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snowbenton
An absolutely bizarre tale of a family that founded a town called Macondo, and all of the things they did there. It's a fine form of magical realism, with the most painfully realistic events side by side with people conversing with ghosts and seeing flying carpets. The stream of consciousness narration is a bit exhausting, but it is meant to be an exhaustive look at this family from start to finish, and so it is forgivable.
Burton's sentences hit the page with the force of a shotgun and the precision of a sniper rifle. She does an amazing job of showing Nella's growth and slowly revealing each of the characters and how they have been formed by the contradictory city of Amsterdam. This book is an absolute gem.
Obreht spent so much time agonizing over wordplay and floaty language that she forgot that the whole point of a novel is to tell a story that makes someone feel. You start off thinking the story is about a young doctor, but nothing happens with her until she starts telling you about her grandfather, so you think the story is about him, but most of his stories are just stories about other people that drag on and on and have no effect on the story at hand, and serve to confuse and exasperate the reader. It is a dull and lifeless but pretty book.
An unexpectedly dark tale from such a charming title. This book kept my pulse racing as I wondered who to trust, what to believe, and just what the hell was going on. Jade is an indecisive and inadvertently unreliable narrator, but despite her flaws you were rooting for her: she had her feet firmly planted in the life she wanted to live, and didn't make dumb decisions. I loved the interplay between witch and vampire and werewolf, and her constant confusion was refreshing and realistic.
What could be more fun than an invented secret society with some of literature's best heroes doing cocaine and sleeping on deck chairs and creating puppet shows in an immobile submarine? Vila-Matas has crafted a tongue-in-cheek novella set in 1925 that waxes poetic on the idea of crafting fiction that is brief, intelligent, mad, and most of all, portable. It feels like fan fiction for a literary crowd. A charming and quick read.
The game started out like truth or dare; you'd play their made up version of poker and each friend would get various embarrassing challenges -- but when they start to up the ante to get each other to give up and lose, these friendships seem worthless in the face of the game. Narrated by one of the six friends fourteen years after the fact, you see the start of his madness in his college years and the full realization in the present day as the various surviving members of the group are revealed. The story itself feels dangerous to hold in your hands. A thrilling and memorable kind of fear.
Instead of the typical humorous essay style book written by most of his comedic contemporaries, Ansari decided instead to embark upon a research voyage to discuss the ins and outs of romance in the modern world. He travels across the world, interviews old and young people, asks questions during his stand up shows, and reveals his own relationship woes to provide examples of his subject matter. This book is equal parts hilarious and informative, and I highly recommend the audiobook to get the full effect of Ansari's humor.
Picture a feudal society with a figurehead ruler, religious wackos, a bunch of bisexual knights, and, oh yeah--most knights still ride horses, but the best knights ride dinosaurs. It's a great setup and the mythology is intriguing and the people's cultures are varied enough to keep things engaging (despite the highly derivative nomenclatures). Unfortunately, despite the fact that I was super excited that a lot of the warriors are women and women are respected, Milan chose to have his female main character raped for no reason other than to show her weakness, and lost me as a reader of his future books. I'd recommend it to fans of high fantasy looking for something strange built in the standard storylines.
