2012 Book #3: The Hobbit
I’m generally not one to reread books unless I have to. They’re mostly school-related, and they include White Noise (the only DeLillo novel I still really like), The Sun Also Rises, The Great Gatsby (I reread that one on my own), and my thesis novels. Those are the only ones I can think of, but I’m sure […]
2012 Book #2: Ready Player One
I only need one word to describe Ready Player One: overkill. Seriously. This novel is like the Treme[1. Treme is an hour-long list of Things You Can Find in New Orleans.] of 80s references: it’s basically a list of all of the Things about the Eighties Ernest Cline could come up with. It’s also juvenile: […]
2012 Book #1: Great Jones Street
I’ve read Great Jones Street three times – and only once because I wanted to. It’s the topic of the second chapter of my thesis on How Don DeLillo Writes the Same Novel Over and Over Again. Okay, that’s not my official topic, but it’s what my Thesis Monster is really about. Translated: I read […]
2011: The Year in Books
I did it. I read fifty books this year. After 2010’s embarrassing performance, I’m rather proud of myself, especially since that fifty includes some really long ones like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and 1Q84 and some really hard ones like The Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children. I enjoyed the vast majority of them, and […]
2011 Book #50(!): The Loved One
I arrived at The Loved One because I was looking for a very short novel (I had two days to read it!), and I read a random article about how prolific Evelyn Waugh was. I was first introduced to him earlier this year with Brideshead Revisited, which is now one of my favorite novels. Then […]
2011 Book #49: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
If I had read The Perks of Being a Wallflower when I was 15 or 16, it would have blown my mind. I really wish I had read it then: it might have made the melodrama that was my adolescence a bit more manageable. Or, at least, I might have realized that other kids had […]
2011 Book #48: The Sense of an Ending
The Christmas Crunch continues, in which I readandreadandread to reach my fifty-book goal before the year is out. Which means I’m limited to short novels for the moment. At a lean 163 pages, The Sense of an Ending definitely qualifies. It’s actually been on my to-read pile since it came out earlier this year. I […]
2011 Book #47: Slaughterhouse-Five
I first read Slaughterhouse-Five many years ago. So long ago, in fact, that I have no idea when it was. I might have been in high school, or I might have been in college. I only remembered a vague outline involving Dresden and time travel – and that I really didn’t like it. Not one […]
2011 Book #46: Midnight’s Children
I’m not quite sure what to say about Midnight’s Children except that it’s fantastic. Really. If you haven’t read it, head over to your local library and pick it up right now. Disregard your Christmas planning, ignore the hurt faces of your family, and hole yourself up for a week, book in one hand, cup […]
2011 Book #45: Wise Blood
I have almost nothing to say about Wise Blood, though I enjoyed it immensely. Fresh off 1Q84, I wanted something a bit shorter and not on the Kindle. I was limited to my own library since it was Black Friday, and I wasn’t in the mood to change out of my pajamas. After reading Everything that […]