The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left Handed Poems
An Unusual Book I Am Reading And Also For Sarah Parker's "Calling All Bookworms" Challenge
Introduction
On my walks where I live, I pass a house that has a book exchange cabinet (and a cat), which I kept meaning to drop some books into. I finally did and saw a slim volume that looked very interesting, which is the subject of this review.
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
This book by the Canadian Michael Ondaatje draws on contemporary accounts, period photographs, dime novels, and his prodigious fund of empathy and imagination, only a hundred pages but like nothing I have read before.
Its form is almost like a scrapbook, part diary. part poetry, part prose but it describes itself as a novel. Here are some pages from the book:
It is an interesting read, violent and sexual, and the pages veer between being full of text to being empty of text. The nearest equivalent I can think of is "taRaNtula" by Bob Dylan but the two books are totally different.
It is only 105 pages so I will be finished before the weekend but I will investigate the author further.
Conclusion
Can I recommend this book? I am glad that I have found it but others may find it not exactly their cup of coffee
It won't be going back to the book exchange cabinet that it came from though.
This is also for Sarah Parker's "Calling All Bookworms" Challenge which you can read about here:
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Comments (7)
The results are in! https://todaysurvey.today/writers/the-winners-of-the-bookworms-unofficial-challenge%3C/span%3E%3C/span%3E%3C/span%3E%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E%3C/div%3E%3C/div%3E%3C/div%3E%3Cstyle data-emotion-css="w4qknv-Replies">.css-w4qknv-Replies{display:grid;gap:1.5rem;}
Good job Mike. I was unaware of the challenge… sounds interesting. I do love visiting Street Libraries 💖.
It sounds like an interesting book, even if it's not "everyone's cup of tea". You should do an updated review once you have finished it and investigated the author further, for those of us curious readers who would like to know more about it as well. Thanks for sharing this with us!
Billy the Kid would be kind of fascinating to find out why he did the things he did really. Was his life always to be the way it turned out.
Don’t forget to post it in the comments on the challenge. 😉😊
Lovely! 😊
Oh wow, that book exchange cabinet seems awesome! Aren't people worried that someone might just steal all those books?