I just finished my Christmas shopping.

Have any of you read Amy Hempel's Collected Stories ? I'd never heard of her until Palahniuk wrote about her in his Stranger than Fiction n-f collection. She's like his overarching goddess. I can see why.

I'm halfway through her Collected and it's knocking my socks off. She writes minimalistic prose that McCarthy (Cormac, not Joe), Proulx, and McMurtry only wish they could write. Instead of being off-putting or stiff, her reductionism (and subsequent embellishment, a la her story “The Harvest”) draws you in, then reaches up through the page, grabbing your heart and throat with one really really really big hand.

“In the Cemetery where Al Jolson is Buried” is her widely anthologized piece, but it's not her best — I'm particularly loving “Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep” and the two-page “San Francisco.”

How come I never heard of her when I was working on my MFA? One of her books was out of print at the time but others were available.

Anyone else out there read her? What's your opinion?

Did you know that the guy who wrote those Left Behind books wrote a Bible ?

Now you do. Do you feel a little dirtier for it? Me, too. Shower time.

Back when I had my first meeting about Living in Northampton and Amherst, the publisher told me she wanted to re-design the cover with some new photos. I told her I have a BA in photojournalism and she agreed to take a look at any pictures I'd like to submit.

Flash-forward three months. I sent her nine pictures last night, and today received this response: “THANK YOU SO MUCH, I love the photos, I will use several of them.”

So, it'll be “written, researched, and cover photos by” Motormouth. Woo-HOO! And, if I make my deadline of early November, it'll be available for you (yes, you) to purchase for all of your holiday gift-giving needs.

Monstro's got fewer than 10 items left to read/view for his comps. I'm balancing out all his scholastic reading by reading, well, in my family we like to call it beach trash. Two of the books I just bought were of this ilk.

The first, Butterfly, I read while I was in college. I remembered it fondly, so I chose it as my “free” option (buy two, get one free at Cherry Picked Books). Read it over one evening and the next morning. Just as trashy as I remembered, and trés 80s — the main bad guy is a hypocritical televangelist. Oh, and there's a fantasy bordello that caters to straight women. Good stuff.

The second, Elegance, was not so much beach trash as chick-lit, a genre I haven't plumbed because most of the books in its ilk are so gawd-awful. This one started with an interesting premise — unfulfilled newlywed adopts a secondhand tome on elegance as her Bible — and I bought it because the secondhand book in the book I bought (confusing, sorry) actually exists in real life. But halfway through the book, with no warning, the main character casts Elegance aside for no reason. The story unraveled at that point (ok, maybe a little before that point), so I just read each chapter as its own short story. Finished it the same night I started it.

Before I went to bed I cracked the Campbell Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake and have learned more about FW in four pages than I did from 150 pages of the source material. I'm thinking it was a good investment.

And now? I need to finish reading my workbook chapter for tonight's Bible study!

I took my paycheck to my local used-book store and bought the following:

Elegance

Butterfly (subtitle: Every Woman's Ultimate Fantasy)

and A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson.

Really, people. I think I need help.

Ten-Four, little buddy!!!