Andy Fitzgerald > Recent Status Updates

please stop being so pretentious. I agree with him about how much John Updike sucks, but I feel like David Foster Wallace is one of those guys who puts on his foot vetements in the following order: sock-shoe, sock-shoe

Not too fond of theatre kids, but I am afraid this book has me in a chokehold. Very well-written thus far. Wrought with carefully crafted metaphors and symbolism.

kinda sucked, but mostly didn't

I love how we're bringing back bodice ripper romances. Blanche from Golden Girls would have eaten this UP.

James A. Garfield is who J.D. Vance thinks he is, and more.

I've been an Emily McIntire hater for the better part of a year now, but dare I say she is genuinely cooking with this one

this book feels like an "inside joke compilation" for all Chuck Palahniuk fans. Just waiting for him to say "cornflower blue" and we'll finish off my bingo card.

The fact that Chuck Palahniuk is able to accurately write female characters (especially teenaged girls) is so refreshing. You know how he does it? He writes them with the same amount of humanity as his male characters. There's no trace of "women are a mysterious and absurd species" ideology in his writing. Samantha is not perfect or angelic, but she's not flawed beyond reason. She is dynamic. She is a complex person.

I've never understood the fantasy of living in a splendorous castle, consuming only the finest products, and having people do everything for you. It feels purposeless and empty. Of course, considering the life of the main character, she deserves a better life, and she deserves to feel like a princess. But this is turning into a weird "Get Out" mixed with "The Institute" situation.

Lord have mercy on me, if I had sticky notes and was free to annotate this book at will (unfortunately it is a library copy) I would be painting the pages rn.

Breaking news: For the second time, Chuck Palahniuk has written a protagonist for whom I actually feel bad, with whom I can actually sympathize, who I really hope is okay in the end.

The first time was the protagonist of Invisible Monsters.

Also idk if anyone else noticed this but I feel like Palahniuk is using this book to criticize and call-out his own repetitive, hypnotic writing style. I love self-reference sm.

Giving up on this book. Nothing wrong with it, I just suddenly lost all motivation to read and I need to return it to the library.

My writing style has been compared to Wallace's several times, so I've decided to read a few of his works. So far, this is amazing. It's not "oh man I have a big message to impart on thee" or "We as a society must repent for our sins," which I used to think were the two types of essayists. Wallace breaks that, and I can say with pride that "Consider the Lobster" is a prime example of "writing for the sake of writing"

I know I've been poking fun at this book, but the action elements and descriptions are really well-written. It's like reading a really cool movie.

The fact that this character is somehow good at everything and seems to know absolutely everything and has a heart of gold and everybody likes him... there's something wrong here.

Okay it's starting to grow on me. I kinda like it.

when you say "he's a divorced, alcoholic, con-man turned defense attorney with an obvious oedipal complex who is willing to die to keep his daughter alive" I'm naturally going to picture a sad, pathetic little Saul Goodman guy who can't keep it together, or is --- at the very least --- kinda silly.

So you can imagine my disappointment when he's written like Bruce Willis in Die Hard.

I'm sorry but I keep reading it in Jake Peralta's "undercover cop with a backstory" voice. You know the one.

Over the course of his career, Edmund Morris has published over 2,000 pages about Theodore Roosevelt, characterizing him so colorfully that you feel as if you know T.R. yourself. This would not have been possible, ironically, without Teddy's bold personality and passionate love for his interests. He wrote incessantly in his journals and diaries, and had such an effect on others that they would write about him, too.

"Some folks said that he was headstrong and aggressive, but I never found him so except when necessary; and I've always thought that being headstrong and aggressive, on occasion, was a pretty good thing. He wasn't a bit cocky as far as I could see, though others thought so. I will say that he was not remarkably cautious about expressing his opinion." -Bill Sewall, Roosevelt's mentor during the summer vacation of 1878

So basically she's Junko Enoshima