10 books I would recommend-not in any order

1. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City,
   by Nick Flynn (coz it's hilarious and poetic and I have a crush on him)

2. Jimmy Corrigan-the smartest kid on earth by Chris Ware,
   (but maybe everyone else who's ever lived in chicago has already discovered it)

3. The Last American Man
   by Elizabeth Gilbert (the best book out of the latest pile I bought and devoured-about an impossible, meglomaniacal, backtotheland guy, that I wanted to admire, but wound up wanting to strangle)

4. the collected works of Arthur Rimbaud
   (23 years after my first reading it still blows my head apart, in translation-patti smith, right again!)

5. Jane Eyre
   by Charlotte Bronte (somehow I missed this as a teenager mired in 19th century wordheavy tomes-and it killed me as a grown up)

6. S.T.P.-A journey through america with the rolling stones
   by Sophie Calle + Jean Baudrillard (definitive rock book, kinda about my definitive rock band)

7. Maggie Cassidy
   (c'mon! have you read it? remember the first time you read kerouac? try to feel that way again! it feels great!)

8. And Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
   by James Agee, with Walker Evans photos (gorgeous, wordy, one of the things this culture can be truly proud of via WPA-and an eye on the south for all y'all from other parts-and if all you see is bad, you're not looking right)

9. Dry
   by Augustin Burroughs (coz he's funny, and I'm obsessed with books about addiction)

10. Willful Creatures
    by Aimee Bender (the only book my sweetest friend Darin ever recommended to me that I actually liked-so I have to pass it on)

- Gwen Carter