i can't really sing, so

As Goodreads keeps track of my "2015 Book Challenge", I won't be doing so here. Instead, I'll just be writing about the books I read each month. Note that I don't really consider what I write here to be "reviews" on what I've read, but more like notes and thoughts. Anyway, I spent most of the month reading a novel that I am still not done with: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. It's excellent, and I can't wait to tell you more about it when I'm through. Though I am so enveloped in its world, I am not necessarily looking forward to being finished with it. That's how I know I am really loving a book. Here's what I DID finish reading last month: BOOKS READ JANUARY 2015 The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (Little Brown, 2002) I was nearly done with this towards the end of December, but the holidays kind of got in the way with  finishing. I didn't want to rush just to finish it by a specific calendar date. I loved the narrator in this b...

I've been doing social media for the upcoming art/lit/small press/poetry extravaganza PHILALALIA, where Gigantic Sequins will be tabling AND co-hosting an on-site event as well as kicking off the first "official" off-site event of the event at Tattooed Moms along with Philadelphia Review of Books and The Head & the Hand Press.  The on-site events' schedule is on the official PHILALALIA site , and each and every one of them is FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. So please come out to the book fair and make some time to stop by one or more of the great on-site events. I am of course partial to the GS/Apiary reading, looking forward to the Temple Contemporary Publication Studio Presentation and their event Thursday night featuring the Poet Laureate and Youth Poet Laureate of Philly, and how can you go wrong with Eileen Myles Potluck Brunch? You just can't. There's so much great lit-ness happening during the 3-day period of the whole shabang, though, that I wa...

As promised, back in action this May. I read a whole bunch. I "caught up" with my Goodreads Challenge and then some. And that's not even including all the rereads! I was the reread Queen this April and am still going strong-- I'm not going to blog about them, but I'm in the middle of rereading the Harry Potter series. I read most of the books each a couple times back in the day, but it's been at least since the summer of 2007 since I read any of them-- so that's a good 7 years ago. I forget if I wanted to wait 10 or what until I reread, but my husband and I have been watching the movies. I really felt a strong need to reread the books to "get straight" a lot of what the movie ruins/gets wrong. The deeper into the series I go, the more I notice the movie's lack of that UMPH that makes the books The Best. They really are so fucking good. But I digress. Back to what I read  this month outside of being in the throes of the HP series as the month ...

I saw a bunch of posts over at HTML Giant where bloggers named their summer reads. Summer is fast upon us, less than a month away if we are to believe calendars. Most people there named five books, and though I plan on reading more than five books this summer, it makes sense to only commit now to five, I suppose. Who knows what might strike my fancy as the hot months unfold. Here are five books I will definitely be reading this summer: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy I read Crime &Punishment this winter and was surprisingly enthralled. I've always avoided the Russian giants for the most part, but I think I'm ready. I needed a longer classic to knock out this summer, and so this one it is. I will most likely crowd-source what the best translation is, and I may or may not read it on my Kindle. A friend of mine and past GS contrib, Olivia Kate Cerrone, will also be reading it, so I am eager to swap reflections on it with her. Someone Else's Wedding Vows by Bianc...

We've already announced on the GS Editors Blog the list of contributors for our 5.2 issue, but I'd like to re-announce them here and encourage you to donate some of your cashmoney to help this great issue go to print. This winter, we had one of our more selective if not most selective open submissions period. It seemed like a lot of the writing being sent to us was "close" but not quite THERE. For fiction, stories seemed either well written and the story fell flat or with a great story but not as solid writing. As for poetry, when the rest of the poem seemed to be working towards something whole, a single line or a word or an ending would break our hearts and not in the good way. We rejected a lot of very good-- very "close"-- pieces of work, it seemed. As for non-fiction, we never never never get enough and the two pieces we chose really spoke to us. We held onto some others up until days before our announcement of the contributors, but they didn't work...

THE GIGANTIC SEQUINS SECOND ANNUAL CONTEST IS OPEN! complete info on the GS contests page . submit via submittable .

I had known all along that I didn’t want to be a journalist. I had known it early in high school, after the school newspaper’s Levendis editor assigned me my first Arts & Entertainment article on Pokèmon. I discovered then that I didn’t like talking to people who I didn’t know. But there I was, early in my senior year of high school, 8 th period, alongside my fellow Arts & Entertainment editors Mark and Chris. It was September 11 th , 2001, and earlier that day, during 2 nd period, our entire school had listened over the loudspeakers to the news from New York City, live, including hearing the reaction of the broadcasters as the second tower fell. I had been surprised to see my peers pulling cell phones from their bags to call to see if their parents who worked in the area were okay—kids my age had cell phones? Parents from Cherry Hill, NJ travelled all the way to New York City for work? In the middle of the day, we watched the repeated footage of the towers afla...

Alice Notley, prominent poet from the 2nd generation of the New York School, will be reading at Rowan University on Monday, April 26th in the Rowan Art Gallery in Wesby Hall at 7pm. This event is both FREE and OPEN to the PUBLIC. If you are in the area, you should probably attend. Visit the official link on the Rowan website HERE . It advises you to contact Bill Friend at friend[at]rowan[dot]edu for more information. In honor of continuing our "poem a day" posts for National Poetry Month, I would like to guide you to the poets.org site on Alice Notley. There are six audio recordings of her reading here as well as two text versions of her poems. Check it out HERE . I read the Selected Poems of Alice Notle y earlier this year, and I started my copy of her collection Disobedience this weekend in honor of her Monday reading, I recommend strongly that you get your hands on a copy of her work. I would, personally, like to own Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems 1970-2005 . I on...

9 poems by 9 authors better known for something that isn't poetry 1) James Joyce -- best known as an author of novels, including Ulysses and A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. A Flower Given to My Daughter Frail the white rose and frail are Her hands that gave Whose soul is sere and paler Than time's wan wave. Rosefrail and fair -- yet frailest A wonder wild In gentle eyes thou veilest, My blueveined child. 2) D. H. Lawrence - best known as the author of novels such as Women in Love and Sons and Lovers . Self Pity I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself. 3) Denis Johnson - best known as the winner of the National Book Award for his novel Tree of Smoke . Surreptitious Kissing I want to say that forgiveness keeps on dividing, that hope gives issue to hope, and more, but of course I am saying what is said w...