Posted by Kurt
I really didn't expect to finish this book. My impression for the first few chapters was, "Wow, this is like a regular bad airport paperback, but with added preachy Recovery jargon." Characters bounce around the various settings, not so much having conversations as quoting from the Big Book at each other. Even when they aren't spouting proverbs from 12-step programs, the dialogue is simply horrendous (for example, a young woman bursts into a scene to stop someone from hitting her friend, and when the potential aggressor asks if he knows her, she responds, "You should. Because a******s like you have been stepping on my feet and ramming pencils up my nose since before I knew what feet and pencils were. You've got a big f*****g truck where your soul should be, and you want to drive it over someone, but you can't because it's encased in flesh and you would die if you tried." I'm serious. This dialogue is presented as realistic for the situation. If you buy this book, then you are paying for this dialogue.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
What to Look for in Winter: A Memoir in Blindness
Posted by Kurt
Candia McWilliam is a supernaturally gifted writer, able to craft prose into unforgettable images and potent insights. Her latest book contains breathtaking observations and crippling emotional honesty. What a shame, then, that so much of it is a waste of her talent that makes the memoir as a whole such a chore to finish.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
One for the Road: Drunk Driving Since 1900
Posted by Kurt
No one approaches drunk driving policy in a vacuum. Each person has a background and a bias, and the most impressive part of this book is that Dr. Lerner is quite clear about his bias and then tries hard to craft a balanced history book that will help inform readers from other backgrounds. Dr. Lerner is an expert in public health issues, and he writes a passionate story of the way that drunk driving (and public perceptions of drunk driving, from media coverage to legislation) has had an impact on public health in the last hundred years. I had a hard time reading this book because of my own personal perspectives, but it does contain a wealth of information, organized in an effective way to tell the story of a nation that is failing to keep its people safe on the roads.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
The Mirage
Posted by Kurt
Matt Ruff has written a novel that, in many ways, is a perfectly fine political thriller. Three government agents fight a terrorist plot and find themselves drawn into a world of political intrigue full of gangsters and corruption and gunfights. At that level, the book would be at home on a rack in an airport bookstore - nothing special, but a perfectly competent example of the genre. The central hook to this book, though, the thing that makes it a must-read, is that this is not our world - in this world, at some vague time around the turn of the twentieth century, the United States degenerated into a loose sprawl of squabbling states run by fundamentalist despots, and the Muslim world united into the globe's dominant superpower. So in this mirage world, the three government agents are named Mustafa, Samir, and Amal, they work in a Baghdad still adjusting to the loss of its World Trade Center towers (after Christian fundamentalists flew planes into them), and the leaders of organized crime and political corruption are Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
The Odd Clauses: Understanding the Constitution Through Ten of Its Most Curious Provisions
Posted by Kurt
I went to a prestigious law school, and I've been practicing as a public defender for more than five years, and until I read this book, I thought I didn't like Constitutional law. The big Constitutional cases tended to be confusing and dishonest examples of judges using implausible means to reach the ends they thought were most just (Wexler completely wins my heart again when he comments that Supreme Court justices like three-part tests almost as much as they like big corporations), and they tended to look much more like politics than legal reasoning. Through these odd clauses, though, Wexler has made me respect the Constitution (and the history of its interpretations) much more.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
We Bought a Zoo (2011)
Posted by Kurt
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Mega-Python vs. Gatoroid
Posted by Matt
I love cheesy sci-fi monster movies. I love pop music. And I am prepared to tell you all about a battle royale pitting Debbie Gibson against Tiffany against a few CGI reptiles...Spoiler alert
I love cheesy sci-fi monster movies. I love pop music. And I am prepared to tell you all about a battle royale pitting Debbie Gibson against Tiffany against a few CGI reptiles...Spoiler alert
Friday, December 2, 2011
Explosive Eighteen
Posted by Matt
Janet Evanovich writes a series of mystery novels about a Jersey girl who finds herself a job as a bounty hunter, using her charm to overcome her lack of any real talent at catching bad guys. Each book has a number in the title, and this is the eighteenth. On the one hand, the audience is built in - we've read seventeen of these adventures, the odds are we're still on board, even if she does phone this one in. But the book has its importance a little elevated. For one, this novel follows Evanovich's best cliffhanger yet, and for another, this is the last book published before Katherine Heigl attempts to embody lead character Stephanie Plum on the big screen this spring. I am pleased to report that the book is a success, with the mild annoyance of an abrupt ending. At the close of the last book, Evanovich teased a resolution to the series's love triangle - Stephanie was going on vacation with ONE of her suitors, and we weren't going to learn who until the next book. I was expecting this book to start by telling us who got that other ticket, and I thought we'd read about that couple solving a mystery in Hawaii instead of the usual Trenton haunts. Instead, the book opens with Stephanie sneaking back home, and for a hundred pages, the author drops clues about what happened without yet revealing. It was a great way to hold my attention, with pacing worthy of the best primetime dramas as they return from summer hiatus. The rest of the book was the usual enjoyable action, comedy, and romance. Reading it reminded me of how she described morning sex - satisfying and enjoyable, but not a marathon because everyone has something else to do that day. This woman has learned what works for this series, and I recommend new readers take a look at One For The Money. By the time you get to Explosive Eighteen, you'll be thanking me.
Janet Evanovich writes a series of mystery novels about a Jersey girl who finds herself a job as a bounty hunter, using her charm to overcome her lack of any real talent at catching bad guys. Each book has a number in the title, and this is the eighteenth. On the one hand, the audience is built in - we've read seventeen of these adventures, the odds are we're still on board, even if she does phone this one in. But the book has its importance a little elevated. For one, this novel follows Evanovich's best cliffhanger yet, and for another, this is the last book published before Katherine Heigl attempts to embody lead character Stephanie Plum on the big screen this spring. I am pleased to report that the book is a success, with the mild annoyance of an abrupt ending. At the close of the last book, Evanovich teased a resolution to the series's love triangle - Stephanie was going on vacation with ONE of her suitors, and we weren't going to learn who until the next book. I was expecting this book to start by telling us who got that other ticket, and I thought we'd read about that couple solving a mystery in Hawaii instead of the usual Trenton haunts. Instead, the book opens with Stephanie sneaking back home, and for a hundred pages, the author drops clues about what happened without yet revealing. It was a great way to hold my attention, with pacing worthy of the best primetime dramas as they return from summer hiatus. The rest of the book was the usual enjoyable action, comedy, and romance. Reading it reminded me of how she described morning sex - satisfying and enjoyable, but not a marathon because everyone has something else to do that day. This woman has learned what works for this series, and I recommend new readers take a look at One For The Money. By the time you get to Explosive Eighteen, you'll be thanking me.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Break the Spell (2 of 2)
Posted by Kurt
I started my review of Daughtry's new album, Break the Spell, here. This is the rest of the review, starting with the most embarrassing track on the album.
Break the Spell (1 of 2)
Posted by Kurt
I am a semi-secret fan of Daughtry. I liked his sound on American Idol, I loved his self-titled debut album, and I basically liked his follow-up album, Leave This Town. I’m aware that I lose any snob street cred by liking his music, but I can’t help myself. When I noticed an opportunity to pre-order his third album, Break the Spell, on iTunes, I put it on my credit card without a second thought. And while, at this point, you already know whether or not you like Daughtry and are interested in a predictable third album, so it’s kind of stupid to write a review.. I am that kind of stupid, so here we go.
I am a semi-secret fan of Daughtry. I liked his sound on American Idol, I loved his self-titled debut album, and I basically liked his follow-up album, Leave This Town. I’m aware that I lose any snob street cred by liking his music, but I can’t help myself. When I noticed an opportunity to pre-order his third album, Break the Spell, on iTunes, I put it on my credit card without a second thought. And while, at this point, you already know whether or not you like Daughtry and are interested in a predictable third album, so it’s kind of stupid to write a review.. I am that kind of stupid, so here we go.
Friday, November 11, 2011
420 Characters
Posted by Kurt
This beautiful collection of hyper-minimalist stories is simply stunning. Lou Beach presents himself with a simple challenge - make an impact in a Facebook status update, which means writing 420 characters or fewer - and succeeds in roughly 160 different ways. Each page of this collection is one status update, each standing independently but some tracing faint connections through the volume in a vaguely Spoon River Anthology kind of way. Some are complete stories with a beginning, middle, and end, and some are completely surreal images that don’t have an obvious surface-level connection, but most are single rich images that suggest much larger stories. I have been madly in love with minimalism since reading a Chuck Palahniuk essay about Amy Hempel (and then devouring each of her collections), and most of Beach’s work compares well with the best of Hempel’s creations. Beach clearly understands exactly how to cultivate just the most evocative details of a scene, like a cowboy realizing that all of his lover’s letters have taken on the aroma of campfires, a child absorbing the warmth of a small wooden bridge while dropping pebbles into the stream below, or three lines of dialogue that suggest the overall shape of a passionate argument.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Comics roundup 11/2/11
Posted by Matt
Mostly new business with the X-Men as the rest of the comic world shakes off that last crossover...
Mostly new business with the X-Men as the rest of the comic world shakes off that last crossover...
Friday, October 28, 2011
The Song is You
Posted by Kurt
This fascinating hipster love story isn't quite as charming as (500) Days of Summer, but I was enchanted by it anyway. The main protagonist (Julian) is a director with a self-consciously astounding collection of music on his iPod, and the novel is generally about his love for Cait, a young Irish rock star on the rise. Their courtship is truly unique, as he gives her hard advice to make her a better artist, and she begins writing the next steps of the relationship into her songs. As the love story develops, though, the book gets more complicated in unexpected but strangely inevitable ways. He follows her around like a man in love, and Phillips is a strong author who is able to subtly shift perspectives and introduce enough doubt to make the reader uncomfortably confront the idea that he may also be following her around like an unwanted stalker. What if, for example, an anonymous message was from some other admirer? What if he is creating his love's reciprocal feelings from inside his own head? It is occasionally nauseating and often creepy and kind of exactly how I think hipster love goes.
This fascinating hipster love story isn't quite as charming as (500) Days of Summer, but I was enchanted by it anyway. The main protagonist (Julian) is a director with a self-consciously astounding collection of music on his iPod, and the novel is generally about his love for Cait, a young Irish rock star on the rise. Their courtship is truly unique, as he gives her hard advice to make her a better artist, and she begins writing the next steps of the relationship into her songs. As the love story develops, though, the book gets more complicated in unexpected but strangely inevitable ways. He follows her around like a man in love, and Phillips is a strong author who is able to subtly shift perspectives and introduce enough doubt to make the reader uncomfortably confront the idea that he may also be following her around like an unwanted stalker. What if, for example, an anonymous message was from some other admirer? What if he is creating his love's reciprocal feelings from inside his own head? It is occasionally nauseating and often creepy and kind of exactly how I think hipster love goes.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Run For Your Lives! (3 of 3)
Posted by Kurt
He is tall, with very short hair and a generally thoughtful expression. He wears a tattered suit covered with blood. She has a beautiful dress, like a glass of champagne, that would be more presentable if not for the occasional bloody stab wound. Her hair is an enormous frizzy white wig, and it looks like the only part of her costume untouched by blood. They are ready for prom, and very much in love. When humans appear, they stand next to each other as they lurch after stragglers, but in their down times, he stands with a hand casually resting on her hip. In the morning chill, his shredded jacket offers little warmth, but it’s on her shoulders when they don't have to perform. When her wild hair begins to bother her, he tears a strip of “caution” tape from the end of a barrier so that she can tie it back, and when she wants it to go wild again for a later wave of humans, she ties the tape around her ribs. In the warmth of the early afternoon sun, they curl up together on the grass, fitting together like pieces of a puzzle. When a young human woman dashes shrieking through the zombie horde in an.. impractical costume.. the zombie prom date turns to her boyfriend and mutters an observation about the runner’s motivations for her wardrobe choice, then gives him a grin that is made just a bit more charming by the shine of fake blood that covers her jaw, neck, and chest, like she has just aggressively imbibed spiked punch directly from the bowl. From time to time between waves of runners, the zombies making small talk will glance at the prom couple and confirm to each other that we are all completely in love with them.
He is tall, with very short hair and a generally thoughtful expression. He wears a tattered suit covered with blood. She has a beautiful dress, like a glass of champagne, that would be more presentable if not for the occasional bloody stab wound. Her hair is an enormous frizzy white wig, and it looks like the only part of her costume untouched by blood. They are ready for prom, and very much in love. When humans appear, they stand next to each other as they lurch after stragglers, but in their down times, he stands with a hand casually resting on her hip. In the morning chill, his shredded jacket offers little warmth, but it’s on her shoulders when they don't have to perform. When her wild hair begins to bother her, he tears a strip of “caution” tape from the end of a barrier so that she can tie it back, and when she wants it to go wild again for a later wave of humans, she ties the tape around her ribs. In the warmth of the early afternoon sun, they curl up together on the grass, fitting together like pieces of a puzzle. When a young human woman dashes shrieking through the zombie horde in an.. impractical costume.. the zombie prom date turns to her boyfriend and mutters an observation about the runner’s motivations for her wardrobe choice, then gives him a grin that is made just a bit more charming by the shine of fake blood that covers her jaw, neck, and chest, like she has just aggressively imbibed spiked punch directly from the bowl. From time to time between waves of runners, the zombies making small talk will glance at the prom couple and confirm to each other that we are all completely in love with them.
Run For Your Lives! (Part 2 of 3)
Posted by Kurt
A young man waits in the staging area before he begins his run. Jay wears a torn white dress shirt and plaid pants, all stained with fake blood. He has rubbed mud in his hair and fixed a false laceration along his cheekbone. As a zombie volunteer in the morning, he perfected a curious pretzel-shaped crouch, with his arms at unnatural and unsettling angles that just happened to be perfect for suddenly snatching at an inattentive runner’s flag, but now his shift is over, and he is ready to experience the other side of the event. He is an accomplished runner, with experience completing masochistic ultra-marathons and pushing himself for 24 hour races, but this is his first time to dodge zombies on his way through an obstacle course.
Run For Your Lives! (Part 1 of 3)
Posted by Kurt
A strikingly beautiful young woman stands in an open field, with her boots drenched in dew and her arm thrust into the air. She holds an orange strip of plastic like a macabre trophy for all to see. She has big pale eyes and bright white teeth, which look even brighter when contrasted with the thick layers of dirt and sticky fake blood all over her face. She wears an outfit that is the kind of thing a pretty girl wears when she dresses down - boots, but they’re cute Uggs; a jacket and some flannel stained from copious amounts of fake blood, but they fit her very well. The look, whether she intends it or not, is “sorority girl goes on a wholesome family camping trip and gets infected by the zombie plague,” with the thick bloodstains around her mouth suggesting the fates of her family members. When she’s in character, stumbling around and groaning, she’s a very scary zombie, hitting you right in the “this could happen to anyone” place in your gut. Out of character, though, she makes funny jokes about “Lindsey Lohan on a good day” being her favorite zombie, and she drifts through the field of off-duty zombies with a cute friend from home, meeting people and enjoying the excitement of the morning.
At this moment, though, she has just withstood her first wave of potential human victims, and she has claimed her trophy. The orange plastic quivers a bit from her excitement, subtly evoking images of a ghoulish Statue of Liberty, and she shouts, “I’m not even a chaser, but that bitch was slow!”
Thursday, October 13, 2011
The Buddha in the Attic
Posted by Kurt
This lyrical, elegant, potent book is a completely worthy follow-up to Otsuka’s first book, When the Emperor Was Divine, and may be even more emotionally powerful. It is not exactly a novel in the traditional sense, as there is no plot, simply a montage of images and simple observations about the experience of Japanese women who came to California before World War II as brides for men they had never met The images flow like a dream that gets quietly more nightmarish until the horrifying and inevitable end at the time of the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942. The chapters are loosely bound by topic (the journey by sea, shared experiences of childbirth, details from the day that the Japanese Americans leave their homes, etc.) and mostly told in the first person plural. This narrative decision is beautiful, churning up history out of a collective experience, presenting contradictions without apology (something like, “We came from X background, and it made us like this. We came from Y background, and it made us like this,” creates delicate tensions that make the story both communal and individual, and I love it).
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs
Posted by Kurt
I have recently had a hunger for the genre of "smart people writing about stupid things," and this book is my new favorite example. While Klosterman may not deserve to be considered a subversive genius, he is a very smart person writing very good analysis of very shallow things, and I love it. This collection of essays includes a comparison of Pamela Anderson and Marilyn Monroe to examine the way our cultural attitudes toward sex have changed (nothing groundbreaking, but the essay is earnest and respectful, even as it touches on the pornographic), a reflection on the way The Real World has altered how young people see their real-life social groupings, a story of the author's time coaching Little League that made me laugh out loud to the point where I had to stop reading for a while, and more. There is a traditionally journalistic portrait of a Guns 'N Roses cover band, which delves into what the cover band phenomenon says about music and our society, and one of the only respectable analyses of Saved By The Bell that I have ever read (it doesn't pretend that the show was good, or entertaining, or coherent - it just looks at the various pieces and how they fit together in a way that considered what fans wanted/needed). There is also a haunting little essay about the cultural impact of serial killers, filled with impressive interviews and some soul-baring on the part of Klosterman. I even liked the essays about sports, although my eyes glazed over while I skimmed through the sections with way too much detail about a topic I loathe.
I have recently had a hunger for the genre of "smart people writing about stupid things," and this book is my new favorite example. While Klosterman may not deserve to be considered a subversive genius, he is a very smart person writing very good analysis of very shallow things, and I love it. This collection of essays includes a comparison of Pamela Anderson and Marilyn Monroe to examine the way our cultural attitudes toward sex have changed (nothing groundbreaking, but the essay is earnest and respectful, even as it touches on the pornographic), a reflection on the way The Real World has altered how young people see their real-life social groupings, a story of the author's time coaching Little League that made me laugh out loud to the point where I had to stop reading for a while, and more. There is a traditionally journalistic portrait of a Guns 'N Roses cover band, which delves into what the cover band phenomenon says about music and our society, and one of the only respectable analyses of Saved By The Bell that I have ever read (it doesn't pretend that the show was good, or entertaining, or coherent - it just looks at the various pieces and how they fit together in a way that considered what fans wanted/needed). There is also a haunting little essay about the cultural impact of serial killers, filled with impressive interviews and some soul-baring on the part of Klosterman. I even liked the essays about sports, although my eyes glazed over while I skimmed through the sections with way too much detail about a topic I loathe.
Songs for Fall 2011
Posted by Matt
The radio in my area has been really disappointing, overplaying autotuned assaults between aggressive commercial breaks, so for the past few months I have gotten my recommendations for new music from podcasts, the iTunes free songs of the week, recommendations of friends, and SoundHounding in public. In case you're in the same boat, here are some of my top songs for Fall 2011 (all available on iTunes):
The radio in my area has been really disappointing, overplaying autotuned assaults between aggressive commercial breaks, so for the past few months I have gotten my recommendations for new music from podcasts, the iTunes free songs of the week, recommendations of friends, and SoundHounding in public. In case you're in the same boat, here are some of my top songs for Fall 2011 (all available on iTunes):
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Shot Through Velvet
Posted by Matt
This is the seventh book in a series by Elaine Byerrum where the mysteries get solved based on clues the astute Washington DC fashion reporter picks up. The series has been generally fun, with entertaining supporting characters and cute fashion articles between chapters. But the books have usually dropped in quality when the authors devotes more time to the sleuth's social life than to the mystery, and this book demonstrates that. It starts where Lacey is writing an article about how the economic downturn means that American fabrics like velvet are no longer being produced, and Byerrum builds an intriguing mystery around this dying little factory town, but around a hundred pages in, Lacey goes home to DC to spend a couple hundred pages killing time with her girlfriends, and by the time we get back to the mystery, I had forgotten the suspects and motivations. Overall, I did enjoy this entry, but I hope the writer will focus future books a little better.
This is the seventh book in a series by Elaine Byerrum where the mysteries get solved based on clues the astute Washington DC fashion reporter picks up. The series has been generally fun, with entertaining supporting characters and cute fashion articles between chapters. But the books have usually dropped in quality when the authors devotes more time to the sleuth's social life than to the mystery, and this book demonstrates that. It starts where Lacey is writing an article about how the economic downturn means that American fabrics like velvet are no longer being produced, and Byerrum builds an intriguing mystery around this dying little factory town, but around a hundred pages in, Lacey goes home to DC to spend a couple hundred pages killing time with her girlfriends, and by the time we get back to the mystery, I had forgotten the suspects and motivations. Overall, I did enjoy this entry, but I hope the writer will focus future books a little better.
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