Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Best Tiny Book Reports

Recently Read:


Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer

A book about how it is hard to sit down and write a book.  Entertaining for the first six pages, then it just starts to seem like whining.  If you like spending a lot of time with frustrated artists, you might enjoy it.  Still, I underlined a few things, related with author often.


Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace

Read this in 2002, had been meaning to reread for a long while.  Wallace's first novel and it's practically normal.  As Wallace wrote this during college, while still "finding his voice" (shudder), the influences of his postmoderns predecessors are most clearly felt in this book (along with ideas that also play a role in Infinite Jest). Creative, young, bright and very good.


Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

First dystopian future story I've encountered that's got social media factored into the equation.  I could feel this fictional future coming true as I read it.  Surprised by how much I liked it, maybe my favorite Shteyngart book?


A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Stories by Hemingway about Hemingway's time in Paris.  Watching Midnight in Paris left me feeling like I had to revisit this one immediately.  So I did.  Probably the best thing you could go out and pick up right now.  Go!  Pick it up right now!

Currently Reading:


Vineland by Thomas Pynchon

At first I was worried it was going to be just like Inherent Vice as they seem like the exact same book for the first, let's say, 65 pages.  Then on, let's say, page 66 it turns into a completely different book, a book full of weirdos on weirder adventures that's a lot more like Against the Day.  I'm enjoying it.  There are ninjas.



Light in August by William Faulkner

Midnight in Paris made me resolve to read more of the Great American Novelists so here we go.  Checking on an online synopsis as I move along through it, I'm ashamed of how much I've been missing.  And of how much of the story the synopsis has given away.

No comments: