Archive for the ‘Novel’ Category

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 [...]

To 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, [...]

Never 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 [...]

The 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 & [...]

The 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 [...]

The 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 [...]

The 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 [...]

The Broom Of The System by David Foster Wallace [Please note that this review does include spoilers.] Look at this painting. It is “The Slave Market With Disappearing Bust Of Voltaire” by Salvador Dali. Your eyes will most likely land on the bust of Voltaire that sits almost squarely in the middle of the painting [...]

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace I will be the first to admit that when David Foster Wallace killed himself on September 12th of last year I only vaguely knew of his name. And if you were to have asked me then if I had heard of Infinite Jest I would have most likely said [...]

Candide by Voltaire The real key to a great satire is its ability to be specific enough to destroy and mock its current targets in such a way that it will not be lost on future generations. For instance, Candide, Voltaire’s masterpiece, is essentially an attack on Gottfried Leibniz and any and all philosophers whose [...]