Post Office

You may not believe it, but with a good portion of the authors I've backlogged, I have this bizarre and incredibly unlikely idea that I'll read every book they've written. You'd think that if I actually wanted to make this happen that I'd focus on finishing authors off before moving on to someone new, yet here I am with a guy completely new to the backlog- Charles Bukowski. Bukowski's been called the 'laureate of American lowlife' and I can't disagree. This semi-autobiographical novel takes a hard look at Bukowski's hard living, working in a post office in the '50s and '60s before he quit to become a writer. It boggles my mind that both the main character ('Chinaski') and the actual author became famous in the first place as a poet, because Bukowski is anything but poetic writing about his hungover shifts and myriad divorces. It is pretty fun however to read about how nonchalantly he responds to events that would make others stop in their tracks and reevaluate their lives. Bukowski's only got five other books, so it shouldn't be too hard to get through them at some point, but I should probably return to some old friends and make progress with previously logged authors first. Onward!