The new school term has slowed down my reading. No, wait. I take that back. It has slowed down my reading for pleasure. My reading for school has increased drastically. I had to spend over $100 on books last week for all the novels needed for my classes. There was something like eight books I needed. Anyway, I just wanted to highlight some books that are coming out soon that I am excited about. I realized while typing this that I know very little about the plot of the new books, but that does not stop me from wanting them.

Attack of the Theater People by Marc Acito (April 22th )
As we last left our hero, Edward Zanni, we found him graduating high school and setting out for Juilliard to become a famous actor (see: How I Paid For College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater ). Naturally things do not go as planned and he gets kicked out of drama school and finds himself being an undercover guest at parties to help motivate their party atmosphere. Along the way I am sure more thing will go wrong and luckily his friends from the previous book will show up and help him along the way. In the end, there will be a happy ending and everyone will be friends again. Such as it is in coming-of-age type novels.

Candy Everybody Wants by Josh Kilmer-Purcell (May 13th )
Josh’s first book, I Am Not Myself These Days , is one of my favorite books. It is the type of book that makes me want to hang out with drag queens all day just to watch them bitch. It was funny, heartfelt, and a little sad. Oh, it was a memoir too. That said, Candy Everybody Wants is his first fictional book about a boy who wants nothing more than to be famous. Taking place in, off of places, the 80′s, expect pop-culture references galore The first chapter is available for you to read and I highly recommend you do so.

Bright Sunny Morning by James Frey (May 13th )
I just found out this book existed. I had read his two previous novels and liked them regardless of the controversy. I don’t know anything else about it other than it takes place in LA.

Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk (May 20th )
I have a very love/hate relationship with Mr. Palahniuk. First off, I can’t pronounce his last name. Secondly, since he hails from the Portland, Ore. area everybody in town talks about how great he is. It’s like hearing a song that is at first good, but then over played on the radio. Of his last two books, Haunted was fantastic while Rant was interesting, but not that exciting. Snuff revolves around a porn star who hopes to make it big by having sex with 600 men in a single day.

The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death: Reflections of Revenge, Germophobia, and Laser Hair Removal by Laurie Notaro (June 24th )
I love Laurio Notaro. Her third book, I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies) , is one of the funniest books I have read. It was because of this book that I learned that there are some books you should not read in a quiet room full of people. This is I believe her sixth book of true stories and the first since her fiction attempt with There’s a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell . I saw her at Powells when she came up here to promote her last book (she lives in Eugene) and I hope I get to see her again.

Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man’s Attempt to Understand the World’s Most Mystifying Nation, or How He Become Comfortable Eating Live Squid by J. Maarten Troost (July 5th )
I discovered this author after two of my fellow co-workers and I agreed to form a book club and read The Sex Lives of Cannibals and follow it up with an in depth discussion. I was the only one who read the book. My co-worker had said that his write style distracted her because it felt to her that he was trying to be funny with everything that he wrote about. I corrected her and told her that he is funny with everything that he writes about. He followed up Sex Lives with Getting Stoned With The Savages which wasn’t a good but still quite enjoyable. In his newest travel memoir he travels to China with his family.

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 1:46 pm.
Filed under: Book News, Thoughts on Books.