Joe's profile

253 ratings | 41 reviews
avg rating: 3.18

Joe's bookshelves

read (294)
currently-reading (0)
to-read (10)
novels (69)
poetry (32)

theory (27)
graphic-novels (25)
nonfiction (24)
short-stories (22)
speculative-fiction (22)

errata (20)
theology (15)
window-dressing (15)
experimental (14)
philosophy (8)

mixed-media (8)
touch-it-touch-it-touch-it (7)
english-textbooks (2)

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Joe's recent updates (rss)

August 05

New comment on ShellBell 's review of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than I.Q.

Joe wrote: "What, are you planning to spend hours on a plane soon? Save this one for after the Harlequin romance...more "

(see all 2 comments)

August 03

Joe marked as to-read:
Sex Appeal of the Inorganic (Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers Series)
by Mario Perniola
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

add a comment

August 02

New comment on Joe's review of Girl Imagined by Chance

Joe wrote: "Oh, you must follow the link. You must. Orlan? Is amazing. Follow the link and check out "The R...more "

(see all 4 comments)

Joe gave

to:
Girl Imagined by Chance (Paperback)
by Lance Olsen
bookshelves: experimental, novels

my rating:

recommended for: lazy people who can't do their own critical thinking
read in July, 2008

Joe said: "Meh.

Actually, that might be a bit strong.

The back-cover description pasted here on Goodreads was clearly written by the author himself and is, unfortunately, the most interesting bit of prose contained in the book. Seems fairly common amongst...more Meh.

Actually, that might be a bit strong.

The back-cover description pasted here on Goodreads was clearly written by the author himself and is, unfortunately, the most interesting bit of prose contained in the book. Seems fairly common amongst books of this chic new genre called "critifiction," which translates into English, roughly, as "masturbatory tripe." Read some Benjamin, and pronounce it BEYN-yah-meen, and then tell me how avant garde and under-appreciated you are, you hipster fucks.

The "plot" (and I'm using the word out of kindness) is Sontag's On Photography smeared over Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Also, I have not enjoyed a second-person narrator since the Choose Your Own Adventure books in j-high. When they aren't busy being fawning and intrusive, second-person narrators smack of the Everyman. Add the observation that the "you" narrator is loosely based on Olsen himself, and I am grossly insulted by his attempts at pawning off his interior musings as my own, as though he were saying something (a) original, or (b) so astoundingly important I must share in his subject-position.

The cover blurb claims that the book's "prevailing metaphor and structural device, the photograph, examines the way images, in their magical ability to mimic memory, ultimately mock and eradicate it." Which means only that the author read Camera Lucida in grad school. "The individual past, seemingly stable and fixed, turns out to be as protean and unknowable as the future." Noooo, you're shitting me. You mean, like, Schopenhauer circa eighteen fifty fucking one? Can you even say "turns out to be" after a century and a half? Turns out there is a literary trope in which love is fully consummated only in death. Turns out we'll call it Love-Death, or liebestod. Turns out "Hills Like White Elephants" is about an abortion. An abortion, people! Gawd! "The body becomes strangely dispensable, perpetually adrift in a cybernetic world of hyperlinks and interfaces." This last bit is utter trendy bullshit, not addressed at all in the novel but damn, doesn't it sound cool? Interfaces...mmmmm. The closest we come is the "you" narrator's fleeting fascination with a performance artist who looks strangely like Orlan, as if the aura of her brilliance might rub off onto this red-shirted bitch of an author.

Basically, this waste of 328 pages is a stoner's super-deep epiphanies after regurgitating a surface-level recap of actually intelligent people who have come before. There is no story-telling involved in this book. There is only a bibliography strung out and uncited for twelve chapters....less "

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July 29

New comment on Joe's review of High Lonesome: Stories 1966-2006

Joe wrote: "Yeah? Well, Damièn, as the illustrious Mary J. Blige has said, "Ain't worried boutchu and what...more "

(see all 4 comments)

Joe gave

to:
High Lonesome: Stories 1966-2006 (Hardcover)
by Joyce Carol Oates
bookshelves: short-stories

my rating:

recommended to Joe by: Andrea, the other me
recommended for: people who occasionally know the pleasure of NPR
read in July, 2008

Joe said: "JCO is everything I hate about Jane Austen made sublime. Not one of her characters is believable, but they all act in the way we wish we could act under similar circumstances. They all utter the stunning, pithy lines we imagine speaking two days late...more JCO is everything I hate about Jane Austen made sublime. Not one of her characters is believable, but they all act in the way we wish we could act under similar circumstances. They all utter the stunning, pithy lines we imagine speaking two days later. Oates smiles on the mundane shit of our lives, and honors the interior significance we fabricate in order to slog through each day.

"But that night as he falls slowly asleep he hears himself explaining to Annemarie in a calm measured voice that she will be risking something few men can risk, she should know herself exalted, privileged, in a way invulnerable to hurt even if she is very badly hurt, she'll be risking something he himself cannot risk again in his life. And maybe he never risked it at all.
You'll be going to a place I can't reach, he says.
He would touch her, in wonder, in dread, he would caress her, but his body is heavy with sleep, growing distant from him. He says softly, I'm not sure I'll be here when you come back.
But by now Annemarie's breathing is so deep and rhythmic she must be asleep. In any case she gives no sign of having heard."

High Lonesome is a collection of out-of-print stories with eleven new stories that, honestly, aren't necessary to sell me on the old ones. Her touch sort of faded after the 80s, which isn't to say that her later stories are crap but, rather, that her earliest stories are goddamn golden. Two pieces in this collection of 36 are padding. Find me another author who can say that after forty fucking years.

I counted three places where her voice took over -- moments that had no justification other than the pleasure she took in writing them. They were stunning. I found myself eagerly reading to find more of them. Each story on its own is perfect as cut glass; the collection itself was brilliantly organized. I couldn't stop, and for 664 pages, that's something considering how most authors' conceits and voices bore me after the first 150.

--------------------------------------------

I would also like to note that this book was gifted to me by a beautiful young woman who tenaciously tracked down JCO to sign the bugger for me. That's right, bitches. Suck it....less "

see all 4 comments

New comment on Ben's review of A Fighter's Heart: One Man's Journey Through the World of Fighting

Joe wrote: "Sure, but don't you just spend fifteen minutes of every day staring at the man on the cover of this ...more "

(see all 2 comments)

July 25

New comment on Matt's review of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Joe wrote: "Dear Stage Directions to Tennessee Williams' Cat On A Hot Tin Roof,

When I go out t...more "

(see all 6 comments)

July 07

Joe gave

to:
Evergreen: A Guide to Writing With Readings (Paperback)
by Susan Fawcett
bookshelves: english-textbooks

my rating:

read in July, 2008

Joe said: "We hates it. We haaaates it.

Some bloke named Jeffrey gave this monument of shite four friggin stars. Look for us to oil wrestle soon on cable.

Why can't I give this book negative stars? I want to take away the stars anyone else gave this book....more "

see all 10 comments

July 02

Joe marked as to-read:
Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing (Paperback)
by Theodora Goss
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

add a comment

see all 294 of Joe's books »

Joe's favorite quotes

"Kiss me and you'll know how important I am "
— Sylvia Plath

tags: importance, kiss, kissing, plath, sylvia

120 people liked it

"Your favorite quote is banal."
— Joe Simonsen

3 people liked it

Joe's groups (recent posts)

Constant Reader — 872 members — last activity 1 hour, 1 min ago
An open forum for friendly discussion of books and anything to do with reading, movies and art.

Guilty Pleasures — 357 members — last activity 14 hours, 29 min ago
Forum for discussing/recommending queer texts, open to the idea that the definition of "queer" is still in process. Interests in all genre...more

On Reading Graphic Novels — 505 members — last activity 3 days ago, 12:22PM
Let's talk about the wide array of graphic novels and which ones you enjoy reading. Maybe you like reading memoirs in the graphic format like Brookly...more

READING AS WRITERS — 352 members — last activity 9 days ago, 10:38AM
Those lines that startle you, endings that follow you for days, maybe a style that disturbs you but you can't stop reading. Discuss it all here.

Joe's friend comments

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from W.

01/22/2008 10:01PM

Yet another puling, postmodern bitch with a hardon for theory, graphic novels and gaymers who can pull off the trenchcoat in a totally non-ironical way.

THE PRECEDING PARAGRAPH IS MORE NEW YORK THAN NEW YORK....

I've lost a depressing number of books over many, many moves. My shelf has books I can remember reading well enough to rate an opinion. Which often means I don't actually remember reading the book, but rather remember hating it desperately. And I've recently added the "window dressing" shelf for all those books that I feel obligated to own but have no intention of ever reading cover to cover.

THE PRECEDING PARAGRAPH IS MORE QUENTIN CRISP THAN QUENTIN CRISP....

Just Born Candies manufactures over 4.2 million Marshmallow Peeps every day. The Iowa Writers' Workshop is close behind....less..

THE PRECEDING PARAGRAPH IS MORE REALISTIC THAN YOU WILL EVER KNOW...

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Joe's friends (30)

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	W. 1376 books 740 friends
	Jacob 1140 books 29 friends
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	Jessica 598 books 80 friends
	Jeff 79 books 48 friends
	Jeff 316 books 10 friends
	ShellBell 416 books 62 friends
	Jessica 370 books 556 friends
	Jordan 3378 books 46 friends
	Michael 3032 books 135 friends
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	Matt 442 books 92 friends
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