More happens in the first fifty pages of Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky than in entire novels I’ve read this year. It’s the lightning speed of the story that makes this book so damn hard…
Posts tagged 2010 Books
Literary husbandry
In my head if Mary Gaitskill’s writing and Philip Roth’s writing were to meet, have sex, and create a baby, that baby would be Gina Frangello’s writing. I choose Gaitskill because, like Frangello, she writes…
Hold me closer, Tiny Cooper
This is the tale of two Will Graysons. Capitalized Will Grayson who is BFFs with Tiny Cooper, a huge gay football star at their high school. And lower case will grayson who is a depressed…
The Great Literary Penis Embargo of 2010
That whole Franzen/Picoult/Wiener “boys get all the attention” kerfuffle, made me acutely aware that my To Read pile was leaning disturbingly masculine. While I haven’t quite sorted out my feelings about the dust up, I…
Tiger Beat: The Dead Author Special Issue
There is no way for me to adequately review David Lipsky’s erm, book-length interview? biography? of David Foster Wallace, Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself. Why? Because I approached the book like it…
A little bit of psychic humor
I tried really hard to hate Super Sad True Love Story. My past experiences reading Gary Shteyngart have left me feeling vaguely offended and greasy. So when I dove into this new novel, the darling…
Misery loves company
I need you to journey back in time with me. Back to the place before my brain was infected with Scott Pilgrim and when Ariel Schrag was the queen of my graphic novel universe. Remember…
A step down from Scott Pilgrim
Once I chewed through every Scott Pilgrim book currently available, I felt a little bereft. What was I going to do? I couldn’t just jump into another graphic novel. What if it wasn’t funny enough?…
Not a swallower
It’s never a good sign when it takes you months and months to read a book. It’s an even worse sign when that book is a graphic novel. But it took me roughly three months…