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roadrunnertwiceDonna Tartt — The Secret History
January 4, 2016
Hahahahaha oh my god. This was great. I don't think I have anything non-dumb to say about it, though. It has a generous sprinkle of the ol’ Gatsby nature, so tune in if you like watching rich people swan-dive into dumpsters? It's tense and incredibly slick? It's out of sync with consensus chronology somehow? I DON'T KNOW. I just loved it.
Well, wait, I have this little fragment: it's God’s own perfect antidote to Pamela Dean's rendition of Tam Lin. (That's too obscure for a real book review [which luckily this isn't], but if you've read Dean's Tam you know exactly what I mean, even if you liked it in a way I couldn't.)
Rainbow Rowell — Fangirl
June 4
A li'l novel about being young and sucking.
A lot of this book is about struggling with anxiety and embarrassment, and kind of generally just being at a lower level of social development than everyone around you, and damn, for me that made it a tough read. But it's really well-constructed, it abjures easy outs, and it follows through on its swing. Good shit. 👌🏼
James Baldwin - The Fire Next Time
??? ??, ????
I distinctly remember reading this at an outdoor table at the La Bonita on Alberta Street during one of the last four summers, but apparently I never wrote it down. What the fuck.
Well, it's been long enough that I only have a vague impression of its content anymore. Also, I read it soon after Ta-Nehesi Coates'd done a periodic series of blog posts about Baldwin and his legacy, so I feel like what I'm most remembering is TNC's Baldwin rather than the undiluted substance.
It was a heady and confronting book, and quite short (two long essays), but that's almost all I remember of it — I retained the sensation, but I lost the précis. I'll have to revisit someday.
Various cartoonists - Wolfen Jump (comics)
Aug 9
This compilation is incredibly silly!! AFAICT the brief was "Whatever you want as long as WOLFMEN, also try and be at least slightly anime."
Most of the stories are like 8 pages tops, which isn't enough time to do... really... anything... story/character-wise, but at least 2/3 of them were good fun with high-quality high-personality art. If you're not sure whether to give a shit, read this and it should clear up everything.
Kimmy Walters - Uptalk (poetry)
Aug 9 (sorta)
Like with short stories, I don't read poetry collections whole or in order, and I always cache away fragments for winter.
Kimmy Walters writes the kind of poetry that characters in a Kelly Link story probably write. She is great. I also kind of want to name-check Aimee Bender here, too, but don't have a full theory of what the shared strand is. Pervasive surrealism combined with a method of playful transgression.
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Date: 2016-08-31 07:03 am (UTC)I liked that Tam Lin.
It gave me the headache, though. Not a headache. Books of that nature give me the headache.
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Date: 2016-08-31 06:40 pm (UTC)In that case you will almost definitely like The Secret History, because that sounds like a close relative to my reaction to that book.
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Date: 2016-08-31 08:05 pm (UTC)