The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald My rating: 4 of 5 stars Never have I been much of a Fitzgerald fan. Never. Not when I read Gatspy in high school (especially not the way it’s taught- ugh!). Not when I read Paradise in grad school. And now, post-damned, I’m still not sure I really like …
The Field by Joanna Gunderson rating: 4 of 5 stars Another good one from Red Dust. Gunderson’s line-broken un-punctuated no-paragraph ‘novel’ is surprisingly novel-ish. The most continuous and recognizable element in the book is the place (in or around the mountains in NY): the house, landscape, seasons, etc. Certain events and relationships are repeated (with …
Geography and Plays by Gertrude Stein My rating: 4 of 5 stars She is a hen and being a hen is to hen. Hen next to hen in. In her hen hemmed nest of in. Her in. Next hen. Next. She is a “bullet in the back of the rooster.” That hen. She is pleasing …
Spillville: A Collaboration by Patricia Hampl My rating: 4 of 5 stars I do like it because the typography is well set and I can read it (out loud) and there are clear *doses* of language in it. It is above everything, measured out and put into halves like hard fruit. Tho there is nothing …
Leviathan by Paul Auster My rating: 1 of 5 stars Obnoxious as it may seem (and is); Leviathan is about a writer writing Leviathan about a writer who already wrote Leviathan. And just to make things interesting the “writer” smells faintly of (who else) Paul Auster who is (of course) writing the novel. Yippie. View …
In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan My rating: 5 of 5 stars Softly we are Richard Brautigan and we have nothing to do with hippies and we fish for trout and keep some of the trout in there because we are Richard and we like to look at them. It suits us to have this …
Break It Down by Lydia Davis My rating: 5 of 5 stars Are you kneeling and putting your hands on the carpet like that. Are you. On the carpet, your hands are on it? View all my reviews >>
The Awakening: And Other Stories by Kate Chopin My rating: 5 of 5 stars Read to the exent that it is like an old boyfriend. First read Junior year of highschool in my Augusta bedroom. Read again the next night, same place. Sections of it read during my second SAT 1997 at some North Augusta …
Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach My rating: 1 of 5 stars Ten Reasons why I don’t like Ecotopia: 1. It reads like a how-to manual for your VCR. The world, unfortunately is not like a VCR. 2. Consistency. Consistency killed the cat, killed the characters, and put a dull green wash on the earth. 3. The …
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein My rating: 4 of 5 stars We are bitties and we are dogs for art and we push to the side all the wars and all the wives that have taken the places of other wives and we tell the story as if it were a …
Cover of Libra * * * When you work for the government, officials visit your neighbors. Men invite themselves into the kitchen. Through the curtains it looks like one person talking to himself. * * * In the crawl space you breathe economically. Albeits are off. * * * Dad worked for the Department of …
Beloved by Toni Morrison My rating: 4 of 5 stars I read it white, didn’t I? I could have read in Georgia, where I grew up—on the front porch of this colonial-style home. I could have leaned against the iron gate than surrounded that neighborhood, reading it. And it bothers me, how quiet I must …
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald My rating: 3 of 5 stars Ok. Ok. Ok. Honestly, I read this book about 2 months ago. And even more honestly, I don’t remember much about it. Ok. So there’s this kid (obviously he’s rich) and this religious figure (priest I guess), the kid’s mom (rich …