postmodernblues's Reviews (465)

This book would be so good if it was about 30% more bizarre.

I need to read every afrofuturist novel right now immediately.

Not amazing, but not bad either. The word I'd use is "serviceable". It was an enjoyable rom-com, but it didn't do anything particularly brilliantly. Also, it's essentially just Notting Hill but in New York and with a bodega employee instead of a bookstore employee and Selena Gom- I mean- "Leanna Smart" instead of Julia Roberts.

I feel it is immensely important that you, the reader, know that in this volume of the Ghostbusters comic series, there is an extended scene in which Ray Stantz dreams vividly that he is Austin Millbarge (Dan Aykroyd's character from Spies Like Us) snowboarding in the USSR with a busty blonde woman clinging onto him being chased by two masked pursuers who double as a covert Blues Brothers reference, at which point the busty blonde woman partially transforms into a blonde, blue-skinned, large-breasted John Belushi (as Jake Blues aka Ray's spirit guide) who then proceeds to pester him regarding the issue of Dimensional Shifting.

If that doesn't convince you to sit your ass down and read this comic series, I just don't know what will. You can't get this shit from anywhere else.

Also, there is a very obscure, blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to Dan Aykroyd's niche 1990 comedy Loose Cannons. And I suspect I and the illustrator are the only ones who got it.

"Are you asking if I believe in ghosts?"
"I don't know. Maybe. Yes."
"Of course not. Imagine how many there'd be."
- Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven, page 308

This book is at its best when Steve Martin's particular brand of comedy shines through. His style of writing is unique and literary, and you can almost sort of hear it in his voice. The best thing about it is undoubtedly the commentary it carries on the (late 90's early 2000's) culture of LA. The cruelty of the city and the desperation of Mirabelle in particular is felt in descriptions only a celebrity of Steve Martin's magnitude and longevity could craft. The characters are suitably complex and their relationships are messy, which is most certainly the point; however, a little bit of "show, don't tell" might have been constructive with some aspects of characterization. Given that it was his first novella, however, I'm somewhat impressed. Will watch the movie and report back.

"... it must have been a solemn and moving thing to see this beautiful animal, in the midst of the first labor of her life, performing upon herself, with no help but unerringly, as though directed by some divine wisdom, the delicate and complicated business of creation."  -J.R. Ackerley, My Dog Tulip, page 131

This is my first foray into dog lit as a cat person, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised and quite taken with this story. Ackerley's prose is comforting and familiar, and his discussion of Tulip's sexual journeys is refreshingly blunt. I have read a number of reviews from people uncomfortable with this aspect of the book, but I found it both interesting and relevant, particularly taking into account Ackerley's own sexuality. A great deal of Tulip's sexual frustrations seem to mirror those a gay man might have had in the 1950's in Britain. 

"The truth is that nothing is less sensational than pestilence, and by reason of their very duration great misfortunes are monotonous. In the memories of those who lived through them, the grim days of plague do not stand out like vivid flames, ravenous and inextinguishable, beaconing a troubled sky, but rather like the slow, deliberate progress of some monstrous thing crushing out all upon its path."  -Albert Camus, The Plague, page 179