3. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
4. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
5. Love Is a Dog From Hell by Charles Bukowski
These were three of the first books my friends delivered when they visited me. I was in Okinawa to make a film, and thankfully my friends took time away from the film to visit me regularly and make sure I felt like a human by bringing me books. I had already read Kafka on the Shore, and it was amazing to read a book I loved as a kid and realize that I hated it as an adult. So much about the character’s psychology doesn’t work for me anymore. I read the book for the first time when I was in Miho Matsugu’s Japanese Literature in Translation class in college, and it really opened a portal for me. With maturity, that portal closed, I think, but Ishiguro opened another one with Klara and the Sun, which I adored. I can’t speak highly enough of this book. It was a genre I didn’t think would enrapture me the way it did, and I’m so grateful I finally was forced to read it. The same is true of Charles Bukowski, whom I unfairly judged when I was a young, pretentious poetry minor in undergrad. I didn’t like any poet whom the straight white boys idolized because there seemed to be something wrong with any writer whom boys like that loved. I want to formally apologize to Bukowski because I didn’t realize that I too would one day be a desperately horny and depressed writer reading him and saying “YASSSS” to every other poem.
6. Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
7. Oreo by Fran Ross
8. What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell
9. Cleanness by Garth Greenwell
This is the section of books I’ll call “Read for Work.” My business partner smartly sent PDFs of all of these for me to read so that I wouldn’t fall behind on my reading for work, and it was a gift from heaven. Grasshopper Jungle was such a surprising and fun nostalgic read. Oreo is one of my favorite books of all time. And nothing is better when you’re a horny nerd than Greenwell, because he’s one of the greatest writers on earth and also very good at writing very erotic literary fiction. This is a godsend when you’re not allowed intimacy for 23 days.
