I must begin, and probably just end it, and say that I have a weakness for all things Patti Smith. This book is a logical process in the memoirs she has written before, it's still her, with all her friends, present and not, (mostly men, I couldn't help noticing) and some dreams, or hallucinations. Also her always enlightening and beautiful comments on literature, art and music.But through it all her voice is strong and clear, just as you can imagine her always. Maybe the second added epilogue wa...

Just Kids is a romantic, bohemian coming of age memoir par excellence; I'm only slightly ashamed to say I moved to New York because of it. The follow-up M Train is not inspiring in the same way but still an interesting reflection of her peripatetic life as a respected middle aged artist exploring different mediums and interests.Year of the Monkey, on the other hand, is something much darker, and unintentionally so - a deep dive into the mindset of a rich, famous artist as they ward off the outsi...

It's funny. The first time I read this book, a year or so ago, I didn't vibe at all with it. Just Kids and M Train both blew me away. This...not so much. I think I was expecting something similar to the prior books; I was taking everything too literally. Patti Smith doesn't profess to have written a memoir - rather this is literature. When you read it as such...this book can blow your socks off. It is rich, rich, rich, in symbolism and imagery that makes you stop and wonder. Smith is a poet afte...

Patti Smith is a poet warrior who's maybe reaching her peak as the country reaches a low point. This book is hypnotic and , as the title warns you, dream like. Long sections are hallucinatory, inspired, and it's impossible to tell what's real and what's not real but still truthful. This is a book about loss--Sam Shepherd to ALS, Sandy Pearlman to a cerebral hemorrhage, America to its President. Smith lives in a dreamy world of poetry and opera. Spending a few hours dreaming with her is a privile...

This is a year in the life of Patti Smith and it’s wrapped up like a dream. We start out and she is on the California coast at the Dream Inn. Her life friend Sam, I'm not sure if they’re married or not, is dying. She wraps her life up with this ‘life is but a dream’ imagery. I love her prose and how she entangles all these events together. She is moving about the country. She goes to San Francisco and Kentucky and New York and ends up in Virginia Beach. She is a rambler.This is 2016, the year of...

Reading this was like being apart someone's dream with insight into their reflections and thoughts while with the feeling of suspension in time that dreams often evoke. Patti Smith writes about the year 2016, which is the Chinese Year of the Monkey. She spends time hitchhiking and relating her free spirited journey to various places in America while subsequently reminiscing on life, loss, aging, and politics. The dreamlike quality lasts throughout, and it is hard to know what is real and what is...

I liked this, but nowhere near as much as I loved two other books by Patti Smith: the moving elegy to photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, Just Kids; and M Train, which was part travelogue, part tribute to Patti’s deceased husband, musician Fred “Sonic” Smith.This book, like those, consisted of loosely connected, hallucinogenic sketches. It had a mournful and dreamy tone, like a sad LSD inspired prose poem. This book was more meandering than the other two books I mentioned above.Patti riffs on t...

Audiobook… read by Patti Smith ….4 hours and 31 minutes Interesting timing —Patti Smith wrote this book at age 69…..contemplating turning 70 - I turned 69 today. I’m contemplating many things myself about aging - our friendships - the world. [and…. Thank you ahead of time to anyone who wishes me a happy birthday as I certainly wish all of your birthdays to be happy and healthy as well]….. but after posting this pint-size book report — I am busy all day HAVING FUN….( God forbid, right?/!)I’ll r...

There are books I love not just for what they are in themselves, but for the quality of the ideas they stimulate within me, their lingering effect. The Year of the Monkey is such a book. In a year ruled by a trickster, in a year of monkey wrenches and monkey-shines, political dire straits (2016 is the Year of the Monkey)--all a woman can do is respond to what the universe kicks up, open to the implications of the random, following where they lead. Smith is 69, going to be seventy, when she takes...

3.5 Stars!In some ways this is a book about absolutely nothing at all. I can see why someone could love or hate this. Personally I really enjoyed the whimsical, easy-going feel to it, with a hearty sprinkling of darkness to finish, which Smith seems to do so well. There are just so many random scenes and moments in here that it starts to take on a semi-cinematic feel. Like a quirky road movie with a bit of David Lynch about it. One of the strangest scenes has to be when she hitches a lift with t...

”Marcus Aurelius asks us to note the passing of time with open eyes. Ten thousand years or ten thousand days, nothing can stop time, or change the fact that I would be turning seventy in the Year of the Monkey. Seventy. Merely a number but one indicating the passing of a significant percentage of the allotted sand in an egg timer, with oneself the darn egg. The grains pour and I find myself missing the dead more than usual. I notice that I cry more when watching television, triggered by roman

Patti Smith is nothing if not a wordsmith. I would love to spend a day in her head, because her brain is a fascinating one. Year of the Monkey is kind of a memoir of Patti living a kind of vagabond existence for one year of her life (2016 I believe), but it also veers into an area where reality and fiction are blurred. It becomes quite odd at times, and I can't say I loved all of it. But for the most part I was in such a quiet little zone reading this, I felt really detached from reality like I

Surrealism in words. Free flowing thoughts, a fever dream, all can be used when experiencing this latest voyage through Smith's thoughts. An experience it is, interpretations, sometimes in dreams, sometimes in reality, non linear, but her words, descriptions are poetic. Starting with an old friend who is in the hospital dying, what he meant to her, taking her back to the past, comparisons with all she sees. Her last year before turning seventy in the year of the monkey. Her husband gone twenty y...

[6/10]As with most Patti Smith books, I think I'll enjoy this one the more time I ponder it and when I inevitably read it again. It's very dreamy and wandering, about a year in her life where she was a sort of vagabond. So the prose meanders as well and it's hard to find your footing. Nevertheless, as I always say, I love Smith's writing style and will read whatever she puts out. And I'll be sure to revisit this one again in the future.

“A mortal folly comes over the world”—Antonin Artaud“Anything is possible, he said. After all, it’s the Year of the Monkey.”Year of the Monkey is the third memoir from punk rocker and National Book Award winner (Just Kids) Patti Smith, and it is making a lot of best-of-the-year lists. It’s short, a smallish book, filled with Smith’s signature Polaroids as she documents a year when she turned seventy, 2016, the Year of the Monkey, which is as you may recall is the same year Trump was elected.Ther...

"Nothing is ever solved. Solving is an illusion. There are moments of spontaneous brightness, when the mind appears emancipated, but that is mere epiphany." Since I've loved Patti Smith for as long as I can remember, it was clear that I would pick this new memoir up on release day, even though her other recent one, M Train , was a bitter disappointment—I liked this better than that last attempt, but only marginally so, not enough to warrant a full additional star.Everything that worked in

Dreamlike and hallucinogenic, full of memory and imagination, meditative and calming. I marveled at how present Patti is in the observations she relates.

I love Patti Smith. I got to see her talk on a book tour of her last book M Train. It was great, part lecture, part reading, and part concert of her singing some great music. Ha, that's lots of parts. She is a must read for me without even reading the book description. So naturally, I bugged my library for the audio version. If you are going to immerse yourself in a Patti Smith book, the only way to do it is via the audio. I do think she is one of the better narrators out there.Year of the Monke...

My love and admiration for the writing of Patti Smith were born when I read the wonderful Just Kids for the first time back in 2015. I wasn’t, and still am not a fan of her music, even though I’ve always loved her song Because the Night (which was actually written by Bruce Springsteen). What I’m trying to say is that this isn’t, by any means, a biased review. I’m a complete fan, yes, but of her honest and poetic memoirs and the way she beautifully mixes her love and dedication for different kind...

Patti Smith's latest memoir recounts the happenings of her life in 2016, which, somewhat unsurprisingly, was the year of the monkey (猴年) in the Chinese zodiac. The reader follows Smith as she hitchhikes around the U.S. while grappling with the death and illness of two close friends.I loved the first half of this - it felt reminiscent of some of Joan Didion's writing at times, dreamy passages about California and life in "the in-between". It lost steam a little for me in the second half, but stil...