cannot escape them. He knows what the great desire to create art feels like and how it is undermined not only by a world that doesn't care about that, but our own inability to capture what we want to say. He also knows how much we hate ourselves when we cannot see a way out of our suck-ass jobs and toxic relationships, and how poorly we can act because of that. And he certainly knows that the American dream, is for so many, just that, a dream, because there is just too much fucked-upedness getting in the way, though that fucked-upedness is not merely the pervasive lack of opportunity, but our own deficits as well, grinding away at our ability to make something of something. And yet, while all of this is true, what we want to say, is that Two Small Birds, which is ultimately a book about brothers who love each other so much they just might hate each other, made us want to toss everything we know and go into business with our brother, a brother who bailed us of out of an emergency involving a sick kid just tonight, no questions asked, and no complaints, because we needed it to be so. And in that we are indebted to both our brother and Dave Newman, because he knows how to make such an act into art, and in doing so has changed our lives, just as he might very well change yours.

Wherein we talk our Top Three Books of the year with TNBBC's The Next Best Book Blog and quite pleasantly encounter some Orphans love as well.

Great writers. Lovely lists. And sublime books.  It's all quite pleasant really. Big thanks to the TNBBC for asking, our choices are below, and there is a much more robust list to come. For real. And totally so.

We the Animals by Justin Torres

Near feral in its intense bursts of family instability.

Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children by Dave Newman

Newman knows true.

The Temple of Air by Patricia Ann McNair

What it means to live, and mostly cope, with things missing in our lives, hands, parents, children, breasts, love, that are at times violently taken from us, and other times more subtly so.

This Book Will Change Your Life - Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children by Dave Newman.

Is it enough to just say you love something, even if you're not entirely sure why? That yes, there are elements of said thing that speak to you, that seem to have been carved from your very brain, pain, frustrations and, joy, and yet so much of it is not you, your life, or day to day existence, that you love it at least in part just because it's so lyrical and flowing, humorous, and real. And god damn it you wish there was a better word than real? We think so, know so, yet, even as we write this, we also think that maybe that's all wrong. Because here's the thing about Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children by Dave Newman, we know what's it like to ignore our children, love our wife, struggle with cash flow, hang out in strip joints, and watch our friends make romantic decisions which seem so terribly suspect, but doing nothing about them. On the other hand, we know nothing about life as an adjunct professor, campus life, teaching classes, and dealing with students. But does that even matter? Because those things are merely scenery and currency. Feelings are feelings. Anger is anger. Love is love. Friendship is friendship. Sex is sex. Great authors write about these things in ways that ring true to the reader. And Newman knows true. What it looks like. Its rhythm and flavor. All of it. We hope you will take a look. It just might change your life.