Alex > Recent Status Updates

I think it's safe to say this is this best comic I've ever read.

High modernism? Proto-postmodernism (heh)? L(J)R is ahead of her time, no doubt. GR friends, I implore you: pick this up.

Funny, this massive book is currently functioning as my light entertainment. My impression of Levin so far is a bit like DFW-lite. I wonder if he'll do anything to distinguish himself.

Thanks to a throwaway comment from Silverblatt heard several years ago in God knows what context. Dubliners also currently on my sidetable. L(R)J is in the lead.

Fantastic prose, very intriguing at the start, but I don’t know yet... We’ll see how things shake out.

You guys, you guys. I figured out a way to get around the “Smith” problem. It’s like this: we call her “Zmith” instead. Am I the first one to this, or is it already a thing?

Excellent so far. The reviews scared me off for a little while. Hard to wade through the hype and the backlash.

Surprisingly relevant to my life as a teacher.

It amazes me that there are people out there who think technology will save us, that don't consider the fact that we write our own biases into to the codes of our machines. A petty illustration: It has taken an immense amount of time-n-effort to find books written by women that appeal to me (the books, not the women), while GR algorithms generate an endless list of male authors for me to read. Skynet is a dude.

Everything that I was enjoying about this book vanished after the first 20 pages.

I can see where Vollmann gets some of his ticks.

I thought maybe my interest in this as a teenager would translate to exhaustion at 30, but so far my expectations have been undermined.

So the narrator is mentally abusing herself for being unable to recall the name of a non-Monroe blonde bombshell, it's the whole anxiety-provoking tongue-tip phenomenon, but oh god I KNOW EXACTLY WHO SHE MEANS, I know I know it, and I'm praying that she gets it FOR MY SAKE, COME ON then praise allah finally at the end of the chapter it comes to her and so also me and we can each get on, her w/ story & I w/ day.

This sounds so... me. But I've picked things up for that reason before and been worse than let-down.

I don't know if I've ever liked poetry this much.

I've read a few stories here and there, likely long before I was ready. This will be my first read from cover to cover.

This is making me want to get my claws on a copy of Darkmans (the pretty one with the skeleton rather than the devil on the cover).

So far each brief chapter has created a small mystery that gives the book an effortless propulsion. Maybe that's just a fancy way of saying its a page-turner. Am I so out of touch with popular fiction?

"Responsible science does not throw out the data that does not fit the paradigm; rather, if necessary, it seeks a new paradigm to fit the data." She employs a wealth of facts in order to dilute the truth.

Sorrentino occasionally goes overboard. Masterfully so, yes, but my attention can’t always take it.

This is just so much damn FUN.

Now this is more my speed. Sorry, Flaubert!

I usually scoff at folks who accuse books of containing too much description, but here I may finally have met my match. Idea: Shoot an adaptation of Madame Bovary on the set of Dogville, end up with a twenty-minute film.

Oh Jung, as always, I'm forced to feel my way through fields inseparable of chaff. A strange pleasure.