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<![CDATA[Michael added 'Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/79220705
Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy (Paperback)
byKeith Waldrop bookshelves: currently-reading
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<![CDATA[Michael added 'Let the Great World Spin: A Novel']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/79220619
Let the Great World Spin: A Novel (Hardcover)
byColum McCann bookshelves: currently-reading
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<![CDATA[Michael added 'Birds of America: Stories']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77477967
to: Birds of America: Stories (Paperback)byLorrie Moore
I've had quite a few starts & stops with this book in the few years I've owned it. But that could be said for my whole library, I suppose. I'm just a starter & stopper. But I'm glad I finished it; it was a joy to read. I was a little disappointed that Moore wasn't able to explore the psyches/experiences/quirks of humans with penises. But her survey of humans with vaginae was good. A lot of characters that were carefully made unforgettable with subtle additions & subtractions that carved out and built these monolithic monuments to...should I say American mediocrity? Vulnerability?
My favorite story was "Dance in America." I also really liked "Real Estate." The rest were amazing, though less so than the aforementioned, save "What You Want to Do Fine," which was oddly depressing & without the soul (and the only penis human oriented, might I add) of the others.
A note: after the long drawl of the Peed Onk story, I'm glad a baby was killed (sacrificed?) in the first paragraph of "Terrific Mother." So much guessing and wondering was driving me mad.
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<![CDATA[Michael added 'Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77582596
Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming (Paperback)
byJames Hoggan bookshelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Michael added 'The Names']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77488843
to: The Names (Paperback)byDon DeLillo
I don't think this was his best book. My lit theory prof (a DeLillo specialist or whatever) back in undergrad told us that this is his most brilliant work. We were supposed to read it, but our class schedule got off-course, and we were encouraged to read it on our own. 3 years later, I read it. And disliked it.
I guess I haven't read DD in a while, but what's with his voice interjecting way too much philosophical qualification into the text? Does he do that with everything? I can't remember. At least in White Noise and the others, the characters were highly thoughtful academics, specialists, etc. who mused in place of the author. But a business guy, working in the corporate culture of ex-pats in Europe?? AND he was a socialite. When did he have time to inwardly dive-in and swallow gulps of thoughts and taste them for weeks on end?? He just didn't fit the bill enough to be a thoughtful character, and because of this, his character lost his opacity, developed a translucence, and by the end of the book, all I could see everytime the main guy opened his mouth was DeLillo's stupid face spoutin' off postmodern mumbo jumbo. And I like postmodern mumbo jumbo! What the!
Needless to say, if my memory serves me right, DD grew a lot between this text and White Noise, and even more so with Underworld.
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<![CDATA[Michael added 'The Virgin Suicides']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77477069
to: The Virgin Suicides (Paperback)byJeffrey Eugenides
The movie followed the curves of this plot, the details of the text to the point that if you watched the movie first, like I did, the book has a good chance of being less enjoyable than otherwise.
That being said, putting the movie aside, I liked it: it was simple, and simply wrote. I felt Eugenides relied too heavily upon the "detective" device ("exhibit A reveals..."), to the point that it became predictable and unbelievable at times. To imagine adolescent boys being thoughtful and philosophical enough to hoard away and gather objects and evidence of these girls was a bit too much at times. And to think that this collective narrator (all the boys) took time out of his (their) lives to call, fly, search out, investigate, retrace etc. to get an answer as middle aged men, was also too much.
That doesn't mean it was bad; in fact, it was an awesome first book. It makes a blooming writer forget all the nonsense that s/he has to overcome to write, and think "just write something."
Another note: Eugenides grew tremendously as a writer between VS and Middlesex, which was awesome.
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<![CDATA[Michael added 'What Is the What']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/38325872
to: What Is the What (Hardcover)byDave Eggers
I will write a more complete review later. I have avoided talking about it because it depressed me so much. While I've read a handful of other well-written dissections of Afro-American/Middle East-American politics, What is the What was so knotted and impossible to solve that the complexity "came home." It would be a GREAT piece to complement Darwin's Nightmare, Exterminate All the Brutes, and Into the Heart of Darkness.
Stylistically speaking, I had a hard time finding pleasure in Eggers' writing. I couldn't tell if it was the voice of Valentino or Eggers voice, or if it was Eggers talking with his hand up Valentino's ass that irritated me, but something made it coarse and hard to swallow. In fact, it took my several stabs before I could get going through the book (and a couple years). But once I overcame the mysterious feature, this book moved along very quickly, and was very....good. I can't say enjoyable because it sunk me into a pretty severe depression for a few weeks.
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<![CDATA[Michael added 'Modern Life: Poems']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/47499134
to: Modern Life: Poems (Paperback)byMatthea Harvey
Matthea Harvey’s world depicted in Modern Life is raw and broke: a system, and all of its implications, gone awry. The metal of machines, once new and useful, has rusted; the scientific discoveries, once progressive and optimistic, have devolved into hideous creatures: hollowed out carcasses (“The Empty Pet Factory”), spliced and mutilated (“How We Learned to Hold Hands”) for human needs; the ancient notion of freedom and free will has collapsed into a crippling fear of terror. Modern Life is wrought with skinless, misplaced creatures vying for cover, for protection. Reading this book of poetry reminds anyone who’s had a skinless wound what it was like for it to be blown on: the cold openness, the pink, the excess of the senses, the instinctual desire to cover over and wait for a healing, for the dumb numbness of skin. After 1000 years of enlightenment, discovery and subsequent innovation, after every stone has been looked at, every creature has been dissected, every atom torn to pieces, forced into diagrams and models, after everything has been seen, what’s left politically, scientifically, psychologically, physically, looks much like an atomic bomb has exploded.
It’s in this aftermath that we enter Harvey’s world through the poem “Implications of Modern Life.” The blood, the meat, the fat of this text puts us squarely within a butcher’s shop: there’s a sense that everything is dead, shaped into cutlets, and placed in a window. You feel everything is cold, that your fingernails are lined in red. The flowers are cut meat (line 1); skin has lost its essential function and now serves as decoration (1). Everything is red and pink, orange like the sunset (2). There is an immediate desire (need) to cover everything over in coats of fur, to bandage (4 & 5), that coincides with a revulsion, a denial of acquaintance. But it’s not until there’s (a) love and its coinciding yells for a resurrection that the voice, perhaps us, admits blame in this massacred world: “I made the ham flowers” (9) seems to say “I am the butcher.” But along with this acceptance comes the unrealistic expectation that it will undo the disaster. The voice turns into that of a naïve child urging his now dead mother to rise up out of the hospital bed: “Get up, dear animal. Here is your pasture…your river…your barn….I will find you fresh hay” (9-13). But the end is a silence: the horse seems to say, “I’m sorry, I wish I could, but not here and not now.” And we turn the page not knowing how we can move on without you, Horse, the warm world now long gone.
In this way, with a question, Matthea Harvey begins Modern Life: can it be fixed? The question is, as would be expected, much more than a philosophical one. One can’t help but to wonder if, instead of a political discussion, Modern Life is a commentary on the state of contemporary poetics (two sides of the same coin, I suppose). Has the Levertovs of modern poetry pulled out all the bones from all the octopuses? What’s left, but the skinless discards? Contemporary poetry finds an animal, an experience or an object perhaps, and wants (urges, naively) it to jump, to live, to be: but all that it can do is be dead. Is it the degradation of language, the hundreds of years of Western progress? Is it the mechanization, and now the cannibalization of our world that has killed the horse? At the end of “Implication,” we don’t know the answer. We want to say, “yes, it is, it was me, I did it, I believed and made the ham flowers: get up, Horse,” we can write something good someday: we’ll teach it in classrooms, we’ll sing it as anthems, we’ll make wars out of it. I will feed you and love you, Horse, if only you just wake up. *silence*
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<![CDATA[Michael added 'One Hundred Years of Solitude']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/63894441
to: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Hardcover)byGabriel García Márquez
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.