Garrett Zecker's Blog, page 5

Nomadland by Jessica Bruder, #1245 Nomadland (2020), and a Unit Plan

This is going to be a relatively long post as I have spent the better part of the past few months teaching and crafting a unit plan for a book that needed one but didn’t really seem to have one – Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland. I have been working on my in-person contribution to the Central Massachusetts Community Read program – one that my students and I haven’t been able to participate in since we completed our work with Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You in 2018 that you can read about here...

It Dies With You by Scott Blackburn

Scott Blackburn is about to hit the ground running hard with his debut southern crime novel, It Dies With You. The novel is a gritty portrait of southern sprawl, as a part-time boxer and bouncer Hudson Miller is suddenly called home when his estranged father is murdered in what looks like a botched robbery of his junkyard business. With Leland’s empire consisting of nothing more than a little cash, some trailers he rented, and land that is all but impossible to get rid of because of toxic automo...

The Life of a Visionary, “All About Me!” by Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks’ Autobiography is a triumph of a book that I read through once, dipped in a bunch of times afterward, and then read through a second time – all in the timeframe between the day it came out and the day I decided to post my review. Two readthroughs, and a schmear of dipping in here and there. It is an absolute riot, as well as a biography that can easily entertain and capture the attention of so many people – the greatest generation, Jewish Americans, lovers of comedy, lovers of crotche...

Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart

Gary Shteyngart’s sardonic work has always been a dark, lovely, and fun experience for me. I follow his work closely, and appreciate the sharp teeth of his honest candor that can both sting and tickle when it rears up bites mid-sentence. After all, who else can write about one’s experience with a botched later-in-life circumcision that draws near universal acclaim for a combination of sharp, intriguing, funny, and tragic energy (besides Jonathan Cameron Mitchell, of course)?  His newest vent...

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Anthony Doerr’s newest novel is an adventure unparalleled in not only the rest of his work but in today’s canon in general. It is a sprawling, experimental piece that at its very heart is a striking ode to storytelling itself, and the ways in which we write, preserve, transmit, and transmute the stories passed down from generation to generation.

The novel follows five characters through several different time periods from the ancient past to the far future, each juggling, performing, reading,...

When Ghosts Come Home by Wiley Cash

Wiley Cash’s newest novel tells the story of the humming underbelly of small-town racial tension, and the rippling effects it has on ignored crime, dirty politics, and decades of silence that can occur when we remain grappling with what remains unsaid in rural southern communities. While the novel takes place decades ago, the core themes of When Ghosts Come Home are a reminder that serves as a clarion call for us all to realize that things can remain festering well into the twenty-first century ...

Larry Wessel’s Palace of Wonders

Larry Wessel is the modern curator of the strange underground of American Folk Kitsch. It is an important role he plays in recording what is being forgotten day in and day out as we are bombarded with more and more electronic artifice that we are mistaking for culture. In the world of the meme, Wessel’s work is a beacon to the three-dimensional world of the bizarro, gonzo true creativity.   

His newest film, Palace of Wonders, is best represented as a metaphor of one of its segments that come...