2015 Book #12: Rabbit, Run
Here’s yet another case of You Got an English Degree…How? I’m not quite sure how it happened, but I got through college and a master’s degree without reading Updike. (In my defense, this time is not as bad as when I got called out in a graduate class for never having read Jane Eyre…which I promptly […]
2014 Book #53: White Noise
I didn’t read White Noise because I wanted to. Not this time, anyway. I read it again because I wanted to give Don DeLillo a chance to redeem himself before I stashed him firmly in the Junk Pile. Okay, there’s nothing about DeLillo’s books that deserves to be there except that they’re all kind of the […]
2014 Book #34: The Cleanest Race – and a couple additions to the Fail Pile
North Korea fascinates me. The culture is so vastly different than my own, and it’s so secretive, that I’m intrigued. I saw The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters on Oyster, and it sounded really interesting. I’d just finished Butcher’s Crossing and had no idea where to go next, so I thought […]
A Really Long Post about Don DeLillo, which mentions 2014 Books #16 and 17: Mao II and Point Omega
The more I read (and reread) Don DeLillo‘s work, the more convinced I become that, in his lifetime, he has come up with one plot idea. That’s one reason I’m lumping these two books together. I’ve read both of them before: Point Omega twice, now, and Mao II four times. (Yes, four. And it’s not even DeLillo’s best […]
2013 Book #36: The Angel Esmeralda
And DeLillo reappears. The Angel Esmeralda, DeLillo’s first collection of short stories that I know of, has been sitting on my Kindle for a long time. Languishing. By now, you probably know my thoughts on DeLillo, so I’ll keep the explanation short: he writes the same novel over and over again. Meh. That said, these are […]
2012 Book #31 (and 32-ish): To Have and Have Not (and Mao II)
But we’re reasonably well into 2013, you (who check my Goodreads account religiously) say! And you finished To Have and Have Not weeks ago! And what’s this new mention of Mao II? How does it have anything to do with anything? What’s the deal?!? Well, I’ve been busy. Or maybe I haven’t been busy, but I’ve been otherwise […]
2012 Book #19: The Names
I know it’s been a long time since my last book post, but I’ve been busy. This time, I make no apologies. If you’d like to see what I’ve been doing lately, have a look over here. Anyway. I finished reading The Names a few days ago, but I’m so unenthusiastic about it that I’ve been […]
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 Book #37: Cosmopolis
I don’t even wanna talk about this one. I hadn’t read a DeLillo novel in quite a while – we’re faaaar away from the glory days of the DeLillo Binge. While I was working on the Thesis Monster (which I still have to finish), I read most of his novels and realized that he’s just […]
2011 Book #33: O Pioneers!
I don’t really have much to say about O Pioneers! I generally enjoyed it, but it’s entirely forgettable. When I was in college, I reluctantly read My Antonia, also by Willa Cather, and thoroughly enjoyed it though I expected to hate it. O Pioneers! is the same type of novel – you know, pioneers and […]