Stuffed Animal Saturday [23]

Stuffed Animal Saturday is a meme that we post here at We Live and Breathe Books to showcase the book we're currently reading with one of our favorite stuffed animals and discuss our stuffed animal's opinion (well, it's really our opinion, but that's besides the point). We hope you enjoy our quirky feature as much as we enjoy writing it!

This Saturday, Olaf and I are reading Song of the Shank by Rachel Jeffery Renard Allen.

So far: Olaf loves music and history. Jeffery Renard Allen's novel is about a blind black musician in the Reconstruction era. Perfect. While Olaf has no ears, he seems to understand what I'm reading him, and he seems to like it so far.

Sneak peek: While Olaf and I fought on the importance of parenthesis and if poetic prose should just be prose or poetry, a beautiful set of lines drifted up from the novel like pitched snow.

"But Tom, planted on his bench, fingers skipping like grasshoppers across the keys, doesn't seem to notice her standing there right next to him . . . he throws his head back and takes a deep draft, throat working, until the glass is empty . . . he takes more time with the second glass, drinking and blowing melodies into the liquid at the same time. Drains the third -- see, you should have brought the bottle, or made a fuss -- then bites the rim in place between his teeth, the glass attached to his face like a transparent beak, both hands free to roam over the keyboard. Tom drinking milk, making an event of it." (Allen, 9)

I just think that was damn clever, and Olaf agrees. So far, there's been a lot of circular poetry about the movement and behavior of characters intersected every so often with just enough of real life to keep the novel alive. Can't wait to review this!

- Marlon

Are you and your stuffed animal reading anything interesting? 

Let us know in your own Stuffed Animal Saturday!