Willful Creatures (stories) by Aimee Bender

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Willful Creatures was published in 2005 by Doubleday. My favorite stories in here were "Dearth," "Off," "Fruit and Words," "The Leading Man," "I Will Pick Out Your Ribs (from My Teeth)," and "Ironhead," which was peculiarly sad and satisfying at the same time.

Now I want to go back and reread The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (stories) and An Invisible Sign of My Own (novel).

Call Me By Your Name

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To me those hours spent at that round wooden table in our garden with the large umbrella imperfectly shading my papers, the chinking of our iced lemonades, the sound of the not-too-distant surf gently lapping the giant rocks below, and in the background, from some neighboring house, the muffled crackle of the hit parade medley on perpetual replay—all these are forever impressed on those mornings when all I prayed for was for time to stop. Let summer never end, let him never go away, let the music on perpetual replay play forever, I’m asking for very little, and I swear I’ll ask for nothing more.

From Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, 2007), p. 30.

There is also a lovely segment starting with the bottom paragraph on page 237 of the hardcover edition (“And like the old men who sat around the piazzetta—”), but it gives away too much of the story’s ending to type it out here.

Oh, and if you see this, thanks for the recommendation.

Poetry by Tania Pryputniewicz and David O'Meara, Fiction, Films, and David Sedaris' tour

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"She dressed in a hurry (Lady Di)" by Tania Pryputniewicz (poem from Salome Magazine, September 28, 2009)

"Airport" by David O'Meara (poem from his collection Noble Gas, Penny Black, Brick Books, 2008)

"Looking American" by Tai Dong Huai (short story from Raving Dove, Summer 2009)

"Margaret Lives in the Basement" and "Duck Blind" by Michelle Berry (short stories from her collection Margaret Lives in the Basement, Somerville House Publishing, 1998; "Margaret Lives in the Basement" was originally published as three separate stories in TickleAce, Ash, and The Malahat Review)

5x2, in French, directed by François Ozon and starring Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi as Marion and Stéphane Freiss as Gilles. Early on, this film had a scene that I really could have lived without. Still, I thought that overall it was excellent. It was also a pleasant surprise to see the wonderful Valeria Bruni Tedeschi again; I'd just seen her in Il est plus facile pour un chameau... (English title: It's easier for a camel...), which she wrote and directed. (She is sometimes credited as Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi or Valéria Bruni-Tedeschi.)

The Savages, written and directed by Tamara Jenkins and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as Jon Savage and Laura Linney as Wendy Savage, and Philip Bosco as Lenny Savage, Peter Friedman as Larry, and Gbenga Akinnagbe as Jimmy. This was the second time I'd seen this one. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney are two of my favorite actors, so I'd really looked forward to seeing this the first time around, but some of the themes were so painful that I couldn't appreciate all of the beauty and humor.

Considering that I briefly considered leaving home in order to attend the rest of David Sedaris's tour dates, I suppose you could say that I enjoyed seeing him live. Some of the appearances are already sold out, but if you like his writing and he's going to be visiting a city near you, I'd strongly recommend getting a ticket. He's great on the page, on CD, and on television, but truly, he's even better in person. Ticket information is available on the website of the Steven Barclay Agency: http://www.barclayagency.com/speakers/appearances/sedaris.html.

The Fall 2009 issue of the Apple Valley Review

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The Fall 2009 issue of the journal features prose poetry by Luiza Oleszczuk; poetry by Michael Lauchlan, Marge Piercy, Jin Cordaro, Ioan Flora (translated from the Romanian by Adam J. Sorkin and Elena Borta), David LaBounty, Bernard Henrie, Gail Braune Comorat, Mary MacGowan, Yun Wang, Anne Britting Oleson, Tammy Ho Lai-Ming, Laura McCullough, and Melissa Adamo; fiction by Elaine Barnard and Kathleen Thomas; essays by J. W. Young and Erika Kleinman; and artwork by Jacob Collins.

The Apple Valley Review is a semiannual online literary journal. The current issue, previous issues, subscription information, and complete submission guidelines are available at www.applevalleyreview.com.

"The Bats" by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

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First published in Zyzzyva (Spring 1993) and subsequently included in her short story collection Arranged Marriage (Anchor/Doubleday 1995).

Jane Austen's Persuasion

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"[Lady Russell] could not imagine a man more exactly what he ought to be than Mr Elliott; nor did she ever enjoy a sweeter feeling than the hope of seeing him receive the hand of her beloved Anne in Kellynch church, in the course of the following autumn."

(This passage--from the end of Chapter 17--is one of my favorites despite the fact that it's about her cousin rather than Captain Wentworth.)

Fiction and Poetry

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"The Motherhood Poems" by Beth Alvarado (short fiction from Necessary Fiction, June 3, 2009)

"Death of the Right Breast" by Bernard Henrie (a poem from Stirring, September 2005)