Some things in life don’t happen often enough. Discovering a favorite food, falling in love, and reading a book that gives as much as it takes from you. First Person, Last Straw is one of those books. Tom Waters is the last of a dying breed of essayists. He’s a humorist with one hand planted firmly on a whiskey bottle and the other lighting a cigarette. His headspace is simple: bitching about whatever is irritating him that day. While not an original premise, this complaining works because Waters makes you feel like you’re reading this type of exercise with fresh eyes. In the first section of the collection, ‘the rants’, we get his take on smoking, work, movies, video games and several other tawdry subjects. For all his jokes and genuine hilarity, we’re also given the opportunity to look at a man who’s not too proud to bare his soul for our enjoyment. In the second section, the author encloses interviews he’s conducted with porn stars, comic artists, magazine editors and musicians. Adding to this are reviews of local bars and concerts, each painting a vivid picture of some local experiences. The third and final section contains poetry along with a blog containing scandalous exploits in a few month’s time. His duality comes out in spades comparing the blog with the poetry; where one is hard living and reckless, the other is somber and more reflective. The poetry has some genuine angst to it, but it also conveys the gentle touch of someone who loves what he’s capable of emotionally. Waters paints a picture of an intelligent man with many gifts. The laughs come fast and furious, but he settles down at the absolute perfect moment and gives us something to think about, remember from childhood, or that just lets us in on how he works.

Candace Bushnell, author of Sex and the City, is all grown up, and so are her characters. At least, that is what she would have us believe. In her new novel, Lipstick Jungle, three Manhattanites are in their late forties and near the top of their game, working in glamorous fields and lunching in fantastically expensive restaurants. The problem is that reading about ladies lunching on sparkling water and salmon isn’t nearly as fun as watching a group of sexual dynamos drink cosmos at the hottest club, and Bushnell seems unable to discern the difference.

Think of all the people you know who read poetry on a regular basis. Now cut that number in half (to be generous) and you can begin to imagine the American audience for poetry in translation. And that’s a damn shame. This first American edition of work by major contemporary Korean poet Kim Kwang-Kyu not only delivers readers to themselves, but illuminates thought patterns and points of view from another culture. Anyone out there still think we can get by without understanding other cultures? For the past thirty years, Kwang-Kyu has revealed truths about Korean society that few poets, anywhere, would be bold and skilled enough to speak about. In The Depths of a Clam he maintains both hope and good humor while plumbing the depths of an over-industrialized society driven by politically corrupt forces. Anyone out there unable to relate? The hope and humor remain because Kwang-Kyu writes from an Everyman perspective; never hovering over the fray, but writing from the depths of his understanding of how the politics of Korea affect the people of Korea. Or is it the people of America?