Greg has
408 books
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| # | cover | title | author | isbn | isbn13 | asin | num pages | avg rating | num ratings | date pub | date pub (ed.) | rating | my rating | review | notes | recommender | comments | votes | read count | date started | date read |
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date purchased | owned | purchase location | condition | format | ||
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| 0316034010
| 9780316034012
| 3.30
| 4,656
| Jan 18, 2010
| Jan 18, 2010
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Joshua Ferris' The Unnamed isn't exactly a cheery book. It's practically a polar opposite from Ferris' first novel, a literary version of the movie Of...more
Joshua Ferris' The Unnamed isn't exactly a cheery book. It's practically a polar opposite from Ferris' first novel, a literary version of the movie Office Space titled Then We Came To The End — a National Book Award finalist that had readers rolling. The Unnamed, however, will have no one rolling in the aisles. Essentially, the novel explores the limits of "in sickness and in health" in a marriage. Tim is a successful New York lawyer who has an unexplained, "unnamed" condition whereby his body forces him to stop whatever he's doing and just walk...walk until he gets tired, curls up and falls asleep. Then, he calls his wife Jane to come pick him up at the gas station or side-of-the-road rest stop or beauty salon (in one memorable case) where he's collapsed. The condition goes in and out of remission, and the resulting hope-despair cycle wreaks absolute havoc on Tim and Jane's marriage. Jane turns to the bottle to cope and escape, proving she's just as vulnerable as he is. Their marriage is a perfect example of co-dependence — until conditions spin out of control. The book was solid, but certainly not great, and not as good as Then We Came To The End. Even so, it's clearly the product of an immensely talented writer with a brilliant imagination. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Feb 06, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
| Hardcover
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| 0375831002
| 9780375831003
| 4.35
| 303,074
| Sep 01, 2005
| Mar 14, 2006
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There is no better way to sum up this profound and moving story than to describe its most profound and moving metaphor: During World War II, a Jewish...more
There is no better way to sum up this profound and moving story than to describe its most profound and moving metaphor: During World War II, a Jewish refugee named Max, who is hiding in a German family's basement, tears out pages of Mein Kampf and whitewashes them. He uses these newly clean pages to write a new story about the bond of shared experience between himself and the family's adopted teenage girl, Liesel. He gives his story to Liesel as a gift, thereby deepening their bond and cementing the central message of the novel: Words are powerful. They can be both damning and brilliant. And they have equal gravity to be either massively destructive (like Nazi ideology), or redemptive, enlightening and life-giving (like Max's homemade book). Liesel, who is the book thief of the title, had already had an inkling of this magnetic draw of words — even before she knew how to read. Her first book theft occurred the day she buried her younger brother on the way to their foster home; she stole a guide to grave digging that fell out of one of the gravedigger's pockets. She simply wanted a way to remember not just her dead brother, but how she was feeling at that moment of his burial. After she arrives at her foster home near Munich, her adopted father Hans teaches her to read and she begins to understand more deeply how life-altering words and stories can be. I'd heard so much about this book before finally picking it up, and I'd always been worried about how much I would really connect with a supposedly "young adult" coming-of-age tale about a teenage girl in Nazi Germany. Let's make one thing clear: Whoever decided to label or market this is as a "young adult novel" made a massive miscalculation. If the YA label is your hesitancy as well, please be assured you can discard it out of hand. I'm not sure where the line between young and adult fiction is, but this belongs on the shelf next to the best of any kind of literature. My second hesitation was the Death-as-narrator gimmick — I was worried how well it'd work. But, again: Fears were unfounded. Death's voice in this novel is unlike anything I've ever read. It's poetic and imaginative, but straightforward and serious at the same time. In an interview published at the end of the novel, Zusak reveals that he'd started the novel with Death as the heartless soul-reaper you'd expect. But, he says, the story wasn't working. So he created an omniscient Death who simultaneously sympathizes with and is terrified of humanity. Finally, approximately 99 percent of people who talk about this book do it in such glowing terms that I had that typical too-high expectations hesitancy. I may not have loved this book as much as many, but I did thoroughly enjoy it. It moved me and it made me think, two hallmarks of a great book. Have you read The Book Thief? If so, I'd love to hear your thoughts, but also there's one question in the "for discussion" section at the end on which I'd be interested to hear your take — what is ironic about Liesel's obsession for stealing books? If you haven't read the book, it is highly, highly recommended. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Feb 16, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
| Hardcover
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| 0743455967
| 9780743455961
| 4.23
| 65,324
| 2000
| Jun 25, 2002
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Fun read, mostly for the biographical elements. The advice won't apply to everyone.
| Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Feb 21, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
| Paperback
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| 0393337200
| 9780393337204
| 3.72
| 2,711
| Jan 01, 2009
| Feb 01, 2010
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You've never read anything like this slim volume of eight interconnected short stories about life in modern Pakistan. I can almost guarantee it. Rescu...more
You've never read anything like this slim volume of eight interconnected short stories about life in modern Pakistan. I can almost guarantee it. Rescued from obscurity by its 2009 National Book Award nomination, Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is a blend of portraits of Pakistani people, both rich and poor. The effect is a holistic image of everyday life in a country stuck in an seemingly endless loop of feudalism and class struggle. Mueenuddin, who was born to a Pakistani father and American mother, spent seven years after college at Dartmouth trying to untangle the twisted network of kickbacks, favors, and below-the-level law enforcement at his father's farm in Pakistan. This experience — the basis for these stories — seems to have jaded Muennuddin a bit, as evidenced by a theme-setting Punjabi proverb included at the beginning of the book: "Three things for which we kill — Land, women and gold." The strength of the book, no doubt due to Mueenuddin's dual nationality, is how these stories cross the cultural divide. When a story focuses on the servant class, American readers have no trouble understanding these Pakistanis, their lot in life and their struggle to rise. That's true even if you're revolted by the male-dominated society and poor treatment of women. When these characters do bad things — like commit adultery, or steal from their bosses — it's still not hard to comprehend why. Sometimes there is no other choice. Sometimes it's a calculated strategy to try to move up. In one story, a young woman, whose previously rich family has fallen on tough times, believes herself to be entitled to wealth and comfort. So she seduces the rich landowner Harouni (who is the common denominator in all the stories), takes him as her lover, and takes advantage of his generosity. However, when he dies, Harouni's scornful family turns her out completely. Now, her poverty is accompanied by even more shame. Similarly, in one heartbreaking story, a woman finally turns her life around by working hard as a servant at the rich landowner's house, only to wind up back on the streets as a heroin-addicted prostitute when Harouni dies. So, the idea seems to be that if you're among the lower class, even if you adapt to the system, your margins still are rather thin. Your entire life and well-being is dependent on the whims and fate of your landowning boss. My favorite passage in the book sums up the dependency of servants on their masters. It is also emblematic of Mueenuddin's beautiful, elegant prose: "Gone, and they the servants would never find another berth like this one, the gravity of the house, the gentleness of the master, the vast damp rooms, the slow lugubrious pace, the order within disorder." Several stories also focus on the upper class. The longest story in the collection, for instance, is about a rich Paris Hilton-like character who spends all her time partying, ordering servants around and living off her parents' wealth. Another story focuses on the son of a rich landowner, who is dating an American girl. These stories are okay, but don't match the pathos and poignancy of the stories about the servants. Mueenuddin's writing and storytelling reach their pinnacle in the last story of the collection, my favorite. An old man, who has worked hard his whole life, finally catches a break when he's hired on as gardener at one of Harouni's farms. Newly wealthy (in relative terms), he hopes to sire a son, so he takes a deal to marry a mentally challenged girl, believing it to be his only chance to carry forth his name. The "simple" girl, though, promptly runs away. When he reports this to the police, he is beaten and accused of killing her. So even when things begin to look up for the poor man, the system beats him back down. It's the sad reality for life in the lower class in Pakistan, and these stories illuminate that brilliantly. This is an important book, and highly, highly recommended! (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Feb 28, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
| Paperback
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| 1416516352
| 9781416516354
| 4.26
| 13,299
| Jul 1999
| Oct 01, 2005
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Good start to the series - definitely made me want to keep reading.
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1
| not set
| Mar 04, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
| Paperback
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| 0670020923
| 9780670020928
| 3.98
| 3,149
| 2009
| Jun 25, 2009
|
Ron Currie Jr. would probably take umbrage with a Bud Light commercial making the rounds these days. In it, scientists spot a meteor heading toward Ea...more
Ron Currie Jr. would probably take umbrage with a Bud Light commercial making the rounds these days. In it, scientists spot a meteor heading toward Earth, realize that death is imminent, and commence partying as if nothing matters anymore. But Currie takes a rather unconventional route toward trying to convince you that, even when you know you're going to die, everything in fact, DOES matter. When our protagonist, Junior Thibodeau, is born, a mysterious voice, which stays with him his entire life, informs him the exact moment the world will end. A comet will crash into the planet on June 15, 2010 at 3:44 pm EST, approximately 36 years from the day he's born. So Junior has to go through life trying to make meaning out of a seemingly purposeless existence, or as he says at a particularly low point of his adulthood, "...life has never been any great f#$%ing shakes in my opinion. In fact, it's always seemed a messy and heartbreaking and overall pointless affair." Will Junior ever change his mind? I kept hoping so, and that's why I couldn't stop reading. Everything Matters! is a novel about discovering the pleasures of life, the importance of love, and capitalizing on opportunities. Look, death is a part of life, Currie would say. We all know we're going to die. Whether we know exactly when doesn't matter. What does is that for life to fulfilling, to matter, we must find our own paths toward life's meaning. So, carpe diem! The story is told though a cadre of shifting narrators — Junior himself, his family and his girlfriend Amy, and the Voices Junior hears, which tell their sections to Junior ("We should tell you at this point," eg.) in a numbered countdown to Comet Day. We see Junior come of age, struggle with alcoholism and heartbreak, and generally try to make meaning of his life. The pleasures of this novel are two-fold: the characters and the writing. The characters: Junior's brother, recovering from a teenage cocaine addiction, which rendered him, um, simple-minded, plays baseball for the Cubs. His mother is an alcoholic and his father a workaholic. And, addition to the fact that he hears the Voices, Junior himself is also the 4th smartest person on the planet, according to the Voices. But he's still a normal, easily recognizable dude, as are all these flawed-but-real characters. Secondly, Currie is a fabulously talented, fun-to-read writer. At one point, writing about Junior and his classmates watching the Challenger explosion, he describes the booster rockets that "...fly wildly away...tracing slow, chunky vapor trails, like illiterate skywriters." I got chills. What an image! But beyond a sentence-by-sentence basis, the inventive structure of the novel — the different narrators, the omniscient Voices counting down section-by-section to doomsday — gives a well-rounded perspective on Junior and the events of the story. The fact that other characters tell their own stories in the first person also lends a bit more realism to the novel, lest you're turned off by the narrative gimmick of the Voices telling us what's happening to Junior. And, finally, the structure works and is necessary because Junior is often so jilted and misanthropic that the multiple narrators bring much-needed reliability and trust to the story. They also provide some essential levity. If we only heard Junior's story, most readers would stop after page 75, depressed and frustrated. The only major problem I had with the book is that just after I understood the point, and was kind of in awe of Currie's writerly prowess and looking forward to a great, profound ending, Currie turns to a sort of silly narrative trick. It made me wonder if Currie's editor didn't request another 50 or so pages to beef up the book a bit. But I don't want to dissuade you from reading this great book. The good far outweighs the bad, and the uplifting message makes it a fine book for anyone who has ever struggled to understand what it all means. (Two other reasons I loved this novel, that I'm putting down here because most readers of this review probably won't care: 1) Currie includes a hilarious inside joke intended solely for sports geeks: Junior's older brother Rodney plays for the Cubs, and in one the sections Rodney narrates, he explains that he has to use a fake name to check into hotels to avoid stalkers. That fake name: Ron Mexico, which is also the fake name Michael Vick used when he checked into hotels. 2) There's a homage to David Foster Wallace's short story collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men — a conversation between Junior's brother Rodney and a therapist in which we only get to read Rodney's side of the conversation. Don't worry, if this post-modern strategy isn't your cup of tea, it's only a few pages and doesn't distract from the main story at all.) (less) | Notes are private!
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1
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| Mar 11, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
| Hardcover
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| 0385337426
| 9780385337427
| 3.82
| 3,917
| 2005
| Mar 28, 2006
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Many people's immediate reaction to Jonathan Tropper — author of last year's critically acclaimed This Is Where I Leave You, one of my favorite books...more
Many people's immediate reaction to Jonathan Tropper — author of last year's critically acclaimed This Is Where I Leave You, one of my favorite books of 2009 — is to pigeonhole him as the dude version of chick lit writers like Sophie Kinsella, Lauren Weisberger and Candace Bushnell. Everything Changes certainly has elements of what could be considered "dude lit" — laughably bad dialogue, silly gratuitous sex scenes, drugs and rock'n'roll. Even the cover art plays into this notion of "for fellas only." But I'd argue that Tropper is so adept at describing the psychology of relationships and love and connecting his readers to his characters that Everything Changes moves well beyond a brainless genre fiction novel to a memorable, affecting literary experience. At least, that was the case for me. I loved Everything Changes. Frankly, I was surprised by how much I liked it, and how it's stayed with me since I finished it several days ago. The story is about 32-year-old Zack King. Ostensibly, his life is great — he lives rent-free with his millionaire buddy in New York City, is engaged to the beautiful, intelligent Hope, and has a well-paying job as a consultant. But then Zack wakes up one morning and pees blood, and then his long-absent father reappears, and then he begins to realize he's in love with his dead best friend's widow, and then he has a career-threatening crisis at work. That's a helluva lot to deal with in one week, and everything begins to, well, change. The idea of the book is that even though Zack's life seems to be moving in the direction any early-30s dude would be happy with, he's really stuck in the neutral middle of just about every facet of his life. He's conflicted about his feelings for his fiance Hope and Tamara, the woman he thinks he really loves; he's a middle man at work, helping match up American companies with overseas manufacturers; and his ridiculous Viagra-popping father's re-emergence, has him torn between anger at his prolonged absence, skepticism about his real motives, and the possibility of forgiveness. And all this is weighing on him at once as he considers the possibility he might have bladder cancer. The resolution is decidedly messy, as everything does, in fact, change. But following Zack through his decisions — both good and poor — and Tropper's acumen for explaining them, make Everything Changes just an out-and-out good time. Both male and female readers will enjoy this book. For females, Tropper provides a pitch-perfect peak behind the proverbial curtain of what the hell goes on in the male mind. For dudes, there are several "ah, yeah!" moments where Tropper describes something you may have thought about but aren't able to articulate. Again, at least that was the case for me. Though Everything Changes isn't quite as good as This Is Where I Leave You, it's still a great read — perhaps a good introduction to Tropper if you haven't read him at all. (less) | Notes are private!
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| not set
| Mar 16, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
| Paperback
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| 1416516433
| 9781416516439
| 4.21
| 11,518
| 2000
| Oct 01, 2005
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Stupid filler novel for what's coming next in this story arc. Conclusion is a conversation. Dullest thriller ever.
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| not set
| Mar 27, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
| Paperback
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| 0375409289
| 9780375409288
| 3.12
| 10,433
| Sep 01, 2009
| Sep 01, 2009
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Like practically everything else in Lorrie Moore's novel, the title A Gate at the Stairs is a metaphor. No matter your station in life, there are alwa...more
Like practically everything else in Lorrie Moore's novel, the title A Gate at the Stairs is a metaphor. No matter your station in life, there are always obstacles. But some "obstacles" -- like race, or past mistakes, or ignorance, or preconceived notions -- are harder to climb over than others. In and of itself, that's a great message, but the plot with which Moore frames this idea is such a tangle of subplots, digressions and varying styles, that this idea almost gets lost amidst the din. In a thinly veiled fictional version of Madison, Wisconsin (Moore teaches at the University of Wisconsin), freshman Tassie Keltjin lands a job as a babysitter for the adopted, mixed-race child of Sarah Brink and her husband Edward. But Sarah and Edward's marriage is rocky, and they have secrets. But Tassie gets a boyfriend who isn't what he seems. But Sarah is a restauranteur. But Tassie's farmer father and Jewish mother are a little kooky. But racism exists, even in a liberal college town. But Tassie's brother is joining the army. But nothing is ever what it seems in a paranoid post-9/11 world. Moore seems to have the literary version of attention deficit disorder. The style and story shifted so often that it was hard for me as a reader to get comfortable. When Sarah has meetings with other parents of mixed-race children, Moore writes these scenes as pages of modifier-less dialogue. But then the next section might be a long description of flowers and nature, practically bursting with over-adorned, metaphor-laden prose. And even when the plot is moving along, Moore will key off a single word or phrase, and spend a several-paragraph digression making jokes or describing further or generally trying to "wow" you with her words. (Here's an example: "Contents may shift during the flight, we had been told. Would that be good or bad? And what about discontents? Would they shift, too? And what if the oxygen deprivation in the cabin caused one to think in idle spirals and desperate verbal coils like this for the rest of one's life?") When I did get comfortable enough to slow down or reread to get some of the jokes (like the one above about "contents shifting during flight"), I did enjoy them. Moore is frequently a clever and witty writer. But more often than not, these seemed like spaghetti-at-the-wall gimmicks. If it stuck with the reader, great. If not, well, Moore had amused herself. Similarly, with the multiple themes Moore tries to tease out of her many subplots, there just seemed to be too many balls in the air. Instead of trying to catch one or two of them to give them the appropriate attention and treatment, Moore actually just drops them all. (less) | Notes are private!
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| not set
| Apr 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
| Hardcover
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| 0307269868
| 9780307269867
| 3.74
| 4,570
| Jan 12, 2010
| Jan 12, 2010
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Don't be surprised if you see Amy Greene's Bloodroot make its way onto several of the literary prize short lists later this year. It's that good; a wo...more
Don't be surprised if you see Amy Greene's Bloodroot make its way onto several of the literary prize short lists later this year. It's that good; a wonderfully engrossing story by a debut novelist who writes with amazing clarity, emotion, authenticity and beauty. Bloodroot is a plant that has the power both to cure or kill; it's the central symbol throughout a novel rich with dichotomy (love and hate, life and death). Bloodroot is also the name of the mountain in dirt-poor East Tennessee where the novel takes place. Much like the Mississippi River in Mark Twain's works, Bloodroot Mountain stands as both the setting for the story and a "thing" with which the novel's characters have a real, tangible relationship. The mountain itself is a character. These tragic characters, all with an inseparable connection to Bloodroot, take turns telling this story about the importance of family heritage and the dangers of fate. Blue-eyed, beautiful Myra Lamb is the central character. She is her family's hope for breaking a century-old curse. But Myra herself seems also to be cursed, and marries an abusive jerk who does everything he can to sever her roots and destroy her sense of self. Her only saving grace is her hope of one day returning home to Bloodroot. "You might leave one day," Myra says, "but your blood will whisper to you." Bursting with symbolism and Biblical allusions, but maintaining a wonderful sense of "country mysticism" and superstition, this novel is about as literary as literary gets. That's not to say the book is difficult — it's actually one of the most brilliant types of literary novels: Even if you don't get all of it, you're still totally engaged in the story and the writing, because the story stands strongly on its own merit and the writing is so fantastic. Taking time to think through and understand the "literary adornments" only adds to the enjoyment of the novel. I'm not in a book club, but if you are, this would be a fantastic novel. It's one that begs to be discussed, and therefore, savored. (less) | Notes are private!
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| Apr 08, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
| Hardcover
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| 4.19
| 135,613
| 2001
| Jan 25, 2005
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Carlos Ruiz Zafon makes an at-first perplexing choice regarding the structure of his novel The Shadow of the Wind. The plot of this mystery novel has...more
Carlos Ruiz Zafon makes an at-first perplexing choice regarding the structure of his novel The Shadow of the Wind. The plot of this mystery novel has two separate strands; the first is the present-day (well, present-day is 1950s Barcelona) story of Daniel Sempere and his quest to track down the author of the first book he's truly loved. The second is the story of what actually happened to that dashing young novelist named Julian Carax about 30 years before. Instead of telling his story as two separate alternating narratives, he tells Daniel's story in the present in first person and the rest of the story in flashback or other non-in-scene devices. So as I traversed the first several hundred pages, I was annoyed — I'm not a fan of the flashback device anyway, and I was dreading another 400 pages of backwards-looking storytelling. What's more, as I was still meeting the characters, it was hard to know what was truly important and what was just background info. For instance, in the first 100 pages, Daniel falls in love with a blind woman named Clara — but then Clara quickly exits the novel. And the reader is left to wonder if she's a significant character for something later on or is she only serving as a sort of cautionary tale of unrequited love? Additionally, one of the first flashbacks tells the story of how Julian's parents met, and the early days of their marriage. Important, or not? I had no idea. What does emerge as the novel progresses, though, is a complex tangle of character relationships and plot twists in both the present and past. But the story is complex in the sense that it's fun to try to do the detective work yourself and make the connections before Zafon makes them clear. It's not complex in the sense that it's at all difficult to understand what's happening. As you learn more about the twists that explain how the characters are connected (and there are some shocking ones!), the novel becomes more and more difficult to put down. Frankly, I struggled through the first couple hundred pages for the reasons mentioned above, as well as the fact that, at first, the prose is a bit clunky and it does take some getting used to. And there are several strange translation decisions (or maybe just funny typos — "the dice [sic] had been cast", for example) and some anachronistic prose ("Young man, you're a bit slow on the uptake, aren't you?" — in 1950s Barcelona?). But by about the midpoint of the novel, the translation hits its stride, and the reader is treated to some wonderfully atmospheric and beautiful writing. In fact, for a novel in translation, for the most part, the narration and story-telling is surprisingly smooth and easy-to-read. So even though this novel violates one of my all-time literary pet peeves — telling story through flashback — (and yeah, like Zafon cares about MY pet peeves!) I will still begrudgingly admit that I thoroughly enjoyed it, because I understand now why Zafon made the choices he did. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Apr 27, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
| Paperback
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| 030759243X
| 9780307592439
| 3.83
| 2,682
| Mar 31, 2010
| Apr 13, 2010
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Right off the bat, let me apologize to my readers for this too-long and rather narrow post, subjectwise — I fully realize that this post and the book...more
Right off the bat, let me apologize to my readers for this too-long and rather narrow post, subjectwise — I fully realize that this post and the book it's describing won't appeal to anyone who hasn't read Infinite Jest or who doesn't care about David Foster Wallace. But I loved reading "Becoming Yourself" and wanted to write about it in some detail in case someone out there is a DFW fan and hasn't come across it yet. And but so, if you ARE as big a fan of David Foster Wallace's writing as I am, then reading this book may be as difficult as it is illuminating. The reason: How do you square the light-hearted, good-natured writer that splashes jokes and humor throughout these pages with the man who suffered from a crushing depression and hung himself 12 years later? It's truly tragic, and while I loved reading this, it made me immensely sad a lot of the time, too. But let me back up for a second: The story behind this book, for those unfamiliar, is that in early 1996 at the height of David Foster Wallace's newfound Infinite Jest-resultant fame (and he was quite the literary rock star!), Rolling Stone sent reporter David Lipsky to follow him around on the last leg of his book tour. The article was never published, but the result instead is this barely edited transcript of their conversations about life, literature (both traditional and avant garde), television and film, dogs, drugs, depression and dozens of other topics over the course of five days. Several themes emerge from the conversations: 1) DFW was hyper self-aware, but also almost painfully shy and self-conscious and always self-deprecating — Almost every important answer DFW gives is couched with a sort of disclaimer that he's aware how what he's saying could be misinterpreted in print. He's constantly asking Lipsky to be nice and portray him positively in the article — which is one of the reasons why Lipsky is terrified to actually write the piece (thankfully for Lipsky, RS canceled the article). One of the best parts of the book is near the end of their time together when Lipsky asks him about his "act" of appearing as a normal person, when everyone knows he's so much smarter than everyone else. This is one of the questions (along with questions about his past drug use) that really rubs DFW the wrong way, because DFW insists that he's been nothing but genuine throughout. He's not posturing or being anyone but himself. It's easy to understand Lipsky's skepticism, because it's amazing to think that someone who was as smart as DFW was really can come off as a guy you'd love to have some beers with — making jokes about being disappointed that his fame hasn't gotten him laid, discussing music and movies, or warning Lipsky about using the bathroom 'cause he "just wreaked a little havoc." 2) DFW was uncomfortable with his meteoric rise to fame, especially after a somewhat pockmarked past, including a stay in suicide-watch ward in the late 1980s — He really had no idea how Infinite Jest would be received. He knew he'd written a good book, because he'd worked so hard on it, and at that level he was satisfied and proud. Finishing that book was his personal justification (even with two other published books under his belt) that he was truly a writer. His reaction to the critical acclaim and massive attention as almost a pop culture icon (every girl wanted to date him, every guy wanted to be him) was only that it would erode his credibility as a serious writer, both in his own mind in the mind of his readers. In fact, his biggest concern was that the fame would affect his writing — that he would be so worried about making his follow-up as impressive and worthy-of-attention as Infinite Jest, that he'd get bogged down in a loop of perfectionism. Here's how he puts it: "I have an enormous ambition to be centered...I mean this stuff, it's really scary...I'm now so scared of having the ambition to be regarded well by other people." 3) DFW was as incredibly smart and incredibly funny in person as he is in his writing — In the introduction, Lipsky describes DFW's voice as a writer as "the best friend you'd ever have, spotting everything, whispering jokes, sweeping you past what was irritating or boring or awful in humane style." I couldn't agree more, and DFW's wit, charm and intelligence is best illustrated with some quotes from the book: — On reading vs. TV (and DFW LOVED TV): "...a book has to teach a reader how to read it. You teach the reader that he's way smarter than he thought was. I think one of the insidious lessons about TV is the meta-lesson that you're dumb." Later, when they're talking about why books are losing ground to other mediums (and remember this was 1996!), DFW argues the reason is that reading requires its consumer to do work, whereas TV doesn't — it's incredibly passive, and Americans are incredibly lazy. — In response to a flight attendant who has announced that "Smoking only is permitted outdoors." DFW: "Permitted only outdoors. It's not the only thing that's permitted outdoors." Lipsky adds: "Irritated as a grammarian and as a smoker." — NPR radio guy prior to interview DFW: "We're gonna record digitially. I hope that's okay." DFW: "So, only yes and no answers?" — On being a writer: "I don't think writers are smarter than other people. I think they may be more compelling in their stupidity, or in their confusion." — "Although of course you end up becoming yourself" — DFW is talking about the influences of your parents, but then, of course, at some point you diverge and forge your own identity. The one thing that bothered me as I read this book (other than the fact that Lipsky seems to be constantly trying to prove how smart he is to DFW, and thus inserting himself quite frequently into the narrative) is something I read in a recent interview. Lipsky said he never talked to DFW again after the time they spent together, and I wondered why. The two have such a great rapport, and admit to each other that they think of each other as friends after the time spent together. So what happened? (less) | Notes are private!
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You won't find too many literary characters more despicable than Michael Beard, the star of Ian McEwan's new novel, Solar. Michael is the prototypical...more
You won't find too many literary characters more despicable than Michael Beard, the star of Ian McEwan's new novel, Solar. Michael is the prototypical dumb smart guy — he's a capable, well-respected physicist, but he can't seem to get his personal life together, and Solar is basically a study of his (deplorable) character. When the novel opens, Michael, a serial philanderer, is trudging amidst the ruins of his failed fifth marriage and happily resting on the laurels of the Nobel Prize he won decades ago. Solar is also a novel of ideas, to use a cliche — McEwan is an incredibly skillful writer, easing us in and out of complex scientific and philosophical notions in a way that enlivens them, keeping the reader engaged. To me, one of the more interesting parts of the novel is a discussion of why more women don't go into physics. To get to the root of this question, we see Michael, as a scientist and therefore staunch objectivist, defending his discipline against what he believes to be silly postmodernists who believe that science is only one of many possible ways of understanding the world — on par with philosophy, sociology and religion. To relate this to climate change, Michael's opponents would say that it's just as legitimate for fundamentalist Christians to be exasperated by those who don't believe in God as it is for scientists to dismiss as idiots people who don't "believe" in climate change. Obviously, most scientists would disagree with the validity of that analogy. Ultimately, though, this novel is about Michael. We travel with him from the Arctic to his London home to the desert of New Mexico, where he tries to develop a new solar energy technology. Ostensibly, his goal is develop a source of clean energy and save the world from climate change, which seems very admirable, but only until you realize that he's only doing it for personal fame and fortune. Throughout the story, you constantly feel bad for the people, his women especially, who are caught in Michael's misogynistic maneuverings. Even so, there are some laugh-out-loud funny parts (during his trip the Arctic, Michael stops to take a pee, and his thing gets frozen to his zipper), especially in the first few chapters as McEwan seems to realize he needs you on his side to continue telling Michael's depraved tale. So I won't render an absolute judgment on this book, because it'll appeal to different folks. If you're turned off by a protagonist who is such a turn-off, you'll hate this book. But if you don't need likable characters to enjoy a novel, this could work. For me, the cynical view of climate change action — that the majority of those working on solutions are either greatly deluded or only doing so for personal gain — was more than a bit irritating, which is too bad, because I enjoyed the writing, the physics, and the discussions about renewable energy. I also had fun rooting for Michael to get his comeuppance. (Also, if you are skeptical of or just cynical about climate change, you'll probably really dig this novel. It'll fit nicely on your shelf next to State of Fear, by Michael Crichton.) (less) | Notes are private!
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| 3.96
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Normally if you read several books by the same author, and the main character in each of those books is pretty much the same guy, you'd be annoyed and...more
Normally if you read several books by the same author, and the main character in each of those books is pretty much the same guy, you'd be annoyed and probably scream "Unoriginal! Repetitive!" But Jonathan Tropper manages to pull this off. How? His prose reads like a 330 pages of stand-up comedy, so you don't really mind that he doesn't spend a whole lot of time on character development. But beyond his wonderful prose, as I've mentioned before, I love reading Tropper because his stories have heart, and are just so, for lack of a better word, true. If you've read Tropper at all, you'll easily recognize Doug Parker, our protagonist for How To Talk To A Widower, as Zack from Everything Changes and Judd from This Is Where I Leave You. He's a wise-cracking, self-deprecating dude's dude with a slightly off-kilter family and a complicated relationship with women. In this novel, the angle is that Doug's wife Hailey, 11 years his senior, has died in a plane crash (Doug is 29). And so he's spent the last year grieving — which has limited his activity to drinking heavily, feeling sorry for himself, occasionally yelling at people who express sympathy, and writing a monthly column for a magazine about how to talk to a widower. But Doug's twin sister Claire, who has her own relationship dilemmas, convinces him that he needs to get back into the dating pool. Meanwhile, he's also charged with the care of his wife's 16-year-old son from a previous marriage, who is angry at the world, as teenagers are. Hilarity ensues. But, again, the fun derived from this novel is directly attributable to the writing. Want some examples? Sure, no problem: "Pity, I've learned, is like a fart. You can tolerate your own, but you simply can't stand anyone else's." Too low-brow? Then this'll really make you wince: "I've never been to an OB/GYN office before, and you can almost see fractal bends in the air from all the estrogen floating around in here." I read the last 200 pages of this novel on a plane in a feverish, barely-looking-up trance. I loved it! So if you're looking for something on the light side that'll make you laugh, think and even get a little emotional, check it out. (less) | Notes are private!
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| Jun 30, 2009
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My favorite of the series so far.
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Better described as a literary work of art than a novel, Let The Great World Spin, is brilliant and profound — and well-deserving of its 2009 National...more
Better described as a literary work of art than a novel, Let The Great World Spin, is brilliant and profound — and well-deserving of its 2009 National Book Award. As life is episodic, so are the interconnected stories of a diverse cast of characters that populate this novel. An Irish Catholic monk. An African-American hooker, and her heroin-addicted daughter. A wealthy socialite named Claire grieving the loss of her son in Vietnam. A Jewish judge. Computer geeks. A guy who photographs graffiti. The novel revolves around the connections — often in unexpected ways — of these characters with the common thread of Philippe Petit's daring tightrope walk between the Twin Towers in August, 1974. Part of the wonder of the novel is the verisimilitude with which McCann renders these characters. Endowed by their creator with beautiful, elegant, but clearly delineated voices, these New Yorkers practically spring off the page. They are so real, themselves so human. And through them, McCann offers a simple road map for being human: Connect. Love. Hope. But the novel isn't just about the interconnectedness of people; it's about connecting with a moment, a memory, an image. As the broke-down hooker Tillie wastes away in jail, she remembers a week spent at an expensive hotel with a trick who only wanted to talk with her, respected her, practically loved her. She relies on that memory to help her navigate the vicious downward spiral of her life. Gloria, a poor black woman, who befriends the grieving mother Claire based on their shared experience of losing children to the Vietnam War, explains this idea as clearly as the English language could render it: "I guess you live inside a moment for years, move with it and feel it grow, and it sends out roots until it touches everything in sight." This novel is also a portrait of New York City. Spanning races and classes, it's a tribute to the city's diversity, richness and history. As McCann tells us through one of his characters, "The city lived in a sort of everyday present....New York kept going forward precisely because it didn't give a good goddamn about what it had left behind." And then later, "(The tightrope walker) had made himself a statue, but a perfect New York one, a temporary one, up in the air, high above the city. A statue that had no regard for the past." For that reason, Petit's walk was a "stroke of genius." And though 9/11 is never mentioned explicitly, it's clearly the undercurrent for and possibly the impetus of this novel. As people connected based on the novelty and shared experience of Petit's walk, so also did they connect on the shared and horrific experience of the terrorist attacks on the most horrific day in American history. McCann, seemingly randomly at the time, includes a photo of "a man high in the air while a plane disappears, it seems, into the edge of the building." The photo's weird trick of perspective didn't mean anything particularly interesting until 27 years after it was taken. Now, looking at it, and contemplating its prescience, you can't help but shudder. This is a novel that I cannot leave; it really affected me. As I've written this, I've gone back and reread several of McCann's elegant passages. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but for McCann, it only takes 95 or so. He conveys images, emotions, memories in words and phrases that are just so precise. For example: "She had the bluest eyes, they looked like small drops of September sky." How many times have you read novelists who totally flub an eye-description analogy? Not McCann — it's perfect, and that's just one of hundreds of examples throughout the novel. I can't recommend it more highly. Please read it. Please. (less) | Notes are private!
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Edward Rutherfurd's New York: The Novel delivers what it promises: A sprawling historical fiction that links generations of characters through signifi...more
Edward Rutherfurd's New York: The Novel delivers what it promises: A sprawling historical fiction that links generations of characters through significant events of the city's rich history. Beginning in the 1600s with the original Dutch settlers, we work our way through the Revolution, the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, the Depression and into contemporary times. The cornerstone characters are the "old money" Master family, who trace their roots back to the original Dutch and English settlers on Manhattan island. Over the centuries, though, the story brings in tangential characters from all walks of life that range from slaves to Italian immigrants who land at Ellis Island to a middle-class Jewish family. But much of the joy of this book is the little-known nuggets of historical fact, and how Rutherfurd relates these episodes to his characters. For instance, did you know that to quell the Panic of 1907, when widespread unscrupulousness in investing and banking practices nearly brought down the entire financial system, President Theordore Roosevelt handed $25 million to JP Morgan and basically said, "Save us"? And he did. These bits of trivia (Wall Street is so-named because it at first literally was a wall that protected Dutch settlers from Indian attacks) are the take-aways from the book because looking back, it's tough to remember which Master character made a narrow escape from the 1863 New York Draft Riots or the name of the Italian immigrant who helped lay bricks for the Empire State Building as it went up during the Depression. But that's okay, because this is an event-driven novel. For the most part, the characters are simply the vessels through which Rutherfurd allows his story of New York to flow. They're there to be representatives of their time and as a way to interface with the historical events. In a novel that spans 400 years, there's not time to give these characters a full emotional range. That said, it's also worth mentioning that Rutherfurd's style can be a bit grating at times. Even during the longer sections that span a few hundred pages and several years with the same characters, Rutherfurd writes in page to page-and-a-half sections, which gives the narrative a bit of a choppy, start-and-stop feeling. James Michener, who invented this historically hefty genre, writes better than Rutherfurd does, in my view. The book winds up telling the stories of Gorham Master, a rich Wall Street banker, and his wife Maggie O'Donnell, a lawyer and descendant of the Masters' 19th century poor servants from Five Points. Though it takes more than 800 pages to get to the one part of New York's story that will really resonate with readers, Rutherfurd does a very commendable job of fitting his characters into a dramatic and harrowing 9/11 narrative. The wait is worth it for this part. Overall, if you're a fan of the Michener-esque long historical novel, you'll probably enjoy this. I'd give it 3.9 out of 5 stars (yes, just slightly below four stars). I learned a lot from this book and, for the most part, enjoyed the three weeks I spent with it. It also was a lot of fun to read this book before, during and after trip to New York — and then visiting Battery Park, Wall Street, Trinity Church, the Empire State Building and other historical landmarks, all which figure prominently in the story. So if you have similar plans, that'll probably bump up your enjoyment of the book as well. (less) | Notes are private!
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In his treatise On Writing, Stephen King says the spark for many of the best novels is when a writer combines two or more disparate ideas/topics/theme...more
In his treatise On Writing, Stephen King says the spark for many of the best novels is when a writer combines two or more disparate ideas/topics/themes and then figures out how they can complement each other in interesting or unexpected ways. Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn is one of the best examples you'll ever find of this theory in action. To explain why, let's try to follow (an absurdly abbreviated version of) what must've been Lethem's thought process before actually sitting down to write: "What I want to write is a literary detective novel that pays tribute to the masters like Raymond Chandler. I like that. But I need something more. What if one of the characters has Tourette's Syndrome? Yeah, that'll add intrigue. But he can't be a punchline, he has to be sympathetic. And his relationship with language is how I'll make him sympathetic. Boom, novel." Then, he sat down to write, and the book he produced (in 1999) won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, turned out to be one of the most-read novels of the aughts, and is often cited as a favorite novel of all time. The plot is pretty simple: Gangster Frank Minna is murdered, and the four wise guys he's nurtured since orphan-hood (Tourrette's-afflicted Lionel Essrog being one of them) try to find out who killed him and why. Lionel tells us the the story in first person, as he wanders around New York City and then coastal Maine looking for clues and doing his best to manage his disease. In my mind, Motherless Brooklyn succeeds spectacularly for two reasons: 1) The novel is incredibly inventive, and avoids cliche, when cliche would've been easy, and 2) It's very clear how much fun Lethem must've had writing this novel, which makes it fun to read. First, how easy would it have been to make Lionel and his Tourette's a silly source of comic relief? Instead, Lethem uses Lionel's Tourette's in an unexpected way: He uses the disease to show us how intricate and clever language can be. Lionel must use the "wall of langauge" as a way to protect himself from his disease-addled brain's attempts to destroy him. For Lionel, language isn't what sets him apart from what's normal, it's what helps him be normal himself. If he didn't have language, even nonsensical strings of language, as an outlet to oppose his other physical tics, his disease would get the better of him, rendering him useless. This is part of Lethem's trick to make Lionel a sympathetic and incredibly self-aware character, as opposed to a source of cheap laughs. He also has Lionel continuously explain Tourette's to us so that we not only understand it (see below for an amazingly written passage explaining Tourette's), but we also understand how his unconventional thinking is actually helping him solve the mystery. Secondly, if we understand #1, then we can also understand that when Lethem has Lionel let loose with a string of language (Franksbook! forkspook! finksblood, i.e.), the effect is not meant to be comic relief. It's just Lionel being Lionel. But, those Tourette's word explosions (ghostradish! pepperpony! kaiserphone!), which appear frequently, sure had to be helluva lot of fun to write! If Lethem wants to be funny, he'll have his characters tell a joke, use a pun (i.e., soon after Frank's dead: "my mourning brain had decided renaming itself was the evening's assignment"), or toss in a word like "chucklehead" — which cracked me up every time. It wasn't until about two-thirds of the way through the novel when this notion of how much fun the novel had to be to write dawned on me. And that's the moment the novel really clicked for me. Lethem's not showing off or being superfluous, he's having a blast! And therefore, as a reader, you can't help but have a blast also. I read this book as the third in my personal New York trilogy (Let The Great World Spin and New York: The Novel being the other two). And while I'm sad to "leave" New York, I'm thrilled that I finished up with one of its resident poets. I'd always met to read Lethem but never had until now, and can't wait to take on his other stuff. I'd highly, highly recommend this book for anyone who enjoys detective novels, the complexities of language, and just great writing. Have you read Motherless Brooklyn? What'd you think?(less) | Notes are private!
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| 4.25
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| Apr 27, 2004
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Mitch Rapp takes a step back.
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| 3.84
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Made me think, challenge beliefs. Successful novel.
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You might expect a character like Karim Issar, who corrects others' grammar, who doesn't get humor, whose language is sprinkled with techno-financial...more
You might expect a character like Karim Issar, who corrects others' grammar, who doesn't get humor, whose language is sprinkled with techno-financial business geek speak, and who lays out his decision-making processes in painstaking, ultra-logical detail, to not be the most likable fellow you've ever read. But you'd be wrong — Karim is actually a wonderfully sympathetic, interesting character. And his story is equally sympathetic, interesting, and fun. Karim's story begins in the fall of 1999 with a cross-Atlantic flight, during which he makes up math problems to amuse himself. Karim is coming to American to work on the Y2K problem in the New York office of the investment company he'd worked for in Doha, Qatar. After a co-worker steals credit for a profitable program he develops, he's more cautious with his next endeavor: The Kapitoil program, which accurately predicts oil futures and makes his struggling company a crapload of cash. Meanwhile, Karim also explores the nightlife of New York, heading out to clubs, museums and parties with his clownish co-workers. Through an often painful (but fun to read) trial-and-error process, he slowly learns American etiquette on everything from one-night stands to interoffice crushes. Soon, circumstances force Karim into a tough choice regarding Kapitoil, and his traditional Qatari values collide with the possibility to make a ton of money for himself — but at a pretty hefty moral cost. It's a straightforward narrative, but Karim's voice and Wayne's writing are anything but. Karim's voice, as Wayne explains in the podcast above, is the result of Wayne's desire to write a novel with an idiosyncratic voice guiding the narrative as well as his want to use language to be disruptive— but in a good way, because Karim's false starts with language and violations of American etiquette make you cringe and laugh at the same time. And as Karim begins learning the ways of New York, the novel begins to move from a laugh-at-Karim, to now laughing-with-Karim dynamic. He slowly begins to "get it" and as his moral dilemma arrives, you're confident he's now equipped with the tools to make the right decision. But will he? If you're a fan hip, urban fiction, you'll dig this. If you enjoyed the way Jonathan Safran Foer wrote his character Alex in Everything is Illuminated — stilted, just-a-bit-off-English — you'll really enjoy Karim specifically but also the novel on the whole. It's a quick read and definitely one worth checking out, especially if you're someone (like me) who enjoys "getting in on the ground floor" of talented new novelists, like Mr. Wayne. But this isn't just some obscure novel from a writer you'll never hear from again — Teddy Wayne writes frequently for the New York Times (and many other pubs) and Kapitoil was blurbed by Jonathan Franzen and given a coveted "starred review" by both Publisher's Weekly and Booklist. (less) | Notes are private!
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Will Jacob de Zoet ever get the girl? To answer that, David Mitchell leads us through the day-to-day routine of a little-known 18th century Dutch trad...more
Will Jacob de Zoet ever get the girl? To answer that, David Mitchell leads us through the day-to-day routine of a little-known 18th century Dutch trading post, a bizarre Japanese cult where women are "engifted" and their "gifts" confiscated, and a naval battle with huge geopolitical implications. Still, whether or not the nice guy won't finish last remains the central question in David Mitchell's fascinating new novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Mitchell's story is, in a word, vivid. As The Millions pointed out, the novel has a cinematic feel. The sentences sparkle and the plot, told in the present tense, continuously veers off unexpectedly. It's not hard to follow (keep a list of characters, like this helpful fellow did, though; there are many), but sometimes it is hard to stay engaged. Here's why: Mitchell constantly interrupts himself to provide detail. He stuffs bits of narration into dialogue mid-sentence (see below for an example) and describes in several one-line sentences in a row that read at times like poetry (see below for an example of this, too). These tricks in themselves aren't annoying, but you never quite get used to them, and they tend to distract from the flow of the story. And when you're telling a story about something as abstruse as Dutch-Japanese-British relations in 1799 at an obscure trading post, doing whatever you can to keep your reader with you seems to be the tack to take. Basically what that all means is that Mitchell's snappy, crackling writing was both a blessing and a curse; both a hindrance to me totally investing myself in the story, but also the way by which I was able to find my way in and derive the enjoyment I did. That said, there are parts — a daring rescue attempt, the aforementioned naval battle — that speed along with thriller-like speed. But the scene-setting — and there's quite a bit to recreate the 18th-19th century world as vividly as Mitchell is able to — and jumps in story (Mitchell basically re-starts the story at the beginning of each of the three "acts" of the novel) cause a few lags in reading enjoyment, at least for me. But back to Mr. de Zoet, the mild-mannered, honest-to-a-fault young clerk who is employed by the Dutch East India Company. Charged with cleaning up the company's ledgers and clamping down on the blatant profiteering and corruption, Jacob has quite a challenge on his hands, especially given that his superiors are as corrupt as anyone. A chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, a Japanese midwife who has the rare opportunity to study under the Dutch Dr. Marinus on Dejima — the Dutch East India's trading post off the coast of Nagasaki — causes Jacob to all but forget his betrothed back home in the Netherlands. Jacob is fascinated with Miss Aibagawa, and is heartbroken when she is essentially kidnapped and forced to take up residence at a bizarre nunnery atop a mountain. Will the two ever be reunited? And if so, will she requite his love? If not, will Jacob ever get back home? This was my first foray into Mitchell, and I am in awe. Thousand Autumns isn't my favorite book of the year by any stretch, but it's easy to see the genius behind it. The imagination and research that must've been required to tell this tale is simply stunning. There's always two ways to evaluate a book — the way that's objective as possible, putting yourself in the shoes of other readers, and the "it was/wasn't my cup 'o' tea" way. Objectively, it's a stunning book, but one I wish I would've liked more than I did. Example of in-dialogue narration: "So," Vorstenbasch settles himself, "after three days ashore, how are you finding life on the company's farthest-flung outposts?" "More salubrious"—Jacob's chair creaks—"than a posting on Halmahera, sir." Example of several one-line sentences in a row that read like poetry: Steam rises from a bowl of water; light is sliced on the bright razor. On the floor, a toucan pecks beans from a pewter saucer. Plums are piled in a terra-cotta dish, blue-dusted indigo.(less) | Notes are private!
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This here is one of them there smart folk books. And as such, in order to enjoy it, you have to really enjoy weeding your way through smart folk stuff...more
This here is one of them there smart folk books. And as such, in order to enjoy it, you have to really enjoy weeding your way through smart folk stuff, like mazes of logical proofs, esoteric Jewish mysticism, faith vs. reason debates, and metaphysical philosophy. Believe it or not, though, 36 Arguments for the Existence of Godactually is a work of fiction with characters and a plot and the whole nine yards. To be clear, it's not "a novel," it's "a work of fiction." And you have to believe that someone as intelligent as Guggenheim fellow and Harvard faculty member Rebecca Newberger Goldstein would choose her words carefully when deciding how to describe her book on its cover. My guess is that she is hoping to subtly signal to her reader not to expect a novel, as one would normally conceive it. Instead, because the characters on which Goldstein's builds her work of fiction are almost too easily recognizable, too typical, it's pretty clear they are just vessels. The real point of this work of fiction isn't the fiction, it's the work required to understand the ideas. That's not inherently a bad thing, just something to be aware of. Cass Seltzer is our protagonist — a middle aged college professor, and best-selling author of an atheist tome titled The Varieties of Religious Illusion. Despite his fame (notoriety?) as an atheist, Cass's charisma and humbleness have earned him the label "atheist with a soul." Cass is brilliant, but for all his logical faculties, he can't quite seem to reason out love. His first marriage ended when his wife got sick, and then fell for her doctor. Now he's dating a fellow academic, and he's trying to decide if he loves her. "Romantic infatuation can be form of religious delusion, too," Cass realizes at one point. Cass studied for his doctorate under the eccentric, mercurial Extreme Distinguished Professor of Faith, Literature and Values, Jonas Elijah Klapper. Goldstein takes us through several scenes that flashback to Cass's graduate school days. When Klapper learns that Cass's family came from a relatively famous ultra-Orthodox Hasidic sect, he insists Cass take him to visit. Klapper becomes infatuated. We get our first real signal that he has gone off the deep end when he tells Cass his doctoral dissertation must be on the specific symbolism and or Kabbalistic meaning of traditional Jewish foods — like kugel. Then, there's Azarya, the child genius "imprisoned" in that Hasidic sect. The kid is a math prodigy, proving that there's no largest prime number at the age of 6. Azarya's purpose in the book seems to be to give Goldstein a vehicle for discussing the philosophy and ethics behind "wasted genius." Will Azarya waste away in the insulated religious sect or will he be permitted to leave and enrich the world with his gift? Much of this work of fiction is told as conversation, or, like the first scene of the novel, Cass standing on a bridge in Boston doing an internal review of his current state of affairs, much is also told through characters' contemplations. There is also quite a bit of description of Jewish mysticism and Hasidic ritual, much of which is a real slog, frankly. The novel is capped off by a Harvard debate between Cass and another guy about the proposition "God exists." Who will win? It should be pretty clear by now that this novel isn't exactly beach reading. I'm not going to lie, it's hard work at times to keep up with the arguments and concepts. And so to use a cliche, you get out of it what you put into it. I was a lazy reader on this one and didn't expend the necessary effort to really enjoy it. So I didn't. But you might... Tip on reading the work of fiction, should you decide to: The Appendix contains the 36 Arguments for the existence of God Cass included in the appendix of his book. There are (surely not coincidentally) 36 chapters in Goldstein's book, so I read one argument in the Appendix after each chapter. That seemed to work out nicely, and made them more interesting and manageable. I can't imagine reading all 50 pages of those 36 Arguments after finishing the story. (less) | Notes are private!
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| Aug 18, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
| Hardcover
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| 042921039
| 9780439554930
| 4.35
| 1,794,472
| 1997
| Apr 11, 2003
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Whimsical. I can see why teenage girls like it so much. Wasn't as enthralled as everyone said I'd be.
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| Aug 25, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
| Paperback
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| 0805091289
| 9780805091281
| 3.78
| 952
| 2010
| May 11, 2010
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Isn't it great when a novel surprises you? Despite the fact that Michael Gruber's The Good Son contained three of my literary pet peeves -- story told...more
Isn't it great when a novel surprises you? Despite the fact that Michael Gruber's The Good Son contained three of my literary pet peeves -- story told in flashback, story told in alternating strains of storyline, and dreams and their interpretations playing important roles in the story -- I really enjoyed it. Gruber is known as a writer with incredible range, writing books about forged paintings, lost Shakespeare plays, cop thrillers, and now this: a ripped-from-the-headlines international thriller with an intellectual bent. Indeed, if Gruber's name wasn't splashed across the cover, you might think Vince Flynn, who had suddenly learned how to write well, had been trapped in a room with John LeCarre, with the resulting work edited and polished by Khaled Hosseini (of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns fame). The Good Son contains three strains of story: 1) Theo Laghiri is a special forces soldier back in the US to recuperate after being injured in Afghanistan by friendly fire. 2) His mother Sonia, a bit of a free spirit, is organizing a conference in Lahore, Pakistan to discuss how to bring peace to Central Asia. This is a risky move, to say the least, as she is infamous in the Muslim world for a book she wrote in her younger years in which she chronicled her experience of dressing as a man and going on haj to Mecca. Muslims were not amused, and there is a Rushdie-esque fatwa out on her. 3) National Security Agency up-and-comer Cynthia Lam has translated some intercepted communications between what appear to be Muslim terrorists plotting something big. She follows leads and hunches, and plots to use the situation to advance her own career. And so, as they must, the stories converge at first subtly, and then rapidly, making for a fast-paced, exhilarating second half. But even the back-stories of Sonia's young-womanhood and Theo's childhood in Pakistan that make up good chunks of the front part of the novel are so rich in detail and intrigue, it'd be impossible to tell the real-time story as effectively without them. Sometimes, with back-story, you wonder how much is relevant or even necessary. Not here -- it all is. Other chunks of the novel are conversations between characters (Sonia vs. Muslim jihadists) in argument regarding the terrorist rationale and the debunking of such. Part of this is Sonia (as a trained Jungian psychologist) interpreting dreams. These dreams and their well-written and logical interpretations provide a fascinating insight into the Muslim religion; one that makes you appreciate the purity and beauty of a religion that has been polluted by radical fundamentalism. Additionally, Gruber's handle on Pakistani and Afghan culture is brilliant, especially in showing the profound differences between those and American culture and thought. Another really interesting part of the book emerges in the first 100 or so pages, as Theo tries to re-acclimate himself into day-to-day American life. Three different times, he ruminates about the ignorance of Americans about what is happening on the other side of the world; about how angry it makes him and other soldiers that we deign to "support our troops" but have no idea what the wars are really like. Theo says, "...when you come back, you kind of secretly want your fellow citizens to get blown up a little; we don't admit it, but it's true. How the f#@k can they be so -- I don't know, normal, like in a dream of shopping and careers and ordinary daily bullsh!t, while what's going on over there is going on?" And then later: "...maybe obsessing about money and sex and celebrities and celebrity sex and the teams is a sign that the terror has failed to bite, which is great, but if it's no big deal, why the hell are we breaking the army into pieces over it? ...it's another thing that makes me snap and get pissed at my fellow Americans." Overall, I'd rate The Good Son 4 out of 5 stars -- minus a star because at times, you really have to suspend disbelief. Still, this will certainly be a satisfying read for anyone who likes fast-paced thrillers that challenge readers to think deeply...maybe about some preconceptions you've never really spent any time or energy to really consider. (less) | Notes are private!
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| Sep 05, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
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| 0374158460
| 9780374158460
| 3.65
| 74,767
| 2010
| Aug 31, 2010
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The quest for limitless freedom is a common theme in literature — from Jack Kerouac's character in On the Road to George Clooney's connectionless corp...more
The quest for limitless freedom is a common theme in literature — from Jack Kerouac's character in On the Road to George Clooney's connectionless corporate downsizer in Up In The Air (via Walter Kirn's novel). Just about every red-blooded American has fantasized about the attractiveness of no attachments, of total privilege to do whatever is wanted whenever. But, as Jonathan Franzen explains in one of the more profound passages in his fascinating new novel Freedom: "The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should that dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage." And so what we have here is 550 immensely readable pages devoted to the idea of exploring the limits of freedom within the context of oft-damaged and then re-mended relationships between a family and one particular friend. At what point does one person's freedom infringe upon another's? And at that point, is freedom still freedom? Indeed, these questions have fluid, multi-hued answers, especially as time passes and relationships change. But one thing about this book is clear: Many years from now, this novel will no doubt be cited as the prime example of the Franzen oeuvre: stories about families that aren't so much dysfunctional as problem-heavy. And liberal environmentalist Walter Berglund, his wife Patty, and their long-time musician friend Richard Katz, are certainly besought with problems; but these problems are generally a result of their own poor choices, and the resulting secrets. In fact, another question the novel poses is to what degree do families have freedom to keep secrets from each other? That question and the delicious conflict it creates is what makes the meat of the novel — and what makes it un-putdownable. Will these secrets be revealed, and if so, how will the revelation effect the characters' relationships? Franzen is a master at rendering these relationships — the ebb and flow, the who-needs-whom-more dynamic, the power struggles. Walter and Patty's marriage is the cornerstone of the novel, but how they both relate to Richard provides the intrigue. Walter and Patty's children, Jessica and Joey also flit in and out of the novel, often playing key roles in the side-taking and blame game when things go awry. And their stories are interesting in and of themselves — from the moment teenage Joey tests the limits of his own freedom by moving out of his home to his next-door neighbors'. So Freedom is highly recommended. It's a long book, yes, but very readable — Franzen's prose flows effortlessly. He's just a joy to read. (By the way, see below for one of my favorite sentences of all time.) But in order to "limit" this novel to 550 pages, Franzen has to spend vast swaths of pages in summary — the one part of the novel, though minor, that was irritating. Just tell me the story, I thought. I'd happily read another 500 pages of this! Also, isn't it sort of clunky to write an entire novel that plumbs the limits of freedom, and then title it "Freedom"? Again, a minor annoyance. So I'd subtract a half a star from my rating: 4.5 out of 5. This is top-shelf contemporary literature. Enjoy it! Near-perfect sentence: "He'd lost his good looks, or, more precisely, they had shrunk into a small facial oasis in a desert of sunburned bloat."(less) | Notes are private!
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| Sep 15, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
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| 1400068916
| 9781400068913
| 3.55
| 1,057
| Jul 09, 2010
| Jul 13, 2010
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In the acknowledgments at the end of his hilarious new novel The Thieves of Manhattan, Adam Langer doles out "thanks to all the fake memoirists, ficti...more
In the acknowledgments at the end of his hilarious new novel The Thieves of Manhattan, Adam Langer doles out "thanks to all the fake memoirists, fictional poets, literary forgers, and hoaxers who have provided such great inspiration." That's funny because it's true — this novel IS an inspired piece of fiction. It's a skewering of the publishing industry. It's an adventure tale, complete with a treasure hunt. And it's a treasure trove of inside jokes for literary geeks (Philip Roth signs a book to a smarmy literary agent: To Geoffrey, a true human stain...Cigarettes are called "vonneguts"...Trendy glasses are called "franzens".) Ian Minot is a Manhattan coffee slinger, trying desperately to publish his short stories before the dregs of his inheritance run out. His girlfriend, Anya, has become a rising star, earning a deal to publish a book of short stories about her childhood in Romania. (Would she have gotten a deal if she wasn't from somewhere exotic?) When Ian, desperate for publishing fame, enters into a scheme to publish a fake memoir with a former book editor looking for revenge on an industry he believes has lost its soul, things go a bit awry. The line blurs between real life and fiction. And Ian finds himself running for his life. The James Frey fiasco shines through clear as day (two chapters are even titled "Bright, Shiny Morning" and "A Million Little Pieces") as the go-point for this book. But with all the great jokes (see below for another), some hilarious caricatures, like an ebonics-spouting fella named Blade who becomes the toast of the literary world when he publishes a memoir about his gangsta life, and with the morph into adventure novel as the rubber meets the road on Ian's fake memoir plot, the novel moves way beyond what could have been a too-simple 250-page insult to Frey and other fakers. At times you feel like Langer himself is angry or disillusioned, that he has his own axe to grind. At one point, he writes: "In the press, these hoaxes were viewed mostly as symptoms of a declining industry struggling for relevance and attention and a society of declining morals." More often, though, you get the sense he's just being funny — and it's pretty clear he had a blast writing this book. For anyone interested in how the publishing industry works (or doesn't), and who enjoys a good laugh at its expense, this is a must. It's a slim little book, written specifically for literary nerds. And it's a whole lotta fun! Another literary joke: Langer setting the scene at a party: "There was a trio of drunk writers, all named Jonathan, each of whom was complaining that the Times critic Michiko Kakutani had written that she'd like their earlier books better."(less) | Notes are private!
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| Sep 19, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
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| 0143036912
| 9780143036913
| 3.52
| 2,420
| May 19, 2005
| Apr 25, 2006
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Near the end of Sean Wilsey's hilarious, engrossing coming-of-age memoir, Oh The Glory Of It All, he explains that "A memoir, at its heart, is written...more
Near the end of Sean Wilsey's hilarious, engrossing coming-of-age memoir, Oh The Glory Of It All, he explains that "A memoir, at its heart, is written in order to figure out who you are." But there are other reasons, too — like outing your evil stepmother as a gold-digging, morally barren ho-bag; like creating a tribute to your dead father, who wasn't always your biggest fan; and like illustrating how different rich people are than we normals. Rich people are interesting. Crazy people are interesting. And rich, crazy people, like Sean's parents and step-mother, are absolutely fascinating! It all starts with the divorce. Sean's mother and father are the prototypical rich, San Francisco socialites. And their split and the almost immediate re-marriage of his father to another San Francisco socialite, Dede, send shockwaves both through San Francisco society and Sean's delicate rich-kid life. (Random note: Dede's ex-husband then married Danielle Steele, who previously had been having an affair with Sean's dad.) Sean's childhood and adolescence becomes a mess of under-parenting and over-schooling — he goes through three high schools, literally escaping from the third one, which is a cult-like, brainwashing place called Cascade. His father disowns him, his mother is furious, and Sean's on his own. Sean's complicated relationship with his parents is the underlying theme of the memoir. His mother wavers back and forth with a strange version of love, and totally using Sean to advance her own agenda. His horrible stepmother Dede never misses any opportunity to flat-out tell Sean what a screw-up he is, and what a disappointment he is to his father. But nevertheless, through all his misbehaving, and despite the fact that his father wants nothing to do with him (Dede's influence!), he still desperately seeks his father's approval. What's most interesting about the book is about how Sean changes in the reader's eyes several times throughout the memoir. He starts off as a "character" for whom readers have this incredible sympathy because of his horrible parents. At one point, his mother suggests that she and Sean kill themselves together, ostensibly to avenge the divorce! But then he becomes your typical rich kid brat — he's cruel to his boarding-schoolmates, he has no concept of consequences, and he does things for no other reason than to be a jerk, like throwing fruit at cars off the balcony of his mother's 30th floor penthouse. It's not until an arrest and a deal to attend a school in Italy that he finally has the experiences necessary for him to mature, and finally graduate high school at age 20. Then, throughout the last third of the book, we're squarely on his side as he battles Dede and grows into manhood. This book came out more than five years ago and has been on my shelf most of that time, but it recently showed up on Jonathan Franzen's list of "Four Overlooked Books," so I finally took it down. I loved it! It's absurd at times (Sean is SURE he's going to lose his virginity to his step-mother Dede. But that's before he's SURE he hates her more than any other human in the world.) It's hilarious in a sarcastic, smart, but also understated way. (Sean relates how angry his mother was when she lost to Elie Wiesel for the Nobel Peace Price — "When it was announced that Wiesel had won, Mom, crushed, threw the pyramid (a glass desk ornament) into a mirror." I literally laughed out loud after reading that scene.) And it's even often sad and affecting, especially near the end as Sean relates his father's death. It's a long book, but definitely worth a read.(less) | Notes are private!
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| Oct 10, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
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| 0143039946
| 9780143039945
| 4.03
| 14,745
| 1973
| Oct 31, 2006
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Ouch! My head! Not sure the mental energy expended was worth the payoff here.
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| Oct 12, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
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| 1554681723
| 9781554681723
| 4.13
| 156,144
| 2008
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Wow — what an emotional wallop! Even as a football-watching, beer-drinking, dude-lit-reading, red-blooded American male, I say the following without a...more
Wow — what an emotional wallop! Even as a football-watching, beer-drinking, dude-lit-reading, red-blooded American male, I say the following without an ounce of sarcasm: Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain is one of the sweetest, most heart-wrenching stories I've read in a long time. I haven't been that near to bawling my eyes out while reading a book since I was like nine years old! You've heard about this book, right? (No shame if you haven't — I hadn't until about 14 people recommended it on my Dog (Book) Post.) It's narrated by dog named Enzo. Enzo is annoyed that he doesn't have thumbs and can't talk, but comforts himself with the notion that in his next life, he'll be human. In fact, he feels like he's ready to be human now. (He also thinks that the domestication of dogs was a conspiracy by humans to prevent them from evolving further. If I were a dog, I'd buy that for sure!) Enzo lives with Denny, an amateur race car driver, Denny's wife Eve and daughter Zoe. Life is good for awhile. But then it's not. Eve gets sick. Her parents meddle. And increasingly bad things happen. But Enzo sticks by Denny's side, both as a companion and a voice (so to speak) of reason. Enzo is a dog, to be sure, so there is much he doesn't understand. But what he does, what he's learned from Denny, is that race car driving can be a metaphor for life. And so, the lessons learned on the track are just as applicable when the dog poo hits the fan in real life. Denny explains that the key to racing in the rain is to remember that "that which we manifest is before us." A driver must be proactive because what he initiates, he can control. What he reacts to, he can't. So, too, in life. And as things get increasingly worse for Denny, he's tempted to give in and quit fighting. But it's Enzo's companionship that carries him forward. Denny is an incredibly admirable protagonist, and you root really, really hard for a happy ending. You root so hard, in fact, you're willing to suspend disbelief quite a bit for a few parts (of course, other than the fact that a dog is telling us the story). This is a must-read for any dog-lover. But if you're a crier, keep the tissues nearby. It's a quick, frenzied read. It's simple, but intellectually engaging. It's funny, but often very sad, too. I really liked it! (less) | Notes are private!
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| Oct 14, 2010
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Mar 12, 2011
| Hardcover
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