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Habitual Reader Profiles - Page 2
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Name: Joe Kempkes |
| City & State: Oakland, California | |
| Vocation / Avocation: Book reviewer/book discussion group organizer | |
| Website: http://www.interlog.com/~kempkes/joe/ |
Why I'm a Habitual Reader:
As a dyslexic teenager, I was put into a remedial reading class and have been a "Habitual Reader" ever since. In the 1970s, I virtually lived in the basement of City Lights Bookstore in SF and in the 80s and 90s burned through the collection at the Berkeley Public Library while employed there. Currently I write book reviews for HarperCollins Publishers in NY, film reviews for Sony Pictures Classics in Hollywood and theater reviews for Aurora Theatre in Berkeley.
Please note: I provide free tips, referrals and contacts influential to Habitual Readers and to aspiring writers, actors and artists. Please visit my web site at www.interlog.com/~kempkes/joe/
My List of Ten: Top ten books for eclectic readers
1. The Kite Runner
Author: Khaled Hosseini
Dr. Hosseini's masterful, bittersweet tale of growing up in 1970s Kabul, Afghanistan
triggered many memories for me. I spent time in Kabul in 1976 and was walking
one night to a tea shop with a French companion. In the distance we saw a small,
dark shape slowly approaching. As the gap closed, we realized it was a small,
legless boy dragging himself directly towards us. When we were directly above
him, he looked up to reveal a face ravaged by leprosy: his browless eyes were
quick and alert as hummingbirds, his nose completely eaten away by the disease
and his lipless mouth exposed blackened gums and a few tiny white teeth like
stars that had burned out billions of years ago, the light only now reaching
our dazzled eyes.
2. The Street of Crocodiles
Author: Bruno Schulz
Kafka on steroids. The one book I'll take with me to outer space.
3. Little, Big
Author: John Crowley
People will definitely look at you differently after you recommend this at
your next book discussion group. If the group devolves into a Satanic cult,
blame Crowley. If, however, they worship you as their perfect master, give
them your blessing and mail me a check. Your choice your majesty.
4. I'm Losing You
Author: Bruce Wagner
Author Bruce Wagner drove a limo for Hollywood stars and kept his ears open.
Now he's a film writer/director and sits in the back of the limo. This is part
one of his so-called "Cell Phone Trilogy."
5. Still Holding
Author: Bruce Wagner
Part two of the trilogy...Don't keep Bruce waiting...
6. I'll Let You Go
Author: Bruce Wagner
Part 3...Bruce is hanging up now...
7. The Asiatics
Author: Frederic Prokosch
Poring over maps and travel diaries in 1932, this Yale student wrote a fictional
masterpiece without ever leaving his New Haven room.
8. Voices: A Memoir
Author: Frederic Prokosch
Fiction masquerading as memoir. Prokosch conjures up a haunted world littered
with the wreckage of famous and infamous writers, artists and cognoscenti all
swirling in their private deliriums of madness with his unique sardonic air
of triumph sweeter than any biblical psalm.
9. Black Hats: A Novel of Wyatt Earp and Al Capone
Author: Patrick Culhane
Culhane's follow-up to "Road to Perdition". This book answers the
question: what if Wyatt Earp and Al Capone's paths had crossed. My book jacket
blurb reads as follows: "Like a kilo of chocolate dipped strawberries
chased by a magnum of Dom Perignon champagne, 'Black Hats' will go to your
head quicker than a .45 caliber slug rocketing out of Wyatt Earp's long-barrel
revolver".
10. Lunch at Larry's
Author: Jas Nakagawa
A send-up of "Breakfast at Tiffany's." When strippers start going
missing at the lunch buffet at Larry Flynt's San Francisco Hustler Club, Oakland
PI Holly-go-Frightwig goes undercover as a pole dancer. "Book should be
in stores by Halloween," said author J-Nak as she donned her purple fright
wig and left Bump City for the twirling colored lights and throbbing beat of
Billy Idol's "White Wedding" over in North Beach.
Have you read any of these titles? Review one now.
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