I can’t remember if Grossman summarized the book this way in the introduction (which is sadly the most entertaining part of the book) but this is trying really hard to be the gen x-ers Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but returning to the relatively few 170-some pages isn’t something I have any desire to do to go back and check. a) I understand why you’d daydream this particular existence away, but b) the daydreams aren’t fleshed out and are impossible to follow as a result, […]
Lemme get a hit of that eugenides
Poor Jeffrey Eugenides. Every book he writes is going to be “good, but it’s not Middlesex” at best to me. It’s not fair to the man. He’s a great writer, but damn was Middlesex a fucking masterpiece. I keep chasing that high. I had the same thing with Michael Chabon; my first experience was with the author’s best, most-intriguing-subject-matter book that was tailor made for me, so everything else was going to suffer by comparison. Any writer would be lucky to have one Middlesex in […]
Oooph.
I’m impressed, I was prepared for this book to be more of a downer than it was. Make no mistake, this isn’t the one to pick up if you want to turn off your brain for something fluffy (not meant as an insult; some days I need fluffy books for just that reason; my next read after this might need to be for decompression, actually). But, for a book on the ways that race plays into the justice systemic racism finds a way to thrive […]
And yet, not penetrating
It’s weird rating a book whose viewpoints so closely align with my own so low, but I kind of have to. It amounts to a lot of glib “can you believe this shit?!” recitation of facts that a) won’t convert any skeptics or b) surprise any believers. I’d like to think that some of it is due to the times a’changing, but really the main changes in the 15 or so years since the publication date are that gay marriage is legal and that women […]
Cuz you’re really gonna be surprised! When it happens!
I feel like my reviews as a whole have been more negative than my actual opinion of books would indicate. I liked this book, but I would’ve cut about 150 pages from it as the “big reveal” 2/3 of the way through was fairly predictable and I loved what came after. But ooohhhhh that stalling to get to the big secret telegraphed early on hurt, you guys. We know. Something happens to the kid, the one the author conspicuously avoids discussing after THE BARBECUE. If […]
A candy bar of a book
My husband, when I was reading The Martian, said he had liked the book but his one complaint was that it read like it was being pitched as a screenplay already. I didn’t feel that way, but also didn’t see why that would be a negative even if I had. I get it now. Which is not to say I disliked this book, quite the contrary. A science fiction thriller that uses a murder mystery as a plot to support the world building the writer […]
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