Jason Pettus's Blog, page 5

Book Review: "Birth," by S.T. Gulik

Birth: or The Exquisite Sound of One Hand Falling Off a Turnip Truck By S.T. Gulik Self-published Reviewed by Jason Pettus Although I'm generally a fan of bizarro literature (as in "I don't actively hate it"), there's one big problem with this genre that prevents me from being a big fan or a fervent fan; namely, every bizarro novel in existence tends to sound exactly like every other bizarro novel in existence, a genre that can quite literally be defined as "a cartoon written out in narrativ...

Book Review: "The Edge of the Empire," by Bronwen Riley

The Edge of the Empire By Bronwen Riley Pegasus Books Reviewed by Jason Pettus There seems to be a trend in history books these days that I'm all for, which is to de-emphasize the date-focused tradition of battles and emperors to instead "paint a portrait" of what daily life in those days must've been like for the average citizen; take Bronwen Riley's The Edge of the Empire, for example, which examines the Roman Empire's far-flung colony of Brittannia (or modern-day Great Britain) by picturi...

Book Review: "Three Years with the Rat," by Jay Hosking

Three Years with the Rat By Jay Hosking Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin's Press Reviewed by Jason Pettus The promotional material for Jay Hosking's Three Years with the Rat claims that the novel is "reminiscent of Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves," but as typical with this kind of stuff, that's simply a lie; in fact the one and only thing the two books have in common is that they both feature a space that's bigger on the inside than on the outside. Other than that, this book consists of no...

Book Review: "Cthulhu Fhtagn!" by Ross E. Lockhart

(CCLaP is dedicated to reviewing as many contemporary books as possible, including self-published volumes; click here to learn how to submit your own book for possible review, although be warned that it needs to have been published within the last 18 months to be considered. For the complete list of all books reviewed here, as well as the next books scheduled to be read, click here.) Cthulhu Fhtagn! Edited by Ross E. Lockhart Word Horde Reviewed by Karl Wolff Cthulhu Fhtagn!, edited by Ro...

Tales from the Completist: "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?," by Roz Chast

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (2014) By Roz Chast Bloomsbury USA Reviewed by Jason Pettus As a 47-year-old, it's of course no secret that my still-living parents are now in their deep elderly years; and without going into details, I deal with the same issues concerning them as most other middle-aged children with living parents in their seventies and eighties, sometimes with charming results but more and more often frustrating as they get older and older. And that's why I'm so...

Book Review: "Leaving Paris," by Collin Kelley

Leaving Paris By Collin Kelley Sibling Rivalry Press Reviewed by Jason Pettus The timeline of CCLaP's history is also roughly the timeline of Collin Kelley's "Venus" trilogy; we received the first volume from him, 2009's Conquering Venus , not long after opening for business, read through the second, Remain in Light , a few years later, and are just now checking out the conclusion, last summer's Leaving Paris which came out while we were on hiatus in 2016 from accepting new books for review. A...

Book Review: "The Full Catastrophe: Travels Among the New Greek Ruins," by James Angelos

(CCLaP is dedicated to reviewing as many contemporary books as possible, including self-published volumes; click here to learn how to submit your own book for possible review, although be warned that it needs to have been published within the last 18 months to be considered. For the complete list of all books reviewed here, as well as the next books scheduled to be read, click here.) The Full Catastrophe: Travels Among the New Greek Ruins By James Angelos Crown Reviewed by Karl Wolff A rec...

Book Review: "The Big Sheep," by Robert Kroese

The Big Sheep By Robert Kroese Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin's Press Reviewed by Jason Pettus To be clear, Robert Kroese's "phenomenological inquisitor" tale The Big Sheep is not much more than a well-written ripoff of Douglas Adams' "holistic detective" Dirk Gently novels, combined with the characterizations found in the cult movie The Zero Theorem and the alt-history universe-building of a typical "slow apocalypse" science-fiction book. But I happen to love the witty and smart Dirk Gentl...

American Odd: "Three Wogs," by Alexander Theroux

A look at peculiar institutions, oddball literary experiments, and reckless rugged individualists. A celebration of American non-conformity. Three Wogs By Alexander Theroux Henry Holt and Company, Inc. (1972) Review by Karl Wolff Alexander Theroux comes from a famous family. Brother to travel writer Paul Theroux and the actor Justin Theroux is his nephew. I first came upon Alexander Theroux in 99 Novels, by Anthony Burgess. It was an informal survey of the best novels in English since World...

We're accepting books for review again, but have made some big changes to our submission policy

Happy New Year! After a year of being completely shut down from accepting any new books for review, I'm excited to announce that our submission process is now open again, and all of us here at CCLaP are looking forward to presenting the 200 or so book reviews we hope to get through by the time 2017 is over. That said, though, we've made some big changes to our policy regarding what kinds of books we will accept for possible review anymore, so I wanted to start the year by detailing them in fu...