The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen [Please note that this review does include spoilers.] Gonna try something new this month. Instead of reading a book (in this case, The Corrections) then writing about it solo like I have the previously, I am going to team up with my friend Chuck Kennedy. We are both going to [...]
Author Archive
August 8, 2010
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April 20, 1999 Edition
By Some Dude in NonfictionColumbine by Dave Cullen At 11:10a MDT on April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris arrived at Columbine High School. At 11:19a they began shooting at their fellow classmates in the cafeteria during lunch. They would proceed to shoot and throw pipe bombs at their classmates and teachers both inside and outside of the [...]
July 30, 2010
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Coming Of Age In Maycomb, Alabama Edition
By Some Dude in Fiction, NovelTo Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee If I had to choose 5 books that not only represents the canon of American literature—while also defining what America is for someone who only had a remedial knowledge of our country—To Kill A Mockingbird easily cracks that list for me.[1] It might be the perfect American novel, [...]
July 27, 2010
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Unnecessary Analogies, Porn References, and Dick Jokes Edition
By Some Dude in NonfictionThe Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons There is only one word I can use to properly describe The Book of Basketball, the latest book from ESPN’s The Sports Guy (Bill Simmons): maddening. His maddening use of long-winded metaphors (David Robinson is like a maître d’ at a really fancy, upscale restaurant who happens to [...]
May 18, 2010
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Memories Of Hailsham Edition
By Some Dude in Fiction, NovelNever Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro [Please note that this review does include spoilers.] I went into this year with a New Year’s reading resolution: I was going to make it a point to primarily read fiction from the last decade. I started out by reading Susan Gregg Gilmore’s Looking For Salvation At The [...]
May 2, 2010
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The Escapist Edition
By Some Dude in Fiction, NovelThe Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon “Forget about what you are escaping from [...] Reserve your anxiety for what you are escaping to.“ The above quote is so central to Michael Chabon’s (pronounced SHAY-bahn, in case you’re wondering) masterful and thoroughly wonderful, Pulitzer Prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & [...]
January 10, 2010
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What Really Is Real? Edition
By Some Dude in NonfictionEating The Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman An excerpt from the chapter titled “The Best Response”: “The best response to being arrested for carrying an unlicensed handgun into a nightclub and accidentally shooting yourself in the leg, thereby jeopardizing your pro football career. “First of all, you people probably don’t know anyone who’s been shot. I, [...]
December 12, 2009
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Lucinda River Edition
By Some Dude in Fiction, Short Story“The Swimmer” by John Cheever John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer” opens with a flowing description of alcohol and its effect on those whose Sunday mornings are particularly trying because of it: “It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying, ‘I drank too much last night.’ You might have heard it [...]
November 26, 2009
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Deep South Gothic, Part 2 Edition
By Some Dude in Fiction, Short Story“The Lame Shall Enter First” by Flannery O’Connor Everything That Rises Must Converge is a collection of nine short stories that Flannery O’Connor wrote before she died in 1964 and was released posthumously a year later. In some way each story deals with themes of race, religion, and morality amongst tragically flawed characters inside of [...]
August 7, 2009
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Deep South Gothic Edition
By Some Dude in Fiction, Short Story“A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’Connor “Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.” –Flannery O’Connor Before I listened to the Slate Audio Book Club’s critique of “A [...]
