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 [...]
Archive for the ‘Fiction’ Category
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, [...]
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 & [...]
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 [...]
July 25, 2009
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Sex, Power And Magic In Rhode Island Edition
By Some Dude in Fiction, NovelThe Witches Of Eastwick by John Updike [Please note that this review does include spoilers.] The Witches Of Eastwick is my introduction to John Updike. (It was a coin toss between this and Rabbit, Run and Rabbit lost.) Without ever having read anything by Updike I knew that there was an aura about him that [...]
July 14, 2009
1
Pelphase-Interphase-Gusphase, Repeat Edition
By Some Dude in Fiction, NovelThe Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess In The Wanting Seed, Anthony Burgess creates a world in which overpopulation has a hand in the following: babies are turned into phosphorus pentoxide; homosexuality is outright advertised by the government (complete with posters that say “It’s Sapiens to be Homo”); women are not only discouraged from getting pregnant [...]
June 14, 2009
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We Await Silent Trystero’s Empire Edition
By Some Dude in Fiction, NovelThe Crying Of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon The Crying Of Lot 49, to me, shares a strong similarity to Some Like It Hot–the movie that stars Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon–in that both have attached to it a very implicit air of importance and groundbreaking-ness. Some Like It Hot is practically universally [...]
