This Book Will Change Your Life - Truth or Something Like It by Curtis Smith.

We are travel and we are reading. And what we finished reading today is Truth or Something Like It by Curtis Smith, a swirling mixture of politics, money and religion that is one part thriller and one part page-turner, the latter of which we would note is no easy task. Nice work man.

This Book Will Change Your Life - Twenty Stories by Kristin Fouquet.

Last night we went to the book release party for David Masciotra's new book Working On a Dream: The Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen. It was awfully fun, with much music, Masiotra supporters, beer and the Jason Fisk, and we will have more about the book and David soon. We promise, but the main reason we are telling you about all this is because the release was in Joliet, yes that Joliet, which meant taking a train, which meant time for writing, sweet, and reading, and we read a lot, including Night Soil Man, the first story from the Big Lonesome by Jim Ruland, which was just heartbreaking, and Chapter Three of the Truth or Something Like It, the engrossing new novel by Curtis Smith, both of which we will touch on here some time soon as well. We promise, but today, and right now, we are going to focus on Twenty Stories by Kirstin Fouquet, which is such a terrific blend of music, sex, humor and alcohol, that just might sound a bit like the book release party itself, except that unlike David's focus on Bruce, Kristin's focus is on New Orleans and these stories about jazz singers, adulterers, cross-dressers and writers not only reinforce, but expand everything you think you know about the city and the people who live there.

Bad Monkey by Curtis Smith.

If you are a geek reader book-loving fanboy type, is there much better than stumbling into a book you know little to nothing about, by an author you're not so familiar with, sorry Curtis, and then encountering so many unexpected pleasures while reading said book? No, not so much. Sure hitting the Sizzler with Jim Carroll or Lynda Barry would be quite cool, but few things are better than the unexpectedly pleasurable book-reading experience. Which is our way of saying that the short story collection Bad Monkey by Curtis Smith is all that. Early on it seems to have a violent Little Odessa thing going for it, but that's not really what's happening here, yes, there is violence, but there is also pathos, sadness and triumph too. In fact, it took us a little while to see how these pieces hang together overall, but then it hit us, collectively these are stories about family, how we make them, how they implode and how no matter what we just want to hold onto them in some fashion despite what common sense ought to be telling us. We should add, that something else hit us as we read it as well, ultimately, the writing here just feels mature, mature like Alice Munro feels mature, or Tommy's ghost cousin Jimmy Keefe on Rescue Me seems so mature, all lived-in and rich and nuanced. There's a lot of craft going on here, and we hope you take a look, it just might change your life.

This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, Week Thirty-Five - "Bad Monkey."

It is Week Thirty-Five of This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, our effort to post one self-portrait per week for one year, and this week we are all "Bad Monkey." More specifically we are reading Bad Monkey by Curtis Smith and it is the goods. We will report back shortly on our overall reactions, but in the interim please feel free to follow this project in its entirety on the Flickr and maybe even send us a self-portrait of your own, which we in turn would be thrilled to post right here on This Blog Will Change Your Life. Hey, did we mention that we would be thrilled to post a self-portrait of you, right here, on this blog? Good.