kurtwombat's reviews
883 reviews

Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris

Go to review page

funny reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Sedaris is not for everybody. Wildly divergent is a modest way to describe the reviews here and on Goodreads. The humor is dry and sarcastic and occasionally cute, a little can go a long way. It doesn’t help that this collection feels kinda tossed together.  There is a holiday theme but that feels thin and the stories vary in quality—you can feel that some have been sitting around longer than others. The collection starts on a high with THE SANTALAND DIARIES—a fantastic sarcastic classic. The next story SEASON’S GREETINGS TO OUR FRIENDS & FAMILY!!! was a departure but I enjoyed it—lucky to catch the tone at the beginning like a small wave. I can see how it would be easy to read the whole story and never quite get in sync with it’s slow decline into madness. After those two my mind started to wander. The next four stories making up the original book were just okay with DINAH, THE CHRISTMAS WHORE rising above the others. This edition included a batch of 6 new cast off stories that were passable—the exception being SIX TO EIGHT BLACK MEN. This achieved the writer’s dream of repeating the same punch line and it getting funnier every time. If you like this at all, I’d recommend ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY which is more consistent and often hilarious.
The Night Parade by Jami Nakamura Lin

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring sad fast-paced

4.25

The world is too big to understand it all at once so we create stories that help us figure it out a piece at a time. Stories that hang around long enough become myths—often beautiful and containing as much poetry as understanding. THE NIGHT PARADE author Jami Nakamura Lin tapped such myths for her memoir.  Her hope was to gain a better understanding of her life while also using her life to better understand the myths. The result is both beautiful and heartbreaking. The early part of the book focuses mostly on the author being bi-polar. Visiting  Japan as a young adult she found gods both capricious and ominous who became stand-ins for different aspects of her life while bi-polar. The book uses a Japanese four act narrative structure which along with enchanting art work by the author’s sister adds comforting layers of structure and a certain amount of grace.   Later the focus shifts more to the author dealing with a “post bi-polar” family life and then a devastating personal grief. I say “post” because unfortunately, after so much focus on her personal health in the first part—there is virtually no mention of it in the latter parts of the book. I assumed she had struck a balance with her medication but it almost felt like losing a limb with the weight of that part of the book suddenly disappearing. Another slight downside, the myths are layered on pretty thick and after a while it was difficult to keep all the gods and demons etc straight.   On the whole however, I feel like I gained a more emotional understanding of the author and a better historical context for the myths—their stories working in service of each other. 
Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir by Werner Herzog

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

5.0

 
This book is simply astonishing. We follow the insatiably curious and creative mind of Werner Herzog from his starved childhood sleeping under a thin blanket in an unheated home in German winter to his self-invention as  an often honored world travelling filmmaker who chases ideas and not dollars. You don’t have to be interested in movies or have even heard of the author to fall under this book’s spell. Movies are referred to mainly for the ideas he was trying to pursue, secondarily how the process affected him and what he learned and rarely what benefit or boost his career received. You can see Herzog reflected back by the friends he has made and the dramatic depth of their connections. His ability to endure and his willingness to keep putting himself in situations where that endurance would be tested provokes the reader throughout the book to ask how and why. The narration left my mind swimming with often hallucinatory visuals and the details he cuts into his memories are almost painterly precise as if each word a frame, each chapter a scene and the book as a whole a dream on film. I listened to the audio version read by the author—his deep and gravelly voice is almost like a musical accompaniment bringing his words to life.  This book is simply astonishing. 
Palimpsest: A History of the Written Word by Matthew Battles

Go to review page

Did not finish book. Stopped at 18%.
Found the writing style precious and annoying.
Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher

Go to review page

challenging funny informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Go to review page

emotional funny hopeful lighthearted medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I have often wondered what it must be like to sing—to let loose a voice that moves others. To not just sing along but cast your voice alone upon the air unsupported to fly and land on it’s own. Maybe it is like flying. Just you--clear of obstacles and free of weight, all directions and distances available and possible. Beautiful. That’s how I feel reading F. Scott Fitzgerald. He writes so beautifully, his sentences often sing and seem to fly. There are times where I have sat startled by his prose. He is often romanticized as a writer partly because of this skill, but also because of the flapper age he was immersed in and the age of his death—44. (And then there’s Zelda). More famous now for his novels, it was short stories that made his living. They aren’t as well remembered but still show that Fitzgerald could write but also write whatever he wanted. I started this thinking it would be one flapper tale after another. The ease and fashion of the roaring 20’s does permeate much of this collection, but there is more to see. He touches on fantasy (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button),  adventure (The Diamond as Big as the Ritz), mock playwriting (Mr. Icky), being Henry James (The Lees of Happiness) and fun with hillbillies (Jemina, the Mountain Girl) all with equal skill. Had he been able to fly in real life, free of money worries, worry over Zelda’s decline in health and the scourge of alcohol, who knows what he might have produced. But that always begs the question, how much did he produce because of enduring those liabilities. All that being said, this is obviously worth a look—not everything ages well (Mr Icky & Porcelain and Pink). My favorites are probably O Russet Witch & The Camel’s Back but there is plenty to enjoy.
 
 
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Go to review page

emotional funny inspiring reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

 
I have wanted to read this for 40 years. It was published while I was in college and was very buzzed about—I remember seeing it everywhere but it never popped up in my syllabus (and syllabus is a word I haven’t thought of in 40 years—in fact, just saying it out loud vexes me).  Natural to build up some expectation in that time—and natural to experience a modest let down—however I was delighted the whole time. The hubbub when it came out was that it opened a door to Hispanic culture. A culture rarely referenced in American Literature, and certainly not from a female perspective. This book helped the pulse of Hispanic life beat on the page for the first time. Not really a novel and not really a collection of short stories, Cisneros uses brief snapshots or impressions to vividly put together a story. Each part is a well-crafted little darling. Adolescent Esperanza narrates her life in working class Chicago with just the right details about her small adventures to create a vivid and embracing tapestry. Small revelations relate to big truths—the neighborhood is the world. Designed so you can drop in anywhere and read randomly but there is a feeling by the end that Esperanza has matured and we see many of the forces that have shaped her.

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.25

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

5.0

 
This staggering work seeks to reset our understanding of slavery and its lingering aftermath—to take our limited view of history and expand it dramatically—like an empty balloon suddenly filled. It does so with a collection of essays that approach our American history and our American present from many different angles—political, economic, geographic, psychological, sociological etc. The essays are bridged by recollections and poetry and short fiction that act as palate cleansers before the plunge into the next demanding chapter.  I listened to the 18+ hour audiobook and enjoyed the different voices—especially when the bridges were performed. The spoken narration drew me out of myself and I believe I was more receptive to the information. The bridges reaffirmed what the chapters had to say or prefaced what was to come.  The essays themselves vary in quality and impact but as a collection 1619 packs quite a wallop—alternately inspiring outrage and sadness but always inspiring. I understand the desire to add this to school curriculums—and even to create entire courses around it (I think in some form or another it should be in every school until our educational system improves enough to grow beyond it)—but I would encourage close monitoring for younger readers. Some of this material, making up the fabric of our nation, covers the worst of what humanity is capable—horrific  brutality the thread of which still runs through today.  Indeed much of the impact comes from blending the intimate with the big picture—looking into the eyes of history. I see this book as kind of a solution guide. I knew there was a puzzle and I could see some of the pieces and suspected there were others but I had no idea how many or how they all fit together. If you doubt the need for such a book, take a look at a few of the one star reviews—filled with the kind of negative passion born of ignorance and fear. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
Walking the Black Cat by Charles Simic

Go to review page

dark funny mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? N/A
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

From the first words, I felt on familiar ground—a place synthesized from my love of noir films, Paul Auster novels and driving at night with nowhere to be. Tight visual language and deceptively simple scenes create images that impact and linger. Curious to read more to see if this is the street Simic lives on or if he was just visiting. I love this as if I had lived my life to read it. (Maybe a bit overblown—but have I got your attention?)