Tidings of comfort and joy

This year, I came to the no-brainer revelation that the inevitable "What do you want for Christmas?" doesn't have to be answered complicatedly, nor bashful and ostensibly hesitant: "Um, yeah, well, I can always use..." Thanks to that thing called email, I got a head start by simply copy-and-pasting my Save for Later purchase items from Amazon, then hiring the Mom as my familial shopping-ideas agent. In addition to the usual yuletide necessities (shoes, socks, cashews, wine), my procurement of the true meaning of the Season (i.e. material goods) occurred without any painful awkwardness. Let's just say, I'm pretty stoked:

-The (new, unexpurgated) Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1
-An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry (bilingual), ed. Elizabeth Bishop
-Planisphere: New Poems, by John Ashbery
-Mean Free Path, by Ben Lerner
-The Alphabet, by Ron Silliman
-Brecht and Method, by Frederic Jameson
-Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never- Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems, by David Rakoff
-Language and Mind, by Noam Chomsky

Wish list/ Name drop

While it's common for bloggers to share what books, films, articles of clothing, means of transportation, etc. they have consumed, utilized, or mail-ordered, I'm caught between want and wealth, having not yet achieved my school-season cushion capital. So I share with you a list of to-acquire items, to remind myself that while I haven't read half the titles on my procreant shelves, and while it is nice to eat every now and then, my consumerist lust for MORE perdures:

(titles by no means rarified or novel)

Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work by Edwidge Danticat

The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle Over American History by Jill Lepore

The Coming Insurrection (Semiotext[e]/ Intervention) by The Invisible Committee

Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never- Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems by David Rakoff

Half Empty by David Rakoff (the first chapter did it for me)

Political Writings 1953-1993 by Maurice Blanchot

In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan by Seth G. Jones

Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future by Robert B. Reich

This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff

James Baldwin: Collected Essays (Library of America) by James Baldwin

Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook ed. by Joshua Marie Wilkinson

Saxophone Colossus: A Portrait of Sonny Rollins by Bob Blumenthal

Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 by Simon Reynolds

Le Style Apollinaire: The Writing of Guillaume Apollinaire by Louis Zukofsky

Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word ed. by Charles Bernstein

The Alphabet by Ron Silliman