Wherein we get to Writers Recommend at TNBBC's The Next Best Book Blog and so we do by getting all The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll.

So totally Writers Recommend indeed. And so totally appreciative we are. Excerpt? Word.

"I re-read books as a boy, I was ravenous for words and the escape and balm they provided, and some books filled the chasm for me again, and again, Carrie, The Catcher in the Rye, The Outsiders, Flowers in the Attic, Then Again, Maybe I Won’t, The Chocolate War, and so many others, but none of them was The Basketball Diaries.

            It was electric, and real time, all live wire, and nerve endings, a mash-up of masturbation, drugs, sports, underage sex, predators, crime, writing, hustle, art, New York City in the mid-sixties, and people love to talk about cities, especially New York City as characters in stories, but usually they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about, here though New York City was oozing and fresh, and another breathing slice of a book, that was so graphic, vivid, and fraught with gunk and stickiness, it was like watching a documentary."

Wherein we are Loren Kleinman Orphans interview and most endlessly appreciative for that.

Truth. More truth? The Kleinman is totally rock star. Excerpt? Cool.

LK: Did you know the titles of your books before you started writing?

BT: No, I had actually briefly fixated on the working title Blue Legs because in the opening scene the protagonist is on a sales call with a potential client who has blue legs. I liked the idea that blue legs would seem weird and imply this book was going to be something different than I usually write, though maybe not exactly so. I also liked the idea that blue legs would be cold to the touch, yet still kind of sexy. To me anyway, I love skin. Later in Orphans the reader learns more about why characters in this story might have blue skin, though by that point, I had moved on to the idea of titling it Orphans, with my focus on the idea that the characters in this book are all orphaned, by family, work, or society.

Zombies. Beaudoin. The Basketball Diaries. Other People. And App.

Sean Beaudoin is new Other People where among other things he talks his new YA zombie joint The Infects and The Basketball Diaries. It is goodness. As is the new Other People App. So do hit it. All of it. Because it just might change your life. 

We are ALL 'LIT' UP. Part Two. We are also McNair.

And big thanks to the James Goertel for that as well. Now how about some excerpt? Word.

Wherein we riff on death, tonic, research and My Father's House at the Necessary Fiction.

Big thanks to the Necessary Fiction for letting us talk death and My Father's House as part of their "Research Notes" series. Please do enjoy, though we recognize that may so not be the right descriptor. And now for some excerpt. 

"I suppose one could ask what kind of research one has to do when they write about death, or maybe more accurately, why would they even want to? Where’s the gain there? None really. I don’t think. Maybe it’s even better not to do so. There are other, better milestones to write about and research certainly. Like losing your virginity for example. It may not be pleasurable, or fun, it may even be scary, something you regret, and wish you could take back. But there will be other chances to at least get sex right, or better, or you can even choose not to at all after that. It worked for Morrissey. Initially anyway."

And now for a non-Petting Zoo Jim Carroll moment.

"It was a dream, not a nightmare, a beautiful dream I could never imagine in a thousand nods. There was a girl next to me who wasn't beautiful until she smiled and I felt that smile come at me in heat waves following, soaking through my body and out my finger tips in shafts of color and I knew somewhere in the world, somewhere, that there was love for me." Jim Carroll, The Basketball Diaries

Dang, first John Hughes, and now this?

"Totally zonked, and all the dope scraped or sniffed clean from the tiny cellophane bags. I can see the Cloisters with its million in medieval art out the bedroom window. I got to go in and puke. I just want to be pure.”

From the start, and even now, no book meant more, or means more, to us than The Basketball Diaries.

Rest in peace.