I loved Norwegian Wood by Murakami, I liked the whole downbeat emotion/character driven element of it. On the whole when reading I prefer characters to fast moving plots. Will I enjoy this one by him? It seems a bit long.

yes, you probably will.

I am scurrying to finish King's new one before Christmas break, where I plan on going for:

1Q84 - Murakami
Middlesex - Eugenidies
Money - Amis

finished that one last week. The last 50 pages or so went by in a flash. A really good book.

Truly great book, probably in the top twenty of stuff I've ever read. The main character is so likable and affecting, very rare to find one so.

Catching up on stuff read over break:

I read the first two books of The Hunger Games. All my students loved the series, so I finally decided to see what they were about. The first one was ok-ish, but the author (even for a YA novel) has no style. It's a rather oddly written book - for such a serious focus the novel doesn't feel serious. People die by the tons in these books and it just doesn't seem to matter. The second one was incredibly slow and then all of a sudden, it just fell into the same plot line as the first book.

After visiting Nepal I decided to read Krakuer's Into Thin Air. Much better book than Into the Wild (if only because Krakauer loves to write about himself and that makes sense in Into Thin Air, it didn't work so well with Into The Wild).

And I read 1Q84. Easily my favorite Murakami and just a delightful book. Sure, he tends to repeat himself often, but it all just flows by so fast and the story is delightfully weird.

About 1/3 of the way through Middlesex and I think I should be able to finish it as I fly back home.

dogs, trees, and rock and roll.
great book, but his first book 'english setter dance' is even better


a very cold reading on a classic album, some insight and good ideas but over all not the best one.

started these two together:

I just finished the Marriage Plot. I went in expecting disappointment, because how do you follow Middlesex? It's a legit work. It's thoroughly researched and in depth in the same vein as Middlesex. The part that has stuck with me is how well Leonard's mania/highs are captured, making the middles and lows even more painful than traditional depictions of depression. For anyone with a close friend dealing with bi-polar disorder or manic depression, it hits hard and feels very real.

I've been out of the novel game for a while, but is there another male author who can write women this well?

Wally Lamb does it well in the first half of She's Come Undone before it turns into pure Oprah-schmaltz.

the marriage plot was one of the best books i read last year. i was dumbfounded by its lukewarm reception. sure, it's a pretty minor novel, whether or not compared to middlesex, but its modesty is part of what makes it so great. rather than tackle a massive canvas, eugenides painstakingly covers a very narrow section. and the way he incorporates the literary crit angle (engagement with the genre convention which gives the novel its name) not only justifies the necessity of humanities departments, but also brings us face to face with the conventions of our own lives. there's a really tender, honest feel to the whole book. no character feels false, an they drive the plot, rather than the plot driving them. the conclusion is heartbreaking, and kinda radical in how it twists the gender dynamic. anyhow, really wonderful read, a source of constant pleasure, page for page, word for word.

This is by far your worst post.

No it is not his worst, and that was a year ago.

The lukewarm reception made sense to me. The first hundred pages has sections that read like a bookshelf. I didn't mind it, but I could see how it would annoy someone who is well read, and make someone who isn't well-read find Eugenides pompous. In addition, I think by and large people aren't particularly good at managing their own expectations based on previous work, especially if their last work was as strong of an effort like Middlesex. When directly compared (as unfair and silly as that may be) it's just going to be underwhelming. On its own, it's a pretty great book though.

I am having the almost opposite reaction to Middlesex. I read The Marriage Plot first, and I am about halfway through Middlesex. I really like Middlesex, but I am enjoying the writing far less - sure the narrator is a riot and engaging, but the style and actual sentences to me are nowhere near as refined as his recent effort.

Both good books, but I guess I as expecting something more from Middlesex.

enjoyed this book.
now I'm reading this one:


Neither is a literary masterwork or anything as both are nonfiction, but enjoying this one, too. Pretty compelling stuff, for the most part. I still hate Laettner.

Does anybody read Stephen King anymore?I read everything up until I was about 15 and haven't read anything since. Parents seem to think I still like things i loved when I was a kid so they got me his new one about time travel and the Kennedy assassination. Was going to give it away but then read some good reviews. Is he any good these days?

Last two books I read were The Divided Mind by Dr. John Sarno and Freedom by Johnathon Frandzen- both outstanding.

Frandzen.

I read every Stephen King book until Dolores Claiborne (wiki say I was 18 at the time). And I mean everything. Non-Fiction, Short Stories, etc. He was my favorite. I'm not sure what happened. He wrote a couple of things I didn't like, and I almost completely stopped reading him.

Since 1992 I've read:

1996 - The Regulators

For some reason he decided Richard Bachman wrote this one, and that's some of my favorite older work of his. I remember thinking it was ok.

2005 - The Colorado Kid

I picked this up because it was on mystery imprint HARD CASE, whose work I generally like. It was a really good read. Quick, easy and a lot of fun.

2006 - Cell

The comparisons to The Stand caught my attention. I love a good post-apocalyptic tale. I really enjoyed this as well.

2011 - 11/22/63

Time travel is also something I find pretty infinitely interesting. Also, JFK stuff has been peppering my consciousness this year. Even after cherry-picking 2 pretty good books in the last 2 decades, I really wasn't prepared for how good this book was. Be prepared, it's not as much about JFK as you would think. The character doesn't even get to Dallas until about halfway through the book, and even then, only about half of what is left is about JFK.



I recently bought BLAZE (another Bachman book) at a second hand store. I'm vaguely interested in that. Somewhat contemplating reading the Dark Tower series (I stopped at #3 two decades ago).

Despite the fact that I love his stories, I can say the answer to this question certainly is not George R.R. Martin.

Or Franzen, even.

Blaze was ok, not something I will read again.

You should try Dark Tower again at #4, Wizard & Glass. King provides a good synopsis of the saga up to that point at the beginning,, and it offers a big flashback of what happened to Roland the Gunslinger before his current journey. Some folks dont dig this novel as much as the others, probably for its romantic leanings. But keep at it up tttthrough #7: there are some fun surprises along the way. Oh, and BTW, King is going to release ANOTHER Dark Tower novel that takes place after #4 (even though it is officially completed at #7).

I am totally itching for 11/22/63.

What's wrong with 'The Perks...'? Stonewall classic I thought, as is...



Got mixed reviews but I fucking loved it, the characterization was in credible, guess it helps if you've lived in Melbourne. Even so, I'm amazed so many people gave it bad reviews, guess it's because little happens and they have a short attention span.

I'd even go as far as to say that Franzen is one of those male writers that does a much better job of writing females than males. But that is mostly because his men (in Freedom, moreso than The Corrections) felt flat and, well, cliche.

Patty was pretty much the saving grace of Freedom.

I've been in grad school for 2 and half years and haven't really had a chance to dive into fiction lately. I recently read Freedom as my foray back into novels and I absolutely loved it. Patty was probably the strongest character but I found Walter (flawed as he was) to be the most relate-able.

I also just wrapped up The Art of Fielding by Harbach which I liked considerably less. Anyone else read that one?

Freedom deserves it's own thread. Instant classic. One of the best books I've ever read. Maybe I just carried the toxins from my dysfunctional family more than you Sansone, but I found Patty to be far more relatable. Walter's heroism, although ultimately mitigated by his martyrdom, is something I am humbled by. I have an honorable profession but I envy Walter's passion in tackling macrosytem issues.

Thanks for the King feedback, theremin. Will definitely stick with 11/22.

I've only read the Corrections, but I'd say the one criticism I had of it were the female characters. He really had an amazing handle on the male characters but the mom was just shrill and one dimensional and Denise screwed everyone she wasn't related to. Overall it's a great book though.

The Art of Fielding was actually my favorite book from last year. I adored almost everything about it and I thought some of the moments in the middle of the novel were just devastating. It was the first book in a long time that I felt like I was reading some long lost classic - where the author was not hyper-concerned with technique or creative structure or anything of that sort. I hate to make the connection (because the writers are totally different), but it felt like I was reading Dickens. It was just a great story, excellent characters, and delightful writing.

So I finished 11/22/63 last night and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Theremin was spot-on with the assertion that it is nowhere near as much about JFK as you would think. Heck, it really is nowhere near as much about Oswald as you'd think. It rarely deals with conspiracy.

I can see where you're coming from. I def didn't hate it. I just liked Freedom a lot more. Maybe I set the bar too high right out of the gate. I was blown away by how nuanced and deep each character was in Freedom. And I felt like the characters in Art of Fielding didn't even get close to that. This may be unfair but I felt like Henry himself was just sort of a two-dimensional character who cared so much about baseball and nothing else.

I'm reading Swamplandia right now. Anyone tackle that one in 2011?

Swamplandia is currently en route from Amazon - although it is also in a pile with other books like The Flame Alphabet and Ready Player One (which one of my students suggested), so I may get to that later.

It's kind of funny that I had the opposite reaction about Freedom and The Art of Fielding. I thought most of the characters in Freedom were pretty two-dimensional - save for Patty. But that may have been Franzen's point, I don't know. Still liked that one though.

A friend recommended Ready Player One might check it out after Marriage Plot, Art of Fielding, White Noise and a bunch of DFW. No time for reading.

Wow, so I finished the last book in the series of The Hunger Games today. I can honeslty say there has never been a series that I liked less, but that I read so fast. The first book was decent. The second book had a good idea, and then retreated to the same plot as the first book. Halfway through the third book I was actively hoping for, "But it was all just a dream" as the final sentence of the book. It was the only way to really save the series.

The books are also horribly violent for the target audience. Horrbily written too, but that was nowhere near as bothersome as the number of times flesh "melts" in this series. Onto the new Julian Barnes.

So I'm just having a great time reading "A Sense of an Ending" by Julian Barnes. Just a thoughtful, funny, little book.

Bah - so the ending pages of "A Sense of an Ending" weren't as good as the majority of the novel. Still a great book and certainly worthy of the accolades that is has received.

How po-mo!

Reader Player One is a pretty amazing geek-fest.

Flew through it this weekend. Good story, decent writing. But honestly, any book that uses Blade Runner and Rush as major plot points is going to earn a thumbs up from me.

Being swayed into reading by way too much geeky uber-praise ruined it for me.
I bought in to the "good as Neuromancer and Snow Crash!" hyperbole going in, but in the end there was no style, no good ideas. It was pretty much Young Adult fiction, which I hadn't been expecting. Very entertaining, and brisk, mind you. But only popcorn.

(Incidentally, I read The Hunger Games right after, which exceeded my expectations. But of note, I haven't read the latter two in the series. And there I was expecting YA lit going in, so there's that.)

Honestly, there isn't too much about Ready Player One that is fantastic. It really does come down to a big laundry list of geek culture references. The story isn't overly clever - well, it actually has a delightful idea but instead of the book being about these characters it is about a contest - and the writing isn't sparkling. I think that this book would have been far cooler if it had come out during the 80's. "Getting the references" is the best part and I think it would have been cool for kids to have to investigate these things on their own. However, today, all the kids need to do is hop online and within a few hours they can have found pretty much every reference and at least watched a few of the movies/tv shows.

But then again, the writing does not hurt the book either. Unlike, for me, how The Hunger Games was a worse novel because of how Collins writes.

Will Eisner - A Dreamer's Life In Comics, Michael Schumacher

Only about 50 pages in. I'll push through because I am a big Eisner fan, but Schumacher has the unique talent of revering his subjects into boredom.

i bought this for my son because of the above...he came to the same conclusion...Popcorn novel.

I dunno. I thought Collins' writing was fine. I could possibly see my mind being changed after reading the second and third books. But I thought Katniss had some nuance to her, a maturity I wasn't expecting going in. I'm not very schooled in contemporary YA (Does Harry Potter count?), but I was expecting much less.

In other news, I've been slogging through Margaret Atwood's Year of the Flood. I'd really enjoyed her earlier Oryx and Crake, but for some reason I'm finding this more of a chore.

Before diving into the new Ben Marcus, I am finishing up some books that I put on the backburner.

Last summer I sprinted through the first through Song of Fire and Ice books, but I stalled halfway through A Feast For Crows. I picked it back up this week and I am just about done, but I honestly can say that this is just a poorly paced story.

It doesn't help that I could care less about Dorne or the Iron Islands. Oh well, only a few hundred pages more until I can return to my man Tyrion.

Beautiful. Does anyone today come close to James in delineating the psychological context for the most seemingly mundane gestures?

just finished the first book and I enjoyed it. I loved the psychological game Katniss goes back and forth with herself and Peeta.

LP, we agree on a ton, but I gotta disagree with you here on the target audience. I used to teach and my g/f currently teachers middle school and we all forget that 11y/o + read a lot of stimulating material that we think is too much for them. I remember reading Holes to a 4th grade class and was shocked, but then I look back to when I was in 6-8th grade and all my friends and I read Michael Crichton books which have tons of violence.

Great book. It is the only James that I have read, and I think I should remedy that pretty soon.


Just finished "Why Read Moby Dick?" by Nathaniel Philbrcik. It was a fun read and rather light. I suppose if someone was looking for some real heavy criticism and analysis about the novel, then this would be a real poor choice. But, I think it really does a fine job of actually exciting people about reading Moby Dick, while providing some context and much needed explanations.

I'm about 100 pages into The Flame Alphabet and I am digging the style and the ideas, but it is a slow read for some reason.

speaking of moby dick, did anyone read this?



highly, highly recommended. it's a multi-quadrant behemoth, combination bildungsroman, meta-textual literary homage, gay romance and sports novel. for christ's sake, the book's blurbed by jonathan franzen and james fucking patterson. you'll love it, your mom will love it.

maybe i'm being a bit too glib here, because the book is truly wonderful. doesn't come off as calculated in the least, which is impressive, because this must have taken a lot of planning and fine tuning. the various parts and pieces fit together perfectly, and the characters who begin as obvious cliches (i.e. the wise and magical savant, the aloof and caddish college dean, etc.) are swiftly and brutally humanized. the literary references are both explicit and sly; herman melville is a central figure in this, and there's a character named phlox in this, what is essentially a more polished, accomplished version of the mysteries of pittsburgh. as neither a baseball fan nor homosexual, i thought that both aspects worked quite well. the game sequences evoke the standard tropes of baseball fiction, while also approaching with a sense of despair and cynicism, and harbach portrays gay sex in a loving, playful, deeply romantic manner, which is what makes the ending all the more disappointing for

Spoiler/NSFW: click to show/hide

turning into a big gay tragedy. i mean, seriously, can't a queer romance ever end without one half of the couple dying?

other than that one gripe, this thing is beautiful and a joy to read, even if you're aware of how much this thing has been designed to please crowds of people like you.

There was some Art of Fielding talk a page or so back. I remember some thinking it was nice; it was my favorite book from last year.


Just finished Middlesex yesterday, another fine quality piece of writing. A truly epic work that didn't feel overblown whatsoever.

i've seen many high accolades for this.
was it a quick read or was it more of a deep read that you needed time inbetween reading to reflect?

Finished this last week. She has the ability to totally immerse the reader in a particular environment. Enjoyable read, recommended.

definitely. read this and dylan's chronicles in the same week span a few years ago. i had come down with a terrible stomach thing after travelling, and i was house-ridden. both books offer these vivid worlds that you really wish you could inhabit. both are really excellent, much better than they probably should be.

i read this yesterday:



above and beyond, the best book i've read over the past half year or so. englander is a hell of a writer, at least when he sticks to familiar subjects. his novel kinda sucked, but his stories are terrific. this returns him to the same modern jewish universe as his debut collection, for the relief of unbearable urges. having grown up as an orthodox jew, i can attest to the absolute accuracy of the details here, from halachic discussions to the depictions of the tortured psychological motivations of his characters. i don't know what the mileage for gentiles will be, though. back cover is littered with impressive names, chabon, franzen, lethem, foer, and so on, but majority of them are yids. so i dunno. i lent his first book to a friend who had a hard time making heads of the various hebrew and yiddish terms thrown about.

anyone interested in carver-inspired stories about jews (and israelis) would do well to check this out of the library.