Book
Infinite Summer
Before leaving for a year abroad in South Korea, I used a razor blade to cut my copy of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest into four sections: three sections of text and then end notes. I made make-shift covers for these new volumes using cardboard Fed Ex envelopes. This made it much easier to read while laying in bed or for carrying around for a day on the town. I highly recommend a similar method. While living overseas the book became my closest English speaking companion over several months. If you haven't yet read this book perhaps it is time. Thankfully the good people over at Infinite Summer have set up a support group to help you do so. They've created an online book club reading the book at the moderate pace of 75 pages per week. The summer of 2009, which is already proving to be full of sun and other pleasures, can only be enhanced by the addition of your first reading of IJ. It will make you laugh, cry and live in mortal fear of becoming a paralyzed, voiceless extra on the hit sitcom Cheers. -Ben Bush

Music
Sonic Youth - The Eternal
You know when you get 5 choices in those little Facebook best of quizzes (well maybe you don’t, maybe you are too busy listening to music, or playing it, or looking at art, or making it - like a couple known as Thurston and Kim). Anyway I did two of those things, one for best band, and one for best guitarist, and I feel guilty now that neither Thurston Moore nor Sonic Youth made it in those top fives...5 huh?  Pretty though. John Fahey made the guitarists bunch, and hell his art's on the cover of Sonic Youth's new album, “The Eternal”, which is what they are, and maybe why I forget.  Brilliant, brilliant, stuff. -Casey McKinney

Music
XBXRX: Un Usurper
Like all non-idiots (and please hold the personal heckling till the end here), I love free albums, and like those lucky enough to have experienced the Bay Area ball of fury known as XBXRX live, I too verily heart this band. So when I got an email saying go to the band's site (http://www.xbxrx.com/) and download a free copy of their new album, all I could say was how high do you want me to jump? Rather, neurotransmitters were firing hypertime - my head snap, crackle and popping like a crack O.D., was almost woofing like my dog seeing a horse on TV! and I thought damn, this internet connection better be good, because I gotta have this LP fast - fast as XBXRX can hammer out a tune if possible. XBXRX defines hardcore now (just ask Ian MacKAye), has been for a few years, and spawns many new surprises with Un Usurper. - PS: donate if you can (an option when dowloading). If anything, download then pay to see them live. -Casey McKinney