en-US Sun, 03 Nov 2024 18:39:16 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 964455 213 Derek Raymond 1852427981 Adam 4 3.92 1986
author: Derek Raymond
name: Adam
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1986
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves: horror-disguised-as-literature, heart-of-darkness, noir
review:

]]> 48484 Two months since the stars fell...

Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.

Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees X-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won’t be needed, and a fainter hope she’ll do any good if she is needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called “vampire,�� recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist �� an informational topologist with half his mind gone �� as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to find.

But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…]]> 384 Peter Watts 0765312182 Adam 5 4.01 2006
author: Peter Watts
name: Adam
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: literature-disguised-as-science-fic
review:
Crank up some Xenakis and Penderecki and abandon hope all ye who enter here. A book as monolithic and labyrinthine as the alien artifact at the heart of it. A grim yet psychedelic book which probably earns Watts place as the new James W. Campbell. A dystopia and a first contact story bent into odd shapes like a bristling metal sculpture. Disturbingly, as hallucinatory as most sections of this book are, Watts seemed to have scientific rational for most of it. A stunning look at consciousness, identity, reality, extraterrestrial life, technology, evolution, psychology, this is very difficult but mind altering experience if you let it. A future as weird and baroque as those pictured by Greg Egan and Charles Stross, scientifically plausible vampires (a branch of lost evolution), people turning to stone, a person with multiple personalities call The Gang of Four, truly alien aliens, and bleak a view of the universe as Lovecraft or Alastair Reynolds. Wow! The notes and references are worth price of entry alone.
]]> 1939682 200 Mervyn Peake 072061306X Adam 4 4.07
author: Mervyn Peake
name: Adam
average rating: 4.07
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/12/23
shelves: horror-disguised-as-literature
review:

]]> 2043342
Tommaso Landolfi is one of Italy's greatest writers, and this volume represents his finest work of the past ten years.

Landolfi's universe is peopled by madmen, fantasists, talking animals, robots, anguished lovers—it is funny, sometimes horrifying, and always bewitching.

The title story, for instance, in the best science-fiction tradition, concerns the spaceship Cancerqueen, which whisks off to the moon a mad scientist and an equally deranged writer. But Cancerqueen herself is no model of mental health either, and in a hair-rising and riotous climax the three characters find their deserved ends. At once, "Cancerqueen", parodies and extends the methods of Poe and H. G. Wells.

Landolfi's writings recall Gogol for their sharp humor, Kafka for their sense of the fantastic, Borges for stylistic wit. But Landolfi's individuality and range have forced his critics to abandon all notions of critical categories and to designate him, simply, an original.

Titles within:
- A Note on Landolfi
- The Mute
- Hands
- Stefano's Two Sons
- Autumn
- Cancerqueen
- Fable
- Misdeal
- [Untitled]
- Looking
- A Family Chat
- At the Station
- Venetian Dialogue
- Week of Sun
- The Sword
- The Calculations of Probability
- "Night Must Fall"
- Shadows]]> 276 Tommaso Landolfi Adam 4 3.93
author: Tommaso Landolfi
name: Adam
average rating: 3.93
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/08/01
shelves:
review:
One of his characters jokingly says when describing sensations that names invoke, “Tommaso is like a ball of tar.�� Strangely true. Landolfi offers a dark hearted mysterious collection filled with flitting images of chased meaning, unease, strange humor, obsessions, gothic atmospheres, and general creepiness. Ranging from odd dialogues, fable like stories, Beckett like rants and in the title story, a Jules Verne style sci-fi adventure (but rewritten by Poe or Gogol). Enigmatic and unsettling for the most part this a great collection if you can find it, and like Poe, Gogol, Borges, Dino Buzzati or Dineson, or more recent practitioners of weird fiction like D.F. Lewis, Jeffrey Ford, or Thomas Ligotti.
]]> 28377 245 Boris Vian 1564782999 Adam 5 4.07 1953
author: Boris Vian
name: Adam
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1953
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/07/29
shelves: surrealism-dada-classics, black-comedy, literature-fantastique
review:

]]> 6086315 83 Alan Moore 1603090002 Adam 5 3.42 2011
author: Alan Moore
name: Adam
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/07/25
shelves: black-comedy, literature-fantastique, steampunkery
review:
The new League storyline seems written for me and my personal obsessions... this episode is manic comedy, a penny dreadful musical, Bertold Brecht, nightmarish augury, and dreadful violence. Working up to be a metatextual rewrite of the last century. Looking good so far. The next episode will involve Rosemary's Baby and Jerry Cornelius...I can ask for nothing more. Appearances by characters from Iain Sinclair(and looking exactly like Iain Sinclair)and Hodgson among many others add to the reference spotting fun(something some people tire of, but I never ever will)
]]> 6621343 Released in 2005, West Coast Blues (Le Petit bleu de la côte ouest) is Tardi's adaptation of a popular 1976 novel by the French crime writer Jean-Patrick Manchette. (The novel had been previously adapted to film under the more literal title Trois hommes à abattre, and was released in English by the San Francisco-based publisher City Lights under the English version of the same title, "3 to Kill".) Tardi's late-period, looser style infuses Manchette's dark story with a seething, malevolent energy; he doesn't shy away from the frequently grisly goings-on, while maintaining (particularly in the old-married-couple-style bickering of the two killers who are tracking Gerfaut) the mordant wit that characterizes his best work. This is the kind of graphic novel that Quentin Tarantino would love, and a double shot of Scotch for any fan of unrelenting, uncompromising crime fiction]]> 80 Jacques Tardi 1606992953 Adam 5 3.84
author: Jacques Tardi
name: Adam
average rating: 3.84
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/07/19
shelves: black-comedy, heart-of-darkness, noir
review:

]]> 70256
Within the concealing walls of an elegant forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on ‘enemy�� floors and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for riots and technological mayhem.

In this visionary tale of urban disillusionment society slips into a violent reverse as the isolated inhabitants of the high-rise, driven by primal urges, create a dystopian world ruled by the laws of the jungle.

This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Iain Sinclair, Ali Smith, Neil Gaiman and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs.]]> 272 J.G. Ballard 0586044566 Adam 4 3.85 1975
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Adam
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1975
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/02/17
shelves: black-comedy, literature-disguised-as-science-fic, horror-disguised-as-literature
review:
This novel is a cross between Lord of the Flies and Absurdist Theater. Another entry in Ballard’s obsessive cataloging of the thin barrier separating humanity from complete savagery and the compliance of technology in breaking of that barrier. The absurdity of the situation (break down of order in a high rise that everyone refuses to leave) and the sensory realism make a disconcerting and affecting blend. An onslaught of sensory details and the darkest cooks and crannies of human malevolence. Little goes unexplored with voyeurism, violence, cannibalism, incest, and much more. Ballard’s novels can lose me, but the focused surrealism of this, Crash, and The Unlimited Dream Company, while grisly, have a savage uncomfortable appeal.
]]> 244262
The Street of Crocodiles in the Polish city of Drogobych is a street of memories and dreams where recollections of Bruno Schulz's uncommon boyhood and of the eerie side of his merchant family's life are evoked in a startling blend of the real and the fantastic. Most memorable - and most chilling - is the portrait of the author's father, a maddened shopkeeper who imports rare birds' eggs to hatch in his attic, who believes tailors' dummies should be treated like people, and whose obsessive fear of cockroaches causes him to resemble one.

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is the second and final work of Bruno Schulz, the acclaimed Polish writer killed by the Nazis during World War II. In the words of Isaac Bashevis Singer, "What he did in his short life was enough to make him one of the most remarkable writers who ever lived." Weaving myth, fantasy, and reality, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, is, to quote Schulz, "an attempt at eliciting the history of a certain family...by a search for the mythical sense, the essential core of that history.]]> 304 Bruno Schulz 0330304119 Adam 5 4.22 1933
author: Bruno Schulz
name: Adam
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1933
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/06/23
shelves:
review:

]]> 160315 208 Robert Walser 1852422769 Adam 5 4.00 1982
author: Robert Walser
name: Adam
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1982
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/02/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 672484 1952 Edward Gibbon 0679423087 Adam 0 to-read 4.34 1776
author: Edward Gibbon
name: Adam
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1776
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/11/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 89559
Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.]]> 466 William Hope Hodgson 189238941X Adam 3 4.22
author: William Hope Hodgson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.22
book published:
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/06/23
shelves:
review:

]]> 60501
This edition contains the following short stories:

Rashomon
The Nose
Kesa and Morito
The Spider's Thread
Hell Screen
The Ball
Tu Tze-chun
Autumn Mountain
In a Grove
The Faint Smiles of the Gods
San Sebastian
Cogwheels
A Fool's Life
A Note to a Certain Old Friend]]> 240 Ryūnosuke Akutagawa 1568860617 Adam 4 4.41
author: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
name: Adam
average rating: 4.41
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/04/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 2498470
In these pages are explained the profound karmic consequences of photographic narcissism, insane record-keeping, the archiving of one’s nail clippings, and the infinite savouring of words; here also are exemplary warnings against surrendering hope, living without creativity, accepting too blithe a Heaven, and answering the phone in the middle of a dream-haunted night. Of course, even with such sage counsel, life remains uncertain and perilous; but even if ultimate answers can never be found, a Zivkovic collection is always eminently collectable��

Also in this volume: “The Teashop,�� a superb new novelette about storytelling and the miraculous weavings of Fate.

A five-part TV series, “The Collector,�� produced by the Belgrade-based Studio B Television, is based on this book.]]> 107 Zoran Živković 1904619886 Adam 4 4.26 2005
author: Zoran Živković
name: Adam
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/02/02
shelves: black-comedy, literature-fantastique
review:
A beautiful short story suite and one extra story. The humor is sharper, the images more confident then some of the author’s other excellent work. The suite is one the theme of collectors and their collections and the tone is whimsy turning to menace at the drop of a hat. Worth seeking out. The Moorcock intro is more of an essay on fabulism versus naturalism in fiction, which is quite intriguing in itself.
]]> 1267013 ]]> 128 Georg Trakl 0865473536 Adam 4 4.46 2011
author: Georg Trakl
name: Adam
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/08/04
shelves: horror-disguised-as-literature
review:

]]> 463533 The Landmark Thucydides, a new Landmark Edition of The Histories by Herodotus, the greatest classical work of history ever written.

Herodotus was a Greek historian living in Ionia during the fifth century BCE. He traveled extensively through the lands of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea and collected stories, and then recounted his experiences with the varied people and cultures he encountered. Cicero called him “the father of history,�� and his only work, The Histories, is considered the first true piece of historical writing in Western literature. With lucid prose that harks back to the time of oral tradition, Herodotus set a standard for narrative nonfiction that continues to this day.

In The Histories, Herodotus chronicles the rise of the Persian Empire and its dramatic war with the Greek city-states. Within that story he includes rich veins of anthropology, ethnography, geology, and geography, pioneering these fields of study, and explores such universal themes as the nature of freedom, the role of religion, the human costs of war, and the dangers of absolute power.

Ten years in the making, The Landmark Herodotus gives us a new, dazzling translation by Andrea L. Purvis that makes this remarkable work of literature more accessible than ever before. Illustrated, annotated, and filled with maps, this edition also includes an introduction by Rosalind Thomas and twenty-one appendices written by scholars at the top of their fields, covering such topics as Athenian government, Egypt, Scythia, Persian arms and tactics, the Spartan state, oracles, religion, tyranny, and women.

Like The Landmark Thucydides before it, The Landmark Herodotus is destined to be the most readable and comprehensively useful edition of The Histories available.]]> 953 Herodotus 0375421092 Adam 5 4.40 -430
author: Herodotus
name: Adam
average rating: 4.40
book published: -430
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/06/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 36313 Weird Tales and Astounding Stories—and in the work that remained unpublished until after his death, including some of his best writing—H. P. Lovecraft adapted the conventions of horror stories and science fiction to express an intensely personal vision, cosmic in its ramifications and fearsome in its shuddering view of human destiny.

In this Library of America volume, the best-selling novelist Peter Straub brings together the very best of Lovecraft’s fiction in a treasury guaranteed to bring fright and delight both to longtime fans and to readers new to his work. Early stories such as “The Outsider,�� “The Music of Erich Zann,�� “Herbert West–Reanimator,�� and “The Lurking Fear�� demonstrate Lovecraft’s uncanny ability to blur the distinction between reality and nightmare, sanity and madness, the human and non-human. “The Horror at Red Hook�� and “He�� reveal the fascination and revulsion Lovecraft felt for New York City; “Pickman’s Model�� uncovers the frightening secret behind an artist’s work; “The Rats in the Walls�� is a terrifying descent into atavistic horror; and “The Colour Out of Space�� explores the eerie impact of a meteorite on a remote Massachusetts valley.

In such later works as “The Call of Cthulhu,�� “The Whisperer in Darkness,�� “At the Mountains of Madness,�� “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,�� and “The Shadow Out of Time,�� Lovecraft developed his own nightmarish mythology in which encounters with ancient, pitiless extraterrestrial intelligences wreak havoc on hapless humans who only gradually begin to glimpse “terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein.�� Moving from old New England towns haunted by occult pasts to Antarctic wastes that disclose appalling secrets, Lovecraft’s tales continue to exert a dread fascination.

Table of Contents:
The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Outsider
The Music of Erich Zann
Herbert West—Reanimator
The Lurking Fear
The Rats in the Walls
The Shunned House
The Horror at Red Hook
He
Cool Air
The Call of Cthulhu
Pickman’s Model
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The Colour Out of Space
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness
At the Mountains of Madness
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Dreams in the Witch House
The Thing on the Doorstep
The Shadow Out of Time
The Haunter of the Dark]]> 838 H.P. Lovecraft 1931082723 Adam 5 4.35 1935
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: Adam
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1935
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/05/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 872816 190 Jack Vance 0671832921 Adam 4 literature-fantastique 4.14 1966
author: Jack Vance
name: Adam
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1966
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2019/05/26
shelves: literature-fantastique
review:

]]> 34222 Book by Edginton, Ian 70 Ian Edginton 1593074743 Adam 4 3.85 2005
author: Ian Edginton
name: Adam
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/01/14
shelves: literature-disguised-as-science-fic, steampunkery
review:

]]> 2043369
Contents:
�� The White Hands
�� The Grandmaster’s Final Game
�� Mannequins in Aspects of Terror
�� Apartment 205
�� The Impasse
�� Colony
�� Vrolyck
�� The Search for Kruptos
�� Black as Darkness]]> 137 Mark Samuels 1872621899 Adam 4 4.12 2003
author: Mark Samuels
name: Adam
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/11/20
shelves:
review:
A great new classic in the weird tale. Well written and filled with terrifying imagery. Minus a point since its obvious that Samuels is working through his influences (especially Thomas Ligotti, but also Borges,Machen,Ballard, M.P. Shiel, and Lovecraft), but these stories(or tales) are so well written they seem like well crafted tributes rather than pale imitations and he has good chance of being regarded with those names at this rate.
]]> 14689 These 33 tales by one of the grand masters of fantasy contain all of the stories from two of Dunsany's finest�� collections �� The Book of Wonder and Tales of Wonder �� including the famous "The Three Sailors' Gambit," possibly the best chess story ever written; "The House of the Sphinx," "The Wonderful Window," "The Bad Old Woman in Black," "The Watch-Tower," "The Three Infernal Jokes," "The Secret of the Sea," and 26 other literary gems.]]> 158 Lord Dunsany 0486432017 Adam 4 4.13 2003
author: Lord Dunsany
name: Adam
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/10/31
shelves:
review:

]]> 22912 --randomhouse.com

Children on a country road --
Unmasking a confidence trickster --
The sudden walk --
Resolutions --
Excursion into the mountains --
Bachelor's ill luck --
The tradesman --
Absent-minded window-gazing --
The way home --
Passers-by --
On the tram --
Clothes --
Rejection --
Reflections for gentlemen-jockeys --
The street window --
The wish to be a red Indian --
The trees --
Unhappiness --
The judgment --
The stoker --
The metamorphosis --
In the penal colony --
A country doctor: The new advocate --
A country doctor --
Up in the gallery --
An old manuscript --
Before the law --
Jackals and Arabs --
A visit to a mine --
The next village --
An imperial message --
The cares of a family man --
Eleven sons --
A fratricide --
A dream --
A report to an academy --
The bucket rider --
A hunger artist: First sorrow --
A little woman --
A hunger artist --
Josephine the singer, or the mouse folk --
Description of a struggle --
Wedding preparations in the country --
The student --
The angel --
The village schoolmaster (The giant mole) --
Blumfeld, an elderly bachelor --
The hunter Gracchus --
The proclamation --
The bridge --
The Great Wall of China --
The knock at the manor gate --
An ancient sword --
New lamps --
My neighbor --
A crossbreed (A sport) --
A splendid beast --
The watchman --
A common confusion --
The truth about Sancho Panza --
The silence of the siren --
Prometheus --
The city coat of arms --
Poseidon --
Fellowship --
At night --
The problem of our laws --
The conscription of troops --
The test --
The vulture --
The helmsman --
The top --
Hands --
A little fable --
Isabella --
Home-coming --
A Chinese puzzle --
The departure --
Advocates --
Investigations of a dog --
The married couple --
Give it up! --
On parables --
The burrow.]]> 566 Franz Kafka 0679423036 Adam 5 4.32 1911
author: Franz Kafka
name: Adam
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1911
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/05/11
shelves:
review:

]]> 18950 Contents:
* Cordwainer Smith: The Shaper of Myths (1975) �� essay by John J. Pierce [as by J. J. Pierce]
* The Instrumentality of Mankind (timeline) (1975) �� essay by John J. Pierce
* Scanners Live in Vain [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1950) / novelette by Cordwainer Smith: meet Martel, a human altered to be part machine-a scanner-to be able withstand the trauma space travel has on the body. Despite the stigma placed on him and his kind, he is able to regrasp his humanity to save another; Fantasy Book #6 ��50
* The Lady Who Sailed The Soul [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1960) / novelette by Cordwainer Smith, Genevieve Linebarger; Galaxy Apr ��60
* The Game of Rat and Dragon [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1955) / short story by Cordwainer Smith; Galaxy Oct ��55
* The Burning of the Brain [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1958) / short story by Cordwainer Smith; If Oct ��58
* Golden the Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh! [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1959) / short story by Cordwainer Smith, Genevieve Linebarger; Amazing Apr ��59
* The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1964) / short story by Cordwainer Smith; Amazing May ��64
* The Dead Lady of Clown Town [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1964) / novella by Cordwainer Smith: get to know the underpeople-animals genetically altered to exist in human form, to better serve their human owners-and meet D'Joan, a dog-woman who will make readers question who is more human: the animals who simply want to be recognized as having the same right to life, or the people who created them to be inferior; Galaxy Aug ��64
* Under Old Earth [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1966) / novelette by Cordwainer Smith; Galaxy Feb ��66
* Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1961) / novelette by Cordwainer Smith; Galaxy Jun ��61
* Alpha Ralpha Boulevard [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1961) / novelette by Cordwainer Smith; Galaxy Jun ��61
* The Ballad of Lost C'mell [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1962) / novelette by Cordwainer Smith: the notion of love being the most important equalizer there is, is put into action when an underperson, C'mell, falls in love with Lord Jestocost. Who is to say her love for him is not as valid as any true-born human? She might be of cat descent, but she is all woman!; Galaxy Oct ��62
* A Planet Named Shayol [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1961) / novelette by Cordwainer Smith: it is an underperson of bull descent, and beings so mutilated and deformed from their original human condition to be now considered demons of a hellish land, who retain and display the most humanity when Mankind commits the most inhumane action of all; Galaxy Oct ��61

aka: Paul M. A. Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, Paul Linebarger, Felix C. Forrest, Carmichael Smith, Kordvejner Smit.
.]]> 377 Cordwainer Smith 0345323025 Adam 4 4.21 1975
author: Cordwainer Smith
name: Adam
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1975
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/03/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 46171
La aparición de Rayuela en 1963 conmocionó el panorama cultural de su tiempo y supuso una verdadera revolución en la narrativa en lengua castellana: por primera vez un escritor llevaba hasta las últimas consecuencias la voluntad de transgredir el orden tradicional de una historia y el lenguaje para contarla. Es quizás el libro donde Cortázar está entero, con toda su complejidad ética y estética, con su imaginación y su humor.

Cortázar empieza por proponer un acercamiento activo al libro y ofrece varias posibilidades de lectura: el lector ha de decidir: ¿optar por el orden de lectura tradicional? ¿Seguir el tablero de dirección? ¿Remitirse al azar? Después lo lleva a dos lugares distintos. «Del lado de allá», París, la relación de Oliveira y la Maga, el club de la serpiente, el primer descenso de Horacio a los infiernos; y «Del lado de acá», Buenos Aires, el encuentro de Tráveler y Talita, el circo, el manicomio, el segundo descenso.

¿Viaje hacia delante, viaje hacia atrás? Viaje iniciático, sin duda, del que el lector emerge tal vez con otra idea acerca del modo de leer los libros y de ver la vida. Un mosaico donde toda una época se vio maravillosamente reflejada.]]> 752 Julio Cortázar 8437604575 Adam 2 4.22 1963
author: Julio Cortázar
name: Adam
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1963
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2017/02/16
shelves:
review:
Structure awesome..content not so much..his short fiction is great though.
]]> 30555488
In Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor--engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

Like the protagonist of Gulliver's Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey--hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.]]> 320 Colson Whitehead 0385542364 Adam 5 ]]> 4.04 2016
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Adam
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2016/08/30
date added: 2016/08/30
shelves: black-comedy, heart-of-darkness, horror-disguised-as-literature, literature-disguised-as-science-fic, literature-fantastique
review:
A stunning and beautiful book from a great writer who has the long received the bizarre criticism that his books are a little too smart and ironic, too infatuated with post modern satire to reach the heart. He has also been frequently compared to Pynchon, Morrison, Ellison, and Heller, and I suspect he will very much continue to get those comparisons as many elements of what makes those authors great are present in Whitehead, stark examination of race and his ability to use the absurd and darkly comic to illustrate our country in ways that more realistic fiction may miss. Using parodies of slave narratives that doesn't blink away from the horror and implications of America's original sin, alternative history and riffs on Gulliver's travels to illustrate the complicated history of slavery, all the while providing a thrilling novel with beautiful language and arresting imagery. Due to Oprah's attention and the subject matter I suspect this will be one of his best know works, don't neglect his others but this is definitely one of his best and clear headed and deserves the attention.

]]> 22381326 Words are weapons

Princess Skara has seen all she loved made blood and ashes. She is left with only words. But the right words can be as deadly as any blade. She must conquer her fears and sharpen her wits to a lethal edge if she is to reclaim her birthright.

Only half a war is fought with swords

The deep-cunning Father Yarvi has walked a long road from crippled slave to king’s minister. He has made allies of old foes and stitched together an uneasy peace. But now the ruthless Grandmother Wexen has raised the greatest army since the elves made war on God, and put Bright Yilling at its head �� a man who worships no god but Death.

Sometimes one must fight evil with evil

Some �� like Thorn Bathu and the sword-bearer Raith �� are born to fight, perhaps to die. Others �� like Brand the smith and Koll the wood-carver �� would rather stand in the light. But when Mother War spreads her iron wings, she may cast the whole Shattered Sea into darkness.]]> 513 Joe Abercrombie Adam 4 literature-fantastique 4.01 2015
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Adam
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2016/08/30
date added: 2016/08/30
shelves: literature-fantastique
review:

]]> 23168277
The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.]]> 371 Viet Thanh Nguyen 0802123457 Adam 0 to-read 4.00 2015
author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
name: Adam
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 21535396 417 Atticus Lish 0988518333 Adam 0 to-read 3.83 2014
author: Atticus Lish
name: Adam
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25397016 218 Sara Jaffe 1941040136 Adam 0 to-read 3.50 2015
author: Sara Jaffe
name: Adam
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 28116847 A monumental new novel from the bestselling author of Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

In the book of Genesis, when God calls out, “Abraham!�� to order him to sacrifice his son Isaac, Abraham responds, “Here I am.�� Later, when Isaac calls out, “My father!�� to ask him why there is no animal to slaughter, Abraham responds, “Here I am.��

How do we fulfill our conflicting duties as father, husband, and son; wife and mother; child and adult? Jew and American? How can we claim our own identities when our lives are linked so closely to others��? These are the questions at the heart of Jonathan Safran Foer’s first novel in eleven years--a work of extraordinary scope and heartbreaking intimacy.

Unfolding over four tumultuous weeks, in present-day Washington, D.C., Here I Am is the story of a fracturing family in a moment of crisis. As Jacob and Julia and their three sons are forced to confront the distances between the lives they think they want and the lives they are living, a catastrophic earthquake sets in motion a quickly escalating conflict in the Middle East. At stake is the very meaning of home--and the fundamental question of how much life one can bear.

Showcasing the same high-energy inventiveness, hilarious irreverence, and emotional urgency that readers and critics loved in his earlier work, Here I Am is Foer’s most searching, hard-hitting, and grandly entertaining novel yet. It not only confirms Foer’s stature as a dazzling literary talent but reveals a mature novelist who has fully come into his own as one of the most important writers of his generation.]]> 592 Jonathan Safran Foer 0374280029 Adam 0 to-read 3.57 2016
author: Jonathan Safran Foer
name: Adam
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 26795307 The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon traveled to his mother’s home in Oakland, California, to visit his terminally ill grandfather. Tongue loosened by powerful painkillers, memory stirred by the imminence of death, Chabon’s grandfather shared recollections and told stories the younger man had never heard before, uncovering bits and pieces of a history long buried and forgotten. That dreamlike week of revelations forms the basis for the novel Moonglow, the latest feat of legerdemain from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon.

��Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession of a man the narrator refers to only as “my grandfather.�� It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and marriage and desire, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at midcentury, and, above all, of the destructive impact—and the creative power—of keeping secrets and telling lies. It is a portrait of the difficult but passionate love between the narrator’s grandfather and his grandmother, an enigmatic woman broken by her experience growing up in war-torn France. It is also a tour de force of speculative autobiography in which Chabon devises and reveals a secret history of his own imagination.

��From the Jewish slums of prewar South Philadelphia to the invasion of Germany, from a Florida retirement village to the penal utopia of New York’s Wallkill prison, from the heyday of the space program to the twilight of the “American Century,�� the novel revisits an entire era through a single life and collapses a lifetime into a single week. A lie that tells the truth, a work of fictional nonfiction, an autobiography wrapped in a novel disguised as a memoir, Moonglow is Chabon at his most moving and inventive.]]> 430 Michael Chabon 0062225553 Adam 0 to-read 3.77 2016
author: Michael Chabon
name: Adam
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 29906980 Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other—for no one but Saunders could conceive it.

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth," the president says at the time. "God has called him home." Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy's body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul.

Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction's ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices—living and dead, historical and invented—to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?]]> 368 George Saunders 0812995341 Adam 0 to-read 3.75 2017
author: George Saunders
name: Adam
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 27245902 From Donald Ray Pollock, author of the highly acclaimed The Devil All the Time and Knockemstiff, comes a dark, gritty, electrifying (and, disturbingly, weirdly funny) new novel that will solidify his place among the best contemporary American authors.

It is 1917, in that sliver of border land that divides Georgia from Alabama. Dispossessed farmer Pearl Jewett ekes out a hardscrabble existence with his three young sons: Cane (the eldest; handsome; intelligent); Cob (short; heavy set; a bit slow); and Chimney (the youngest; thin; ill-tempered). Several hundred miles away in southern Ohio, a farmer by the name of Ellsworth Fiddler lives with his son, Eddie, and his wife, Eula. After Ellsworth is swindled out of his family’s entire fortune, his life is put on a surprising, unforgettable, and violent trajectory that will directly lead him to cross paths with the Jewetts. No good can come of it. Or can it?

In the gothic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy with a healthy dose of cinematic violence reminiscent of Sam Peckinpah, Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, the Jewetts and the Fiddlers will find their lives colliding in increasingly dark and horrific ways, placing Donald Ray Pollock firmly in the company of the genre’s literary masters.]]> 365 Donald Ray Pollock 0385541295 Adam 5 4.08 2016
author: Donald Ray Pollock
name: Adam
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/08/19
shelves:
review:
Kicking out the cobwebs of the southern gothic genre of O'Conner, McCarthy, and Thompson with an exuberant display of black comedy and generous vision of humanity and all its beautiful and terrifying impulses. An inferno or odyssey filled with fools, dreamers, con men, and serial killers. Moments of horror and violence but also moments of sweetness, beauty, and even happiness. Told with a wicked sense of humor compared on the back cover to Gogol and I have to agree. An upside down carnivalesque display of this vale of tears. His sense of humanity and humor transcend and comparison to past authors and the vision is unique. His best work and probably going to be the best novel I've read this year.
]]> 23602561 The Power of the Dog comes The Cartel, a gripping, true-to-life, ripped-from-the-headlines epic story of power, corruption, revenge, and justice spanning the past decade of the Mexican-American drug wars.

It’s 2004. DEA agent Art Keller has been fighting the war on drugs for thirty years in a blood feud against Adán Barrera, the head of El Federación, the world’s most powerful cartel, and the man who brutally murdered Keller’s partner. Finally putting Barrera away cost Keller dearly—the woman he loves, the beliefs he cherishes, the life he wants to lead.

Then Barrera gets out, determined to rebuild the empire that Keller shattered. Unwilling to live in a world with Barrera in it, Keller goes on a ten-year odyssey to take him down. His obsession with justice—or is it revenge?—becomes a ruthless struggle that stretches from the cities, mountains, and deserts of Mexico to Washington’s corridors of power to the streets of Berlin and Barcelona.

Keller fights his personal battle against the devastated backdrop of Mexico’s drug war, a conflict of unprecedented scale and viciousness, as cartels vie for power and he comes to the final reckoning with Barrera—and himself—that he always knew must happen.

The Cartel is a story of revenge, honor, and sacrifice, as one man tries to face down the devil without losing his soul. It is the story of the war on drugs and the men—and women—who wage it.]]> 616 Don Winslow 1101874996 Adam 5 4.33 2015
author: Don Winslow
name: Adam
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2016/04/20
date added: 2016/04/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 23754479
Young Pip Tyler doesn't know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she's saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she's squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother �� her only family �� is hazardous. But she doesn't have a clue who her father is, why her mother chose to live as a recluse with an invented name, or how she'll ever have a normal life.

Enter the Germans. A glancing encounter with a German peace activist leads Pip to an internship in South America with The Sunlight Project, an organization that traffics in all the secrets of the world �� including, Pip hopes, the secret of her origins. TSP is the brainchild of Andreas Wolf, a charismatic provocateur who rose to fame in the chaos following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now on the lam in Bolivia, Andreas is drawn to Pip for reasons she doesn't understand, and the intensity of her response to him upends her conventional ideas of right and wrong.

Purity is a grand story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder. The author of The Corrections and Freedom has imagined a world of vividly original characters �� Californians and East Germans, good parents and bad parents, journalists and leakers �� and he follows their intertwining paths through landscapes as contemporary as the omnipresent Internet and as ancient as the war between the sexes. Purity is the most daring and penetrating book yet by one of the major writers of our time.]]> 563 Jonathan Franzen 0374239215 Adam 3 3.62 2015
author: Jonathan Franzen
name: Adam
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2016/04/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 22551730
On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. He knew, moreover, that his ship - the fastest then in service - could outrun any threat.

Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger's U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small - hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more--all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history.

It is a story that many of us think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour, mystery, and real-life suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope Riddle to President Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love. Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster that helped place America on the road to war.]]> 430 Erik Larson 0307408868 Adam 4 4.10 2015
author: Erik Larson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/04/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 22693211 273 Kim Gordon 0062295896 Adam 3 3.66 2015
author: Kim Gordon
name: Adam
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2016/04/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 23453112
Some of our problems are unique to our time.��“Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?”��“Should I go out with this girl even though she��listed Combos as one of her favorite snack foods?��Combos?!�� “My girlfriend just got a message from��some dude named Nathan. Who’s Nathan? Did he��just send her a photo of his penis? Should I check��just to be sure?”��

But the transformation of our romantic lives��can’t be explained by technology alone. In a short��period of time, the whole culture of finding love��has changed dramatically. A few decades ago,��people would find a decent person who lived in��their neighborhood. Their families would meet��and, after deciding neither party seemed like a��murderer, they would get married and soon have��a kid, all by the time they were twenty-four. Today,��people marry later than ever and spend years of��their lives on a quest to find the perfect person, a��soul mate.

For years, Aziz Ansari has been aiming his��comic insight at modern romance, but for Modern��Romance, the book, he decided he needed to take��things to another level. He teamed up with NYU��sociologist Eric Klinenberg and designed a massive��research project, including hundreds of interviews��and focus groups conducted everywhere from��Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita. They analyzed��behavioral data and surveys and created their own��online research forum on Reddit, which drew��thousands of messages. They enlisted the world’s��leading social scientists, including Andrew Cherlin, Eli Finkel, Helen��Fisher, Sheena Iyengar, Barry Schwartz, Sherry��Turkle, and Robb Willer. The result is unlike any��social science or humor book we’ve seen before.

In Modern Romance, Ansari combines his��irreverent humor with cutting-edge social science��to give us an unforgettable tour of our new��romantic world.]]> 279 Aziz Ansari 1594206279 Adam 4 3.79 2015
author: Aziz Ansari
name: Adam
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/04/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 25065629
Before Carrie Brownstein codeveloped and starred in the wildly popular TV comedy Portlandia, she was already an icon to young women for her role as a musician in the feminist punk band Sleater-Kinney. The band was a key part of the early riot- grrrl and indie rock scenes in the Pacific Northwest, known for their prodigious guitar shredding and their leftist lyrics against war, traditionalism, and gender roles.

Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl is the deeply personal and revealing narrative of Brownstein's life in music, from ardent fan to pioneering female guitarist to comedic performer and luminary in the independent rock world. Though Brownstein struggled against the music industry's sexist double standards, by 2006 she was the only woman to earn a spot on Rolling Stone readers' list of the "25 Most Underrated Guitarists of All-Time." This book intimately captures what it feels like to be a young woman in a rock-and-roll band, from her days at the dawn of the underground feminist punk-rock movement that would define music and pop culture in the 1990s through today.]]> 244 Carrie Brownstein 1594486638 Adam 4 3.83 2015
author: Carrie Brownstein
name: Adam
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/04/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 25897691 From the acclaimed, best-selling author Adam Hochschild, a sweeping history of the Spanish Civil War, told through a dozen characters, including Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell: a�� tale of idealism, heartbreaking suffering, and a noble cause that failed

For three crucial years in the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War dominated headlines in America and around the world, as��volunteers flooded to Spain to help its democratic government fight off a fascist uprising led by Francisco Franco and aided by Hitler and Mussolini. Today we're accustomed to remembering the war through Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and Robert Capa’s photographs. But Adam Hochschild has discovered some less familiar yet far more compelling characters who reveal the full tragedy and importance of the war: a fiery nineteen-year-old Kentucky woman who went to wartime Spain on her honeymoon, a Swarthmore College senior who was the first American casualty in the battle for Madrid, a pair of fiercely partisan, rivalrous��New York Times reporters who covered the war from opposites sides, and a swashbuckling Texas oilman with Nazi sympathies who sold Franco almost all his oil �� at reduced prices, and on credit.������It was in many ways the opening battle of World War II, and we still have much to learn from it. Spain in Our Hearts is Adam Hochschild at his very best.


]]> 438 Adam Hochschild 0547973187 Adam 4 4.22 2016
author: Adam Hochschild
name: Adam
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/04/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 76401 The New York Times called "Original, remarkable, and finally heartbreaking...Impossible to put down."

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition—published in both hardcover and paperback—Brown has contributed an incisive new preface.

Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.]]> 509 Dee Brown 0805066691 Adam 4 4.24 1970
author: Dee Brown
name: Adam
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1970
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/04/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 303496 307 Amos Tutuola 0802133630 Adam 4 3.87 1952
author: Amos Tutuola
name: Adam
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/03/11
shelves:
review:
Yes, very little to compare this to, as surreal and fantastic as any journey taken by Jarry or Swift.
]]> 8519058
Over the course of a single night, Mirković visits the sites of these tragedies in his memory and recalls the damage that his own participation in that violence—as a soldier fighting for Croatia during the Balkan Wars—has wreaked in his own life. Mirkovic´ hopes that this night will be his last in the Zone, that this journey will expiate his sins, and that he can disappear with Sashka, the only woman he hasn’t abandoned, forever . . .

One of the truly original books of the decade—and written as a single, hypnotic, propulsive, physically irresistible sentence—Mathias Énard’s Zone provides an extraordinary and panoramic view of the turmoil that has long deviled the shores of the Mediterranean.]]> 517 Mathias Énard 1934824267 Adam 5 4.18 2008
author: Mathias Énard
name: Adam
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/02/20
shelves: black-comedy, heart-of-darkness
review:
Mathias Enard’s Zone is a novel that while it can’t be said that it is breaking new ground, but it is synthesizing various threads of narrative experimentation and presenting them in a maximalist style that resembles a grand claiming of new territory. W.G. Sebald’s Rings of Saturn, Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey, David Markson’s later work, Bernhard’s endless paragraph and symphonic repetition, Pound and Eliot’s poetry, Joyce’s dreams, and even contemporary journalism on the middle east(Robert Fisk for example) are evoked here. This book if it resembles anything it is a meditation on the bloodstained history of the Mediterranean region, a panorama featuring its killers, victims, fascists, dreamers, artists, and writers. History as a gore stained daydream of a man with a very conflicted connection to that history, a daydream experienced on a train journey, the train taking the place of one of Sebald’s country walks or Bernhard’s museum benches. The World Wars, the Lebanese and Algerian Civil War, Cervantes and the battle of Lepanto, the fall of Yugoslavia are among the many subjects that haunt this book. The brutality of much of it, the book’s length, and the lack of much of the furniture of the realist novel might turn many off, but I found it compulsively readable and a book of prophetic resonance.
]]> 323328 Death in Venice, this volume includes "Mario and the Magician," "Disorder and Early Sorrow," "A Man and His Dog," "Felix Krull," "The Blood of the Walsungs," "Tristan," and "Tonio Kröger."

These stories, as direct as Thomas Mann's novels are complex, are perfect illustrations of their author's belief that "a story must tell itself." Varying in theme, in style, in tone, each is in its own way characteristic of Mann's prodigious talents. From the high art of the famous title novella ("A story," Mann said, "of death...of the voluptuousness of doom"), to the irony of "Felix Krull," the early story on which he later based his comic novel The Confessions of Felix Krull, they are stunning testimony to the mastery and virtuosity of a literary giant.

Translated from the German by H.T. Lowe-Porter.]]> 402 Thomas Mann 0679722068 Adam 5 3.90 1936
author: Thomas Mann
name: Adam
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1936
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/12/19
shelves:
review:
It took me a long time to get to Mann, but I feel in good company with him. Lots influence of Poe and Conrad and clearly in company with Dineson, who he obviously influenced, an operatic tone, ironic, comic, erudite, and seemingly a strange mix of a 19th century feel with more modern concerns and anxieties. Paul Bowles and Bruno Shultz, who are two of my favorite writers, also claim Mann as an influence, and I can see parallels in their work. “Death in Venice�� is a masterpiece of symbolism and foreshadowing with a sense of growing apocalyptic dread, strange events, odd characters (the old man pretending to be young, the weird smelling clown), a mysterious epidemic, a Dionysian dream/vision, and the obsessive quest of narcissism/pedophilia. It brings to mind Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness��, Machen’s “The Great God Pan��, and “Lolita; and of course a wealth of mythic allusion. “Mario and the Magician�� is an eerie parable of fascism with a sinister mesmerist that reminds of character from Hawthorne’s House of Seven Gables. Hawthorne troublesome parables/allegories is good touchtone for this story. “Disorder and the early sorrow�� is satire of the changing social order set during the Weimar republic, examining the poverty and changing/blurring social classes. Told through the viewpoint of the history Dr. Cornelius who refuses to see his era as part of history as it lacks dignity. This is a plenty telling metaphor. The Wagner meets Poe in “The Blood of the Walsungs�� a tale with elements of the gothic and decadent, and filled with opera, incest, and misanthropy. So if you like Gogol, Hawthorne, Poe, Dineson, Dante, Greek myths and drama, Conrad, Voltaire, Bowles and Shultz; then you should like Mann. And consider these lines from the opening paragraph in “Mario and the Magician��; “Luckily for them, they did not know where the comedy left off and the tragedy began; and we let them remain in their happy belief that the whole thing had been a play up till the end.��
]]> 221597 288 Gustave Flaubert 0140443282 Adam 3 3.78 1862
author: Gustave Flaubert
name: Adam
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1862
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2015/11/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 24189224 New York Times
��
New York City, 1976. Meet Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney, estranged heirs to one of the city’s great fortunes; Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie and Samantha, two suburban teenagers seduced by downtown’s punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter and his idealistic neighbor—and the detective trying to figure out what any of them have to do with a shooting in Central Park on New Year’s Eve.
��
The mystery, as it reverberates through families, friendships, and the corridors of power, will open up even the loneliest-seeming corners of the crowded city. And when the blackout of July 13, 1977, plunges this world into darkness, each of these lives will be changed forever.
��
City on Fire is an unforgettable novel about love and betrayal and forgiveness, about art and truth and rock ’n�� roll: about what people need from each other in order to live . . . and about what makes the living worth doing in the first place.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 911 Garth Risk Hallberg 0385353774 Adam 0 to-read 3.39 1997
author: Garth Risk Hallberg
name: Adam
average rating: 3.39
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/10/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 22055283
Fate places her life in the hands of the deep-cunning Father Yarvi as he sets out to cross half the world in search of allies against the ruthless High King. Beside her is Brand, a young warrior who hates to kill. A failure in her eyes and his own, the voyage is his last chance at redemption.

But warriors can be weapons, and weapons are made for one purpose. Will Thorn always be a tool in the hands of the powerful, or can she carve her own path? Is there a place outside of legend for a woman with a blade?]]> 366 Joe Abercrombie 0804178429 Adam 4 4.16 2015
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Adam
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/10/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 18666047
But first he must survive cruelty, chains and the bitter waters of the Shattered Sea itself - all with only one good hand. Born a weakling in the eyes of a hard, cold world, he cannot grip a shield or swing an axe, so he has sharpened his mind to a deadly edge.

Gathering a strange fellowship of the outcast, he finds they can help him more than any noble could. Even so, Yarvi's path may end as it began - in twists, traps and tragedy...]]> 336 Joe Abercrombie 0804178321 Adam 4 3.96 2014
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Adam
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/10/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 17934530 Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.]]> 195 Jeff VanderMeer 0374104093 Adam 4 3.79 2014
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Adam
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2015/10/16
date added: 2015/10/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 22756871 A propulsive and ambitious novel as electrifying as The Wire, from a writer hailed as the West Coast's Richard Price—a mesmerizing epic of crime and opportunity, race, revenge, and loyalty, set in the chaotic streets of South Central L.A. in the wake of one of the most notorious and incendiary trials of the 1990s.

At 3:15 p.m. on April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted three white Los Angeles Police Department officers charged with using excessive force to subdue a black man named Rodney King, and failed to reach a verdict on the same charges involving a fourth officer. Less than two hours later, the city exploded in violence that lasted six days. In nearly 121 hours, fifty-three lives were lost. But there were even more deaths unaccounted for: violence that occurred outside of active rioting sites by those who used the chaos to viciously settle old scores.

A gritty and cinematic work of fiction, All Involved vividly re-creates this turbulent and terrifying time, set in a sliver of Los Angeles largely ignored by the media during the riots. Ryan Gattis tells seventeen interconnected first-person narratives that paint a portrait of modern America itself—laying bare our history, our prejudices, and our complexities. With characters that capture the voices of gang members, firefighters, graffiti kids, and nurses caught up in these extraordinary circumstances, All Involved is a literary tour de force that catapults this edgy writer into the ranks of such legendary talents as Dennis Lehane and George V. Higgins.]]> 384 Ryan Gattis 0062378791 Adam 4 3.99 2015
author: Ryan Gattis
name: Adam
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2015/10/16
date added: 2015/10/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 13153693 Ghettoside is a fast-paced narrative of a devastating crime, an intimate portrait of detectives and a community bonded in tragedy, and a surprising new lens into the great subject of murder in America--why it happens and how the plague of killings might yet be stopped.]]> 366 Jill Leovy 0385529988 Adam 4 4.05 2015
author: Jill Leovy
name: Adam
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2015/10/16
date added: 2015/10/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 22571552 290 Jon Ronson 1594487138 Adam 5 3.91 2015
author: Jon Ronson
name: Adam
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2015/10/16
date added: 2015/10/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 23014657
The Mireeans have now fled to the city of Yeflam with the immortal Zaifyr in chains to barter for their safety. With the threat of war arriving at the Floating Cities, Zaifyr's trial will become the center of political games. However, Zaifyr is intent on using his trial to begin a new war, a motive that many fear is an echo of the dangerous man he once was. Ayae, a young girl cursed with the gift of fire, sees a chance to learn more of her powers here in the floating city, but she is weighed down by her new responsibilities regarding the safety of the Mireean people.

Across the far ocean, exiled Baron Bueralan and cartographer Orlan have arrived in the city of Ooila with some chilling cargo: the soul of a dead man. As the two men are accepted into the city's court, they are pulled ever deeper into the Queen's web of lies and deceit. All the while, a rumor begins to spread of a man who has come ashore, whose seemingly innocent presence threatens them all.]]> 448 Ben Peek 1250050030 Adam 0 to-read 4.08 2016
author: Ben Peek
name: Adam
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 17910065
In a hideout beneath the city, a small group of seditionists debate ways to overthrow the Houses. How can they rouse the citizens of the city? Should they begin a campaign of terror? Is there a way to uncover the thaumaturgical knowledge that the Houses guard so jealously? As the Houses scramble to maintain their rule, it becomes clear that things will change forever in Caeli-Amur.]]> 430 Rjurik Davidson 0765329883 Adam 0 to-read 3.24 2014
author: Rjurik Davidson
name: Adam
average rating: 3.24
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 23920769
Every two thousand years, parallel dimensions collide on the world called Raisa, bringing a tide of death and destruction to all worlds but one. Multiple worlds battle their dopplegangers for dominance, and those who survive must contend with friends and enemies newly imbued with violent powers.

Now the pacifist country of Dhai's only hope for survival lies in the hands of an illegitimate ruler and a scullery maid with a powerful �� but unpredictable –magic. As their dopplegangers spread across the world like a disease, a former ally takes up her Empress’s sword again to unseat her, and two enslaved scholars begin a treacherous journey home with a long-lost secret that they hope is the key to the other worlds' undoing.

But when the enemy shares your own face, who can be trusted?]]> 507 Kameron Hurley 0857665588 Adam 0 to-read 3.89 2015
author: Kameron Hurley
name: Adam
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 20646731
In the frozen kingdom of Saiduan, invaders from another realm are decimating whole cities, leaving behind nothing but ash and ruin.

As the dark star of the cataclysm rises, an illegitimate ruler is tasked with holding together a country fractured by civil war, a precocious young fighter is asked to betray his family and a half-Dhai general must choose between the eradication of her father’s people or loyalty to her alien Empress.

Through tense alliances and devastating betrayal, the Dhai and their allies attempt to hold against a seemingly unstoppable force as enemy nations prepare for a coming together of worlds as old as the universe itself.

In the end, one world will rise �� and many will perish.]]> 540 Kameron Hurley 0857665553 Adam 0 to-read 3.47 2014
author: Kameron Hurley
name: Adam
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 207918 160 Alfred Jarry 1878972073 Adam 5 4.03 1911
author: Alfred Jarry
name: Adam
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1911
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/05/01
shelves: surrealism-dada-classics, black-comedy
review:
This book is a blissful bomb...
]]> 22522805
The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.

Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in nearly a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge, and war.

Included on TIME Magazine's "THE 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME"]]> 317 Kazuo Ishiguro 030727103X Adam 5 3.56 2015
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Adam
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/04/21
shelves: black-comedy, heart-of-darkness, literature-fantastique
review:
Ishiguro decides to write a fantasy novel. Anyone expecting Martin, Tolkein, or Malory will be confused, as this book uses the furniture of fantasy(Knights, dragons, quests, monsters,and magic) but its muse is closer to Beckett and Kafka. It is also one of the best novels I've read in awhile.
]]> 21943206
George Clinton began his musical career in New Jersey, where his obsession with doo-wop and R&B led to a barbershop quartet—literally, as Clinton and his friends also styled hair in the local shop—the way kids often got their musical start in the ��50s. But how many kids like that ended up playing to tens of thousands of rabid fans alongside a diaper-clad guitarist? How many of them commissioned a spaceship and landed it onstage during concerts? How many put their stamp on four decades of pop music, from the mind-expanding sixties to the hip-hop-dominated nineties and beyond?

One of them. That’s how many.

How George Clinton got from barbershop quartet to funk music megastar is a story for the ages. As a high school student he traveled to New York City, where he absorbed all the trends in pop music, from traditional rhythm and blues to Motown, the Beatles, the Stones, and psychedelic rock, not to mention the formative funk of James Brown and Sly Stone. By the dawn of the seventies, he had emerged as the leader of a wildly creative musical movement composed mainly of two bands—Parliament and Funkadelic. And by the bicentennial, Clinton and his P-Funk empire were dominating the soul charts as well as the pop charts. He was an artistic visionary, visual icon, merry prankster, absurdist philosopher, and savvy businessmen, all rolled into one. He was like no one else in pop music, before or since.

Written with wit, humor, and candor, this memoir provides tremendous insight into America’s music industry as forever changed by Clinton’s massive talent. This is a story of a beloved global icon who dedicated himself to spreading the gospel of funk music.]]> 416 George Clinton 1476751099 Adam 3 3.90 2014
author: George Clinton
name: Adam
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2015/04/21
date added: 2015/04/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 21531497
Roland Nair calls himself Scandinavian but travels on a U.S. passport. After ten years' absence, he returns to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to reunite with his friend Michael Adriko. They once made a lot of money here during the country's civil war, and, curious to see whether good luck will strike twice in the same place, Nair has allowed himself to be drawn back to a region he considers hopeless.

Adriko is an African who styles himself a soldier of fortune and who claims to have served, at various times, the Ghanaian army, the Kuwaiti Emiri Guard, and the American Green Berets. He's probably broke now, but he remains, at thirty-six, as stirred by his own doubtful schemes as he was a decade ago.

Although Nair believes some kind of money-making plan lies at the back of it all, Adriko's stated reason for inviting his friend to Freetown is for Nair to meet Adriko's fiancée, a grad student from Colorado named Davidia. Together the three set out to visit Adriko's clan in the Uganda-Congo borderland―but each of these travelers is keeping secrets from the others. Their journey through a land abandoned by the future leads Nair, Adriko, and Davidia to meet themselves not in a new light, but rather in a new darkness.]]> 228 Denis Johnson 0374280592 Adam 4 review soon 3.17 2014
author: Denis Johnson
name: Adam
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2015/04/21
date added: 2015/04/21
shelves:
review:
review soon
]]> 11529868
Considering himself "a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world," Jun Do becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his Korean overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress "so pure, she didn't know what starving people looked like."

Part breathless thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, The Orphan Master's Son is also a riveting portrait of a world heretofore hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love. A towering literary achievement, The Orphan Master's Son ushers Adam Johnson into the small group of today's greatest writers.

An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master's Son follows a young man's journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world's most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea.]]> 443 Adam Johnson 0812992792 Adam 3 4.05 2012
author: Adam Johnson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2015/04/21
date added: 2015/04/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 18490708
It's the eve of the twenty-second century: a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from Heaven and evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues; where genetically engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline humans and soldiers come with zombie switches that shut off self-awareness during combat. And it’s all under surveillance by an alien presence that refuses to show itself.

Daniel Bruks is a living fossil: a field biologist in a world where biology has turned computational, a cat's-paw used by terrorists to kill thousands. Taking refuge in the Oregon desert, he’s turned his back on a humanity that shatters into strange new subspecies with every heartbeat. But he awakens one night to find himself at the center of a storm that will turn all of history inside-out.

Now he’s trapped on a ship bound for the center of the solar system. To his left is a grief-stricken soldier, obsessed by whispered messages from a dead son. To his right is a pilot who hasn’t yet found the man she's sworn to kill on sight. A vampire and its entourage of zombie bodyguards lurk in the shadows behind. And dead ahead, a handful of rapture-stricken monks takes them all to a meeting with something they will only call “The Angels of the Asteroids.��

Their pilgrimage brings Dan Bruks, the fossil man, face-to-face with the biggest evolutionary breakpoint since the origin of thought itself.]]> 384 Peter Watts 076532802X Adam 0 to-read 3.81 2014
author: Peter Watts
name: Adam
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 70925
Contents

The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket -- (1838)
MS found in a bottle -- (1833)
Loss of breath -- (1832)
Mystification -- (1837)
How to write a Blackwood article -- (Nov 1838)
A descent into the maelström -- (Apr 1841)
The pit and the pendulum -- (1843
The balloon hoax -- (Apr 13, 1844)
The premature burial. (Jul 31, 1844)]]> 336 Edgar Allan Poe 0192837710 Adam 4 H.P. Lovecraft-At the Mountains of Madness (which Charles Stross gave a sequel with “A Colder War��
Jules Verne- Sphinx on the Ice Field: an Antarctic Mystery (which I’m sad to report is pretty boring)
Howard Waldrop and Steve Utley-“Black as Pitch from Pole to Pole��
Rudy Rucker-Hollow Earth

]]> 3.62 1844
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: Adam
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1844
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/03/25
shelves: horror-disguised-as-literature, steampunkery
review:
A grand macabre 19th century adventure that inspired Melville and a league of sequels/tributes including:
H.P. Lovecraft-At the Mountains of Madness (which Charles Stross gave a sequel with “A Colder War��
Jules Verne- Sphinx on the Ice Field: an Antarctic Mystery (which I’m sad to report is pretty boring)
Howard Waldrop and Steve Utley-“Black as Pitch from Pole to Pole��
Rudy Rucker-Hollow Earth


]]> 20821134 This epic cultural and historical odyssey unearths the full influence of occult traditions on rock and roll—from the Beatles to Black Sabbath—and shows how the marriage between mysticism and music changed our world.

From the hoodoo-inspired sounds of Elvis Presley��to��the Eastern odysseys of George Harrison, from��the dark dalliances of Led Zeppelin to��the Masonic imagery of today’s hip-hop scene, the occult has long breathed life��into rock and hip-hop—and, indeed,��esoteric and supernatural traditions are a key ingredient behind��the emergence and��development��of rock and roll.��

With vivid storytelling and laser-sharp analysis, writer and critic Peter Bebergal illuminates��this web of influences to produce the definitive work on how the occult shaped—and saved—popular music.

As Bebergal explains, occult and mystical ideals gave rock and roll its heart and purpose, making rock into more than just backbeat music, but into a cultural revolution of political, spiritual, sexual, and social liberation.

Editorial Reviews
Review
“A fascinating thesis reflecting the time when everyone seemed to give rock and roll the status of, if not a religion, then certainly that of a spiritual belief system. Peter Bebergal’s Season of the Witch brought it all back. It's an absorbing read deserving an important place in rock literature.��
—Michael Moorcock

"Rather than turning in either a fanboyish rhapsody or a scholarly dissertation, he treads the line between those approaches. The result is passionate, informed, gripping and at times wonderfully lyrical."
—N�ʸ�

“This sharply written narrative illuminates the centrality of the occult imagination at the heart of rock and roll.��
—Library Journal (starred review)

“A thoroughly researched, absorbing, entertaining ride for anyone who’s ever played the Beatles�� ‘White Album�� backwards.��
—Andrea Shea, WBUR/ NPR

“Kudos to Bebergal for taming the wily spirits of rock long enough to capture their essence in this fascinating book. Perhaps more impressive is the book’s comprehensiveness—from Delta blues to beatnik bluster to acid evangelists to metal overlords, Season of the Witch puts the hellfire in highbrow.��
—The Contrarian

“Skillfully woven...will delight any music fan and music historian in equal measure.��
—Spirituality Today (5/5 stars)

“Peter Bebergal has written of his own searching, reconciling spiritual aspirations and personal background, in The Faith Between Us and Too Much To Dream. Both are on my bookshelves. Here, in Season Of The Witch, Peter presents an overview of one “alternative influence�� at work on some of those intending to change the world.

The world they hoped to change was a dangerous mess.

Now, half a century later…��
—Robert Fripp

“This book is a glorious headlong rush into the dark, full of the electricity of the arcane. I loved it.��
—Warren Ellis, author of Gun Machine and Transmetropolitan

“From grimoires to topographic oceans, from heavy metal to hip-hop, Peter Bebergal tracks the Mysteries through half a century of popular music (and some underground noise as well). At once an overview of rock's mystic rebellions and a handy primer on modern esoterica, Season of the Witch suggests that we may need to round out the trinity of sex, drugs, and rock' n' roll with an additional deity: the occult, another primal portal to a re-enchanted world.��
—Erik Davis, author of Led Zeppelin IV and Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica

“Told with clear-eyed scholarship and delectable anecdotes, Peter Bebergal's mind-expanding occult history opened my third eye to Rock & Roll's awesome power over human behavior. Rock & Roll will never sound the same to me again, and I'm glad about it.��
—Mark Frauenfelder, founder of Boing Boing

"Bebergal displays an intelligent understanding of the interaction between religion and culture when he argues that the "occult imagination is the vital force of rock-and-roll culture." "
—Publishers Weekly]]> 288 Peter Bebergal 0399167668 Adam 0 to-read 3.45 2014
author: Peter Bebergal
name: Adam
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 97566
In the village of Gibbeah--where certain women fly and certain men protect secrets with their lives--magic coexists with religion, and good and evil are never as they seem. In this town, a battle is fought between two men of God. The story begins when a drunkard named Hector Bligh (the "Rum Preacher") is dragged from his pulpit by a man calling himself "Apostle" York. Handsome and brash, York demands a fire-and-brimstone church, but sets in motion a phenomenal and deadly struggle for the soul of Gibbeah itself. John Crow's Devil is a novel about religious mania, redemption, sexual obsession, and the eternal struggle inside all of us between the righteous and the wicked.
]]> 226 Marlon James 1888451823 Adam 0 to-read 3.74 2005
author: Marlon James
name: Adam
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 4682558 The Book of Night Women is a sweeping, startling novel, a true tour de force of both voice and storytelling. It is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they and she will come to both revere and fear.

The Night Women, as they call themselves, have long been plotting a slave revolt, and as Lilith comes of age and reveals the extent of her power, they see her as the key to their plans. But when she begins to understand her own feelings and desires and identity, Lilith starts to push at the edges of what is imaginable for the life of a slave woman in Jamaica, and risks becoming the conspiracy's weak link.

Lilith's story overflows with high drama and heartbreak, and life on the plantation is rife with dangerous secrets, unspoken jealousies, inhuman violence, and very human emotion between slave and master, between slave and overseer, and among the slaves themselves. Lilith finds herself at the heart of it all. And all of it told in one of the boldest literary voices to grace the page recently--and the secret of that voice is one of the book's most intriguing mysteries.]]> 417 Marlon James 1594488576 Adam 0 to-read 4.36 2009
author: Marlon James
name: Adam
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 20893314
Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters—assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts��A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 70s, to the crack wars in 80s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 90s. Brilliantly inventive and stunningly ambitious, this novel is a revealing modern epic that will secure Marlon James�� place among the great literary talents of his generation.]]> 688 Marlon James 159448600X Adam 0 to-read 3.91 2014
author: Marlon James
name: Adam
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 16131189 Mo' Meta Blues is a punch-drunk memoir in which Everyone's Favorite Questlove tells his own story while tackling some of the lates, the greats, the fakes, the philosophers, the heavyweights, and the true originals of the music world. He digs deep into the album cuts of his life and unearths some pivotal moments in black art, hip hop, and pop culture.

Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson is many things: virtuoso drummer, producer, arranger, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon bandleader, DJ, composer, and tireless Tweeter. He is one of our most ubiquitous cultural tastemakers, and in this, his first book, he reveals his own formative experiences--from growing up in 1970s West Philly as the son of a 1950s doo-wop singer, to finding his own way through the music world and ultimately co-founding and rising up with the Roots, a.k.a., the last hip hop band on Earth.

Mo' Meta Blues also has some (many) random (or not) musings about the state of hip hop, the state of music criticism, the state of statements, as well as a plethora of run-ins with celebrities, idols, and fellow artists, from Stevie Wonder to KISS to D'Angelo to Jay-Z to Dave Chappelle to...you ever seen Prince roller-skate?!?

But Mo' Meta Blues isn't just a memoir. It's a dialogue about the nature of memory and the idea of a post-modern black man saddled with some post-modern blues. It's a book that questions what a book like Mo' Meta Blues really is. It's the side wind of a one-of-a-kind mind.

It's a rare gift that gives as well as takes.

It's a record that keeps going around and around.]]> 288 Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson 1455501352 Adam 4 review soon 4.11 2013
author: Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/12/05
shelves:
review:
review soon
]]> 12991188 Train Dreams is an epic in miniature, one of his most evocative and poignant fictions. It is the story of Robert Grainier, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century---an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime. Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West, this novella captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.]]> 116 Denis Johnson 1250007658 Adam 4 review soon 3.91 2002
author: Denis Johnson
name: Adam
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/12/05
shelves:
review:
review soon
]]> 23008107
In her most provocative book yet, Naomi Klein, author of the global bestsellers Shock Doctrine and No Logo, exposes the myths that are clouding climate debate.

You have been told the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. You have been told it's impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it—it just requires breaking every rule in the 'free-market' playbook. You have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight back is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring.

It's about changing the world, before the world changes so drastically that no one is safe. Either we leap—or we sink. This Changes Everything is a book that will redefine our era.]]> 576 Naomi Klein 1846145058 Adam 4 4.12 2014
author: Naomi Klein
name: Adam
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2014/12/05
date added: 2014/12/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 18774020
The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they've left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable in the face of hardship and isolation. Mourning a past they can't reclaim, they seek solace in each other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant.

Terrified of the unknown and unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realize this community poses dangers of its own. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust.]]> 393 Edan Lepucki 0316250813 Adam 3 review soon 3.23 2014
author: Edan Lepucki
name: Adam
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2014/12/05
date added: 2014/12/05
shelves:
review:
review soon
]]> 21913812
In her most provocative book yet, Naomi Klein, author of the global bestsellers Shock Doctrine and No Logo, exposes the myths that are clouding climate debate.

You have been told the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. You have been told it's impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it—it just requires breaking every rule in the 'free-market' playbook. You have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight back is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring.

It's about changing the world, before the world changes so drastically that no one is safe. Either we leap—or we sink. This Changes Everything is a book that will redefine our era.]]> 566 Naomi Klein 1451697384 Adam 4
]]> 4.15 2014
author: Naomi Klein
name: Adam
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/11/06
shelves:
review:
Klein is the current master of political journalism (some would call muckraking) exposing the misery behind the logos on our foreign made clothes or tracing the electroshock and bullet holes that we used to build this monolith of capitalism. Here she takes on the climate change and it is a book alternately filled with hope, exasperation and despair. She skewers all the false idols and hopes we could rely on to fight this oncoming threat like natural gas, population control, geoengineering , green billionaires and other false and foolish hopes. The idea that we can prevent the worst effects of this without fundamentally altering our entire way of life is an illusion and she makes this case thoroughly. I find her way to optimistic but hope she is right. We will look back at this book in the coming years with either praise or an infuriating frustration at what we could of done, how we could have ended up. I do wish a less divisive character had written this book as more people need to read it, but I can’t think of anyone better suited to the task.


]]> 12948822
Louder Than Hell is an examination of the cultural phenomenon of heavy metal, a much-maligned genre that has not only stood the test of time, but has metamorphosed with each new generation of bands and audiences. Unlike many forms of popular music, whose fans are fickle and transitory, metalheads tend to embrace their favorite bands and follow them over decades. Metal is not only a pastime for these people; it's a lifestyle and obsession that permeates every aspect of their being.

The book will feature over 250 interviews conducted by renowned journalists Jon Wiederhorn and Katherine Turman over the past 25 years. The book will include candid and confessional commentary from late icons of the genre. In addition, the book will feature comprehensive interviews with established metal musicians discussing their often-traumatic upbringings, musical histories, battles with substance abuse, sexual exploits, plus expert analysis of the heavy metal scene from the '60s to the present. Industry insiders (managers, record label A&R people, family members, friends, scenesters, groupies, journalists, porn stars and tattoo artists) will provide additional insight.]]> 736 Jon Wiederhorn 006195828X Adam 4 Metal was one of my first musical loves. Or more specifically my brother’s Metallica tapes. Then I grew up in age of exciting popular metal watching grunge wipe away hair metal(which I mostly hated…because well I had heard Metallica, except Van Halen…I loved Van Halen until David Lee Roth quit…oh and I guess Guns and Roses) and the bizarre era of Jane’s Addiction, Primus, Faith no More, Melvins,Helmet, NIN,Rage against the Machine, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains being popular bands. Then moving on to hear the classic rock and proto metal of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer and of course the Stooges. This book traces the four decades of this misunderstood but always evolving genre of music. From its roots in English prog bands up until the today of Mastodon and their ilk moving through NWOBHM, hair, thrash, death, black, nu and metalcore. It’s a bit gossipy and definitely takes the behind the music approach and anyone trying to dissuade people that metal is filled with drugs, misogyny, and violence will not be able to use this book as evidence. It was entertaining and trashy throughout even when it was covering bands I couldn’t stand (most of nu metal and metalcore). There is some important bands I think they missed covering like grunge (arguably covered thoroughly elsewhere, they only touched on Alice in Chains the most metal of the big four, but grunge adjacent bands Melvins and Earth are very important metal bands, as is Soundgarden arguably), most doom was ignored (except its roots in St Vitus and Black Sabbath, but nothing on Cathedral!), in metalcore they ignored the Boston big three of Isis, Cave in and Converge(one quote from them), the more alt of the alt metal was ignored (Jane’s addiction, Helmet and Primus), the Swedish bands Opeth, Meshuggah and Cult of Luna, and nothing on Neurosis a very influential band. Other modern bands they missed are Sleep, Karp/Big Business, Sunn0)))/Goatsnake/Burning Witch/Khanate,Boris, Dillinger Escape Plan, the Locust, Botch,Wolves in the Throneroom,and of course I would include indie rock bands that I see influencing metal like Dazzling Killmen and Don Caballero. Volume two would be a way to solve these problems, I would definitely read it.
]]> 3.89 2013
author: Jon Wiederhorn
name: Adam
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2014/11/06
date added: 2014/11/06
shelves:
review:

Metal was one of my first musical loves. Or more specifically my brother’s Metallica tapes. Then I grew up in age of exciting popular metal watching grunge wipe away hair metal(which I mostly hated…because well I had heard Metallica, except Van Halen…I loved Van Halen until David Lee Roth quit…oh and I guess Guns and Roses) and the bizarre era of Jane’s Addiction, Primus, Faith no More, Melvins,Helmet, NIN,Rage against the Machine, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains being popular bands. Then moving on to hear the classic rock and proto metal of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer and of course the Stooges. This book traces the four decades of this misunderstood but always evolving genre of music. From its roots in English prog bands up until the today of Mastodon and their ilk moving through NWOBHM, hair, thrash, death, black, nu and metalcore. It’s a bit gossipy and definitely takes the behind the music approach and anyone trying to dissuade people that metal is filled with drugs, misogyny, and violence will not be able to use this book as evidence. It was entertaining and trashy throughout even when it was covering bands I couldn’t stand (most of nu metal and metalcore). There is some important bands I think they missed covering like grunge (arguably covered thoroughly elsewhere, they only touched on Alice in Chains the most metal of the big four, but grunge adjacent bands Melvins and Earth are very important metal bands, as is Soundgarden arguably), most doom was ignored (except its roots in St Vitus and Black Sabbath, but nothing on Cathedral!), in metalcore they ignored the Boston big three of Isis, Cave in and Converge(one quote from them), the more alt of the alt metal was ignored (Jane’s addiction, Helmet and Primus), the Swedish bands Opeth, Meshuggah and Cult of Luna, and nothing on Neurosis a very influential band. Other modern bands they missed are Sleep, Karp/Big Business, Sunn0)))/Goatsnake/Burning Witch/Khanate,Boris, Dillinger Escape Plan, the Locust, Botch,Wolves in the Throneroom,and of course I would include indie rock bands that I see influencing metal like Dazzling Killmen and Don Caballero. Volume two would be a way to solve these problems, I would definitely read it.

]]> 18090125
Leroy Kervin is a 31 year old Iraqi War veteran living with a traumatic brain injury. Unable to dress or feed himself, or cope with his emotions, he has spent the last seven years in a group home. There he spends his days watching old sci-fi movies until he awakens one night with a clear mind and memories of his girlfriend. Realizing what his life has been he decides it would be better to die than to go on living this way. A failed suicide attempt leaves Leroy hospitalized where he retreats further into his mind in order to make sense of his existence.

Freddie McCall is a middle aged father working two jobs. He's lost his wife and kids, and is close to losing his house. He's buried in debt, unable to pay the medical bills from his daughter's childhood illness. As Freddie's situation becomes more desperate he undertakes a risky endeavor he hopes will solve his problems but could possibly end in disaster. Just as Freddie is about to lose it all, he is faced with the possibility of getting his kids back.

Pauline Hawkins takes care of everyone else around her. She cares for her mentally ill father out of a deep sense of obligation. As a nurse at the local hospital, she treats her patients and their families with a familiar warmth and tenderness. When Pauline becomes attached to a young runaway, she learns the difficult lesson that you can't help someone who doesn't help themselves.

The lives of these three characters intersect as they look for meaning in desperate times. Willy Vlautin covers themes ranging from health care to the economic downturn and housing crisis, to the toll war takes on veterans and their families. The Free is an extraordinary portrait of contemporary America and a testament to the resiliency of the human heart.]]> 320 Willy Vlautin 0062276743 Adam 4 ]]> 3.94 2014
author: Willy Vlautin
name: Adam
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/11/06
shelves:
review:
Vlautin’s work I picked up kind of at random and have never stopped reading. It belongs to a tradition I respect but usually avoid, an American realism with clear headed sadness giving portraits of small, undramatic lives overcome by debt, family, their own vices, and the general messiness of life. It is not like I try to avoid glaring light of reality, I just usually prefer a more baroque setting for such concerns, but Vlautin’s writing is a beautiful and peaceful as the wind through the leaves on a tree. These lives in Leguin’s “City of ruin��(from the back blurb) had me at every moment of their stories. Vlautin knows the forgotten like no one else. He is our Carver and Steinbeck.

]]> 20694952 Nixonland: a dazzling portrait of America on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the tumultuous political and economic times of the 1970s.

In January of 1973 Richard Nixon announced the end of the Vietnam War and prepared for a triumphant second term—until televised Watergate hearings revealed his White House as little better than a mafia den. The next president declared upon Nixon’s resignation “our long national nightmare is over”—but then congressional investigators exposed the CIA for assassinating foreign leaders. The collapse of the South Vietnamese government rendered moot the sacrifice of some 58,000 American lives. The economy was in tatters. And as Americans began thinking about their nation in a new way—as one more nation among nations, no more providential than any other—the pundits declared that from now on successful politicians would be the ones who honored this chastened new national mood.

Ronald Reagan never got the message. Which was why, when he announced his intention to challenge President Ford for the 1976 Republican nomination, those same pundits dismissed him—until, amazingly, it started to look like he just might win. He was inventing the new conservative political culture we know now, in which a vision of patriotism rooted in a sense of American limits was derailed in America’s Bicentennial year by the rise of the smiling politician from Hollywood. Against a backdrop of melodramas from the Arab oil embargo to Patty Hearst to the near-bankruptcy of America’s greatest city, The Invisible Bridge asks the question: what does it mean to believe in America? To wave a flag—or to reject the glibness of the flag wavers?]]> 880 Rick Perlstein 1476782415 Adam 4 4.22 2014
author: Rick Perlstein
name: Adam
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2014/10/16
date added: 2014/11/06
shelves:
review:
The follow up to Nixonland bring us from the excitement, the motion, the carnival, and the conflict of the Sixties to the quagmire and culture wars of the seventies. A morass that we have yet to crawl out of. This book feels very now, the silly divide and conquer conflict of culture wars, solipsism, spiritual longing crumbling infrastructure, apocalyptic rumblings, news as a source of panic more than information, and the political parties fighting a civil war for their identity. Covering Watergate, the rise of Reagan and Carter, the floundering of Ford, the end of Vietnam, and the Patty Hearst kidnapping, Perlstein continues to make history as addictive and arguably as exploitative as a novel. Essential and compulsive reading.
]]> 20819685
For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born.

A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.]]> 624 David Mitchell 1400065674 Adam 4 3.82 2014
author: David Mitchell
name: Adam
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/11/06
shelves: black-comedy, heart-of-darkness, literature-disguised-as-science-fic, literature-fantastique, noir, spy-vs-spy
review:
David Mitchell seems to be moving back to the mosaic narrative of his earliest book after a more straight forward historical novel (including references that make it seem like all his books are part of the same reality), or maybe he is trying to write his version of the TV show Lost (everything connected, battling immortals, all the characters making cameos in the narrative of others), or maybe writing a literary fantasy in the vein of Tim Powers and Neil Gaiman (before he was kidnapped by the internet). Or to quote the man himself (via an author character describing his book), “…think Solaris meets Noam Chomsky via the Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. Add a dash of Twin Peaks.�� There are bits of all of this going on here, and he mostly pulls it off. His prose has been overly fussy and distracting and turned me off on occasion, but here it is very clear headed and readable. The book suffers somewhat when the messiness of the characters�� lives interact with the supernatural subplot, I sometimes found myself impatient to return to the more realistic parts. The least essential part is the long part most focused on this psychic war subplot. The best parts are the extended riff on Martin Amis in the author character’s narrative and the apocalyptic ending filled with sadness but also lingering bits of hope and humanity. All the more disturbing for being so believable.
]]> 18453074 A big, brilliant, profoundly observed novel about the mysteries of modern life by National Book Award Finalist Joshua Ferris, one of the most exciting voices of his generation

Paul O'Rourke is a man made of contradictions: he loves the world, but doesn't know how to live in it. He's a Luddite addicted to his iPhone, a dentist with a nicotine habit, a rabid Red Sox fan devastated by their victories, and an atheist not quite willing to let go of God.

Then someone begins to impersonate Paul online, and he watches in horror as a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account are created in his name. What begins as an outrageous violation of his privacy soon becomes something more soul-frightening: the possibility that the online "Paul" might be a better version of the real thing. As Paul's quest to learn why his identity has been stolen deepens, he is forced to confront his troubled past and his uncertain future in a life disturbingly split between the real and the virtual.

At once laugh-out-loud funny about the absurdities of the modern world, and indelibly profound about the eternal questions of the meaning of life, love and truth, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is a deeply moving and constantly surprising tour de force.]]> 352 Joshua Ferris 0316033979 Adam 3 review coming soon 3.08 2014
author: Joshua Ferris
name: Adam
average rating: 3.08
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/10/16
shelves:
review:
review coming soon
]]> 9813
Originally published as two distinct volumes: 'Il visconte dimezzato' (1952) and 'Il cavaliere inesistente' (1959). Also published in a single volume with 'The baron in the trees' (Il barone rampante, 1957) as 'Our Ancestors' (I nostri antenati, 1960).]]> 254 Italo Calvino 0156659751 Adam 4 4.03 1959
author: Italo Calvino
name: Adam
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1959
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/08/29
shelves:
review:

]]> 307853
Hawthorne's short fiction in its entirety: his three collections, Twice-told Tales, Mosses from an Old Manse, and The Snow-Image, along with his tales for children based on Greek myths, The Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales, plus sixteen previously uncollected short stories. In a unique arrangement, all these stories appear in order of their first publication in periodicals, allowing the reader to experience the work of this masterful writer as it appeared before the American public.

Collected Novels

This second volume rounds off Hawthorne's complete fiction with his five novels. Includes his studies of historic and contemporary New England his acknowledged masterpiece The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, Fanshawe, written while Hawthorne was still an undergraduate, and his last completed novel of mystery and romance among American artists in Rome, The Marble Faun.]]> 2765 Nathaniel Hawthorne 1579580270 Adam 5 4.15 1982
author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
name: Adam
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1982
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/08/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 7084002 I Hotel begins in 1968, when Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, students took to the streets, the Vietnam War raged, and cities burned.

As Karen Yamashita’s motley cast of students, laborers, artists, revolutionaries, and provocateurs make their way through the history of the day, they become caught in a riptide of politics and passion, clashing ideologies and personal turmoil. And by the time the survivors unite to save the International Hotel—epicenter of the Yellow Power Movement—their stories have come to define the very heart of the American experience.
]]> 613 Karen Tei Yamashita 1566892392 Adam 0 to-read 3.85 2010
author: Karen Tei Yamashita
name: Adam
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/08/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 17262740 ��
“Harrowing�� true stories from two years of immersion reporting on the migrant trail from Chiapas to Arizona—an “honorable successor to enduring works like George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier �� ( New York Times )
��
One day a few years ago,��300 migrants were kidnapped between��the remote desert towns of Altar, Mexico,��and Sasabe, Arizona. A local priest got��120 released, many with broken ankles��and other marks of abuse, but the rest��vanished. Óscar Martínez, a young��writer from El Salvador, was in Altar��soon after the abduction, and his account��of the migrant disappearances is only��one of the harrowing stories he garnered��from two years spent traveling up and��down the migrant trail from Central��America and across the US border. More��than a quarter of a million Central��Americans make this increasingly��dangerous journey each year, and each��year as many as 20,000 of them are��kidnapped.

Martínez writes in powerful,��unforgettable prose about clinging to��the tops of freight trains; finding respite,��work and hardship in shelters and��brothels; and riding shotgun with the��border patrol. Illustrated with stunning��full-color photographs, The Beast is the��first book to shed light on the harsh new��reality of the migrant trail in the age of��the narcotraficantes .]]> 275 Óscar Martínez 1781681325 Adam 5 As the lights flicker a little bit in the American empire, we see the cracks in facade, but we must remember that we still cast a very large shadow, and we must remember those in the shadows. There isn’t a more forgotten or scorned people on this continent than the central American migrant, and Oscar Martinez gives us a tour of their world. This tour is the tour of hell. The horrible fates along this trail rival Dante and the violence seems pulled from the pages of Cormac McCarthy novel, but this is reporting, and Martinez reports it with compassion and humanity. This hell is ruled by the indifferent and at times hostile gods of the U.S. and Mexican governments and populated by more active demons like MS13 and Los Zetas, and “The beast��( a vicious almost legendary train that migrants need to hop). We start south in the violence wracked and collapsing countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. We learn the stories of those who travel north, many not just seeking a better wage, but actually fleeing for their lives. Then we travel through the desolate regions of Chiapas where the migrants are prey to bandits. Then to the ‘the beast��, descriptions of travels on the train are unreal. Bandits jumping on or being attacked with convoys of trucks, people trying to jump on and not get mutilated or killed, and once there on having to cling to the train for dear life while fighting off sleep. Then to the ghost towns and desolate regions of the border or “wall��, the deadly Rio Grande and deserts, and the hell of Ciudad Juarez. There the migrants are caught between the border patrol, the narcos, and their own coyotes. Martinez is in the Ciudad Juarez during the height of the drug war and his reporting is frightening, a city of pure fear and violence, a near civil war. He rides with the border patrol, the migrants, and those who few who try to help them without financial motivation, and those who prey on the migrants. He lets all of these voices speak. He is reporter and provides no real solutions to the disasters he witnesses, but we owe these who are among the most forgotten people in the Americas at least to hear their stories. Martinez tells it so well if you can stomach the subject matter it is a joy to read, and you will not forget it.


]]> 4.30 2010
author: Óscar Martínez
name: Adam
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/06/11
shelves:
review:
I dedicate this review to 70,000 missing migrants, to the 100,000 dead from the Mexican drug war and the 8 out 10 migrant women who are raped as they travel el norte. It is a small witnessing, but I do it for you.
As the lights flicker a little bit in the American empire, we see the cracks in facade, but we must remember that we still cast a very large shadow, and we must remember those in the shadows. There isn’t a more forgotten or scorned people on this continent than the central American migrant, and Oscar Martinez gives us a tour of their world. This tour is the tour of hell. The horrible fates along this trail rival Dante and the violence seems pulled from the pages of Cormac McCarthy novel, but this is reporting, and Martinez reports it with compassion and humanity. This hell is ruled by the indifferent and at times hostile gods of the U.S. and Mexican governments and populated by more active demons like MS13 and Los Zetas, and “The beast��( a vicious almost legendary train that migrants need to hop). We start south in the violence wracked and collapsing countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. We learn the stories of those who travel north, many not just seeking a better wage, but actually fleeing for their lives. Then we travel through the desolate regions of Chiapas where the migrants are prey to bandits. Then to the ‘the beast��, descriptions of travels on the train are unreal. Bandits jumping on or being attacked with convoys of trucks, people trying to jump on and not get mutilated or killed, and once there on having to cling to the train for dear life while fighting off sleep. Then to the ghost towns and desolate regions of the border or “wall��, the deadly Rio Grande and deserts, and the hell of Ciudad Juarez. There the migrants are caught between the border patrol, the narcos, and their own coyotes. Martinez is in the Ciudad Juarez during the height of the drug war and his reporting is frightening, a city of pure fear and violence, a near civil war. He rides with the border patrol, the migrants, and those who few who try to help them without financial motivation, and those who prey on the migrants. He lets all of these voices speak. He is reporter and provides no real solutions to the disasters he witnesses, but we owe these who are among the most forgotten people in the Americas at least to hear their stories. Martinez tells it so well if you can stomach the subject matter it is a joy to read, and you will not forget it.



]]> 307164
As a correspondent for the New York Press , The Nation , and Rolling Stone , Matt Taibbi scoured the political landscape for hard-hitting news stories. But the closer he got to the politicians, the more pompous and vapid they appeared. How could he write anything meaningful about these puffed-up martinets, much less vote for them? Nevertheless, Taibbi forged on and continued his responsibilities as a serious campaign reporter—though not without frequent bouts of blind panic, drug use, and donning a gorilla suit.

Spanking the Donkey indicts the surreal irrelevance of today’s mainstream politics with barbed wit and caustic intelligence. Follow Taibbi as he covers the primary for the 2004 presidential election, joining him for a spot on John Kerry’s campaign plane, face-to-face encounters with John Edwards’s pancake makeup, enough Howard Dean press conferences to memorize the good doctor's stump speech by heart, and—just to spice things up—a two-month stint working undercover in a Republican campaign office in Orlando, Florida. Brimming with uncensored opinions and total truth, Taibbi captures the real American political mind; as a patron at Flo’s Bar in Manchester, New Hampshire, eloquently puts “They all suck . . . who’s running?��

“Gonzo journalist Matt Taibbi will do anything . . . to bring political reporting back to life. Spanking the Donkey is all the more necessary in the aftermath of an election that harnessed enough liberal outrage to light the Vegas strip, cost more than a billion dollars, absorbed hundreds of hours we will never get back, and achieved absolutely nothing.�� �� Salon]]> 368 Matt Taibbi 0307345718 Adam 3 ]]> 4.00 2005
author: Matt Taibbi
name: Adam
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/06/03
shelves:
review:
Spanking the donkey this earlier work covering the 2004 election is his busiest writing, filled with skits, jokes and lots of gonzo antics like drug taking and wearing silly outfits. Its thesis that Taibbi delivers in more nuanced fashion in later books is of the presidential election as an elaborate version of the third world military parade. He heaps endless scorn on all the candidates and both parties, and the reporters who give it such an air of importance. The only politicos he retains any love for are Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders, which seems about right. This book is cynical and disgusted, but in the end who is more cynical, the pageantry or the one who exposes it.

]]> 1090823 Smells Like Dead Elephants is a brilliant collection from Matt Taibbi, “a political reporter with the gonzo spirit that made Hunter S. Thompson and P. J. O’Rourke so much fun�� (The Washington Post).

Bringing together Taibbi’s most incisive and hilarious work from his “Road Work�� column in Rolling Stone, Smells Like Dead Elephants shines an unflinching spotlight on the corruption, dishonesty, and sheer laziness of our leaders. Taibbi has plenty to say about George W. Bush, Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, and all the rest, but he doesn’t just hit inside the Beltway.

He gets involved in the action, infiltrating Senator Conrad Burns’s birthday party under disguise as a lobbyist for a fictional oil firm that wants to drill in the Grand Canyon. He floats into apocalyptic post-Katrina New Orleans in a dinghy with Sean Penn.

He goes to Iraq as an embedded reporter, where he witnesses the mind-boggling dysfunction of our occupation and spends three nights in Abu Ghraib prison. And he reports from two of the most bizarre and telling trials in recent memory: California v. Michael Jackson and the evolution-vs.-intelligent-design trial in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Equally funny and shocking, this is excellent work from one of our most entertaining writers.]]> 288 Matt Taibbi 0802170412 Adam 4 4.03 2007
author: Matt Taibbi
name: Adam
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/06/03
shelves:
review:
Episodes or dispatches from the disasters of Bush’s second term. Taibbi retains interest whether reporting on the corrupt do nothing congress, or where the thin veneer of civilization is wiped away to reveal the uncaring face of reality. For these later parts his trip into post-Katrina New Orleans with Sean Penn is piece of reporting worthy of Heller or Thompson, a piece of apocalyptic comedy equal parts satire and deadly serious, and three surreal days in Abu Ghraib.
]]> 1948003
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi set out to describe the nature of George Bush's America in the post-9/11 era and ended up vomiting demons in an evangelical church in Texas, riding the streets of Baghdad in an American convoy to nowhere, following a trail of pork through the halls of Congress, and falling into the rabbit hole of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

He discovered in his travels across the country that the resilient blue state/red state narrative of American politics had become irrelevant. A large and growing chunk of the American population was so turned off--or radicalized--by electoral chicanery, a spineless news media, and the increasingly blatant lies from our leaders ("they hate us for our freedom") that they abandoned the political mainstream altogether. They joined what he calls The Great Derangement.

Taibbi tells the story of this new American madness by inserting himself into four defining American subcultures:
�� The Military, where he finds himself mired in the grotesque black comedy of the American occupation of Iraq;
�� The System, where he follows the money-slicked path of legislation in Congress;
�� The Resistance, where he doubles as chief public antagonist and undercover member of the passionately bonkers 9/11 Truth Movement; and
�� The Church, where he infiltrates a politically influential apocalyptic mega-ministry in Texas and enters the lives of its desperate congregants.

Together these four interwoven adventures paint a portrait of a nation dangerously out of touch with reality and desperately searching for answers in all the wrong places. Funny, smart, and a little bit heartbreaking, The Great Derangement is an audaciously reported, sobering, and illuminating portrait of America at the end of the Bush era.

"The funniest angry writer and the angriest funny writer since Hunter S. Thompson roared into town."
-- James Wolcott

"��[A] scabrous, hilarious vivisection of our disintegrating nation. …Taibbi shines a light on the corruption, absurdities, and idiot pieties of modern American politics. Beneath his cynical fury, though, are flashes of surprising compassion for the adrift credulous souls who are taken in by it all."
-- Michelle Goldberg]]> 281 Matt Taibbi 0385520344 Adam 4 3.93 2008
author: Matt Taibbi
name: Adam
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/06/03
shelves:
review:
The Derangement is about the loss of a collective public narrative during the Bush era. People on the right and left started to use his wonderful term “reality shopping�� to find their own narrative. He explores and infiltrates Pastor Hagee’s megachurch and the 9/11 truth movement. He finds an America disenchanted with its political options, seeking easy superhero narratives (the Matrix and V for vendetta being common touchstones), and mostly very lonely. I found this book deeply sad, the optimism of the conspiracy theorist (even though they think they are facing a truly evil and murderous foe) versus the cynicism, disinterest and shabbiness of reality is deeply depressing. Taibbi finds humanity in both of these camps and avoids easy humor, even though he exposes some troubling beliefs and subtexts in the current era of popular movements.
]]> 17834992 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER �� NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST,��NPR, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS

A scathing portrait of an urgent new American crisis
��
Over the last two decades, America has been falling deeper and deeper into a statistical mystery:
��
Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles.
Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail.
��
In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends—growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration—come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime—but it’s impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side.
��
In The Divide, Matt Taibbi takes readers on a galvanizing journey through both sides of our new system of justice—the fun-house-mirror worlds of the untouchably wealthy and the criminalized poor. He uncovers the startling looting that preceded the financial collapse; a wild conspiracy of billionaire hedge fund managers to destroy a company through dirty tricks; and the story of a whistleblower who gets in the way of the largest banks in America, only to find herself in the crosshairs. On the other side of the Divide, Taibbi takes us to the front lines of the immigrant dragnet; into the newly punitive welfare system which treats its beneficiaries as thieves; and deep inside the stop-and-frisk world, where standing in front of your own home has become an arrestable offense. As he narrates these incredible stories, he draws out and analyzes their common source: a perverse new standard of justice, based on a radical, disturbing new vision of civil rights.
��
Through astonishing—and enraging—accounts of the high-stakes capers of the wealthy and nightmare stories of regular people caught in the Divide’s punishing logic, Taibbi lays bare one of the greatest challenges we face in contemporary American life: surviving a system that devours the lives of the poor, turns a blind eye to the destructive crimes of the wealthy, and implicates us all.

Praise for The Divide
��
“Ambitious . . . deeply reported, highly compelling . . . impossible to put down.�� —The New York Times Book Review
��
“These are the stories that will keep you up at night. . . . The Divide is not just a report from the new America; it is advocacy journalism at its finest.�� —Los Angeles Times
��
“Taibbi is a relentless investigative reporter. He takes readers inside not only investment banks, hedge funds and the blood sport of short-sellers, but into the lives of the needy, minorities, street drifters and illegal immigrants. . . . The Divide is an important book. Its documentation is powerful and shocking.�� —The Washington Post
��
“Captivating . . . The Divide enshrines its author’s position as one of the most important voices in contemporary American journalism.����The Independent (UK)
��
“Taibbi [is] perhaps the greatest reporter on Wall Street’s crimes in the modern era.����Salon


From the Hardcover edition.]]> Matt Taibbi 0804128057 Adam 4 4.10 2014
author: Matt Taibbi
name: Adam
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/06/03
shelves:
review:
The Divide is the most current and the most important as it shows, to crudely paraphrase Taibbi’s thesis, the move of America towards a dystopia. An oligarchy that is criminalizing being poor by intertwining the social safety net with law enforcement and refusal to prosecute financial crimes criminally (only seeking fines). Taibbi gives us a tour of the bureaucracy of welfare, stop and frisk, immigration laws of Georgia, and other stops. He uses situations that seem worthy of the fiction of Heller and Kafka, bureaucracy gone amuck, serving only its illogical needs. Then he counters this with the inadequate prosecuting of financial crimes. HSBC bank can launder $100 million for the mass murders in the Sinaloa cartel without a single person going to jail but a homeless man caught with a single joint gets to serve 40 days in jail. Case by case Taibbi goes through this surreal tilting of justice.
]]> 7897556 ��
The financial crisis that exploded in 2008 isn’t past but prologue. The stunning rise, fall, and rescue of Wall Street in the bubble-and-bailout era was the coming-out party for the network of looters who sit at the nexus of American political and economic power. The grifter class—made up of the largest players in the financial industry and the politicians who do their bidding—has been growing in power for a generation, transferring wealth upward through increasingly complex financial mechanisms and political maneuvers. The crisis was only one terrifying manifestation of how they’ve hijacked America’s political and economic life.

Rolling Stone��s Matt Taibbi here unravels the whole fiendish story, digging beyond the headlines to get into the deeper roots and wider implications of the rise of the grifters. He traces the movement’s origins to the cult of Ayn Rand and her most influential—and possibly weirdest—acolyte, Alan Greenspan, and offers fresh reporting on the backroom deals that decided the winners and losers in the government bailouts. He uncovers the hidden commodities bubble that transferred billions of dollars to Wall Street while creating food shortages around the world, and he shows how finance dominates politics, from the story of investment bankers auctioning off America’s infrastructure to an inside account of the high-stakes battle for health-care reform—a battle the true reformers lost. Finally, he tells the story of Goldman Sachs, the “vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.��

Taibbi has combined deep sources, trailblazing reportage, and provocative analysis to create the most lucid, emotionally galvanizing, and scathingly funny account yet written of the ongoing political and financial crisis in America. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the labyrinthine inner workings of politics and finance in this country, and the profound consequences for us all.]]> 253 Matt Taibbi 0385529953 Adam 4 4.14 2010
author: Matt Taibbi
name: Adam
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/06/03
shelves:
review:
Griftopia is Taibbi’s sour take on the financial crisis and its aftermath. He reviews what he calls the “grifter era�� where everyone in government and business has moved towards seeking a fast buck instead of long term planning. Pennsylvania attempts to sell its turnpike, and Chicago does sell its parking meters to fill a one year budget gap(for a 75 year lease) This resembles the sacking of a crumbling empire rather than a plan for continued business. He treats the bailouts, the Tea Party, Affordable Care Act(which has done nothing to break up the insurance cartels and is many ways a gift to them) with scorn, disgust and also compassion. The consensus between the two parties to back up business at every turn while keeping people squabbling over social issues is creating a culture of cynicism and corruption truly alienated from democratic impulse.
]]> 17871514
His childhood in Peoria, Illinois, was spent just trying to survive. Yet the culture into which he was born—his mother was a prostitute; his grandmother ran the whorehouse—helped shaped him into one of the most influential and outstanding performers of our time.

Pryor attracted admiration and anger in equal parts. He was a comedian who many consider the greatest ever, yet his triumphant stand-up work has been largely eclipsed by his mediocre movie output. His personal life was likewise something of a contradiction, because Pryor was a man of deep intelligence and sensitivity yet was also someone who could never seem to make the pieces of his life come together to create a whole. His was a fascinating, larger-than-life personality; he was as pivotal and essential a figure as Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, or Muhammad Ali. Pryor the solo artist brought to a pop-obsessed generation the news that they had a past with deep roots that spoke to our shared humanity. Through David and Joe Henry, Richard Pryor speaks to us still.]]> 297 David Henry 1616200782 Adam 4
]]> 3.73 2013
author: David Henry
name: Adam
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/06/03
shelves:
review:
The Henry Brothers have done the world a favor with this beautiful book. It is a work of history, sociology, a critic of pop culture, and a prose poem, and it is very readable with poetic moments. It is unsentimental about its subject, the brothers are unapologetic though in their defense of Pryor’s genius though. They are equally unapologetic about Pryor’s dark side, his damaged psyche, abuses of woman and drugs. This book enters some almost terrifying moments, but it never feels exploitative, just the bitter truth. Paul Mooney as usual almost steals the show. The book in the end is a celebration of an American genius and his brief fulfilling of his promise and his long decline and neglect of his vibrant and important voice. He spoke a truth and then silenced himself with money and terrible movies. This celebrates that short moment when Pryor showed us something about our country, the people he worked with and knew (and abused), and the world that created him. This book is must for fans of Pryor, standup comedy, pop and social culture of the 60’s and 70’s, and historians of those turbulent decades. It also stands as terrific literary artifact worthy of its subject.


]]> 94351
Death in the Andes is both a fascinating detective novel and an insightful political allegory. Mario Vargas Llosa offers a panoramic view of Peruvian society, from the recent social upheaval to the cultural influences in its past.]]> 322 Mario Vargas Llosa 057117549X Adam 4 3.72 1993
author: Mario Vargas Llosa
name: Adam
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/04/23
shelves:
review:
This might be a five star book but I’m going to have to think about it for awhile. A masterful meditation on violence and its roots in politics, poverty, sex, and folklore; and a portrait of the mountain people caught between government indifference (and malice), the seemingly irrational violence of the Shining path rebels, and the harshness of the landscape. Told through flashbacks, and variety of intertwining stories this book has a love story, murder mystery, the bizarre tale of a Dionysian cult , and a dozen or so little stories thrown in, which makes the book sound really dense and complicated but the story telling is so effective I didn’t really notice. The title of the book must have been given in translation because the Spanish title is Lituma en los Andes (Lituma being one of the characters), but it works since it evokes both Agatha Christie and Thomas Mann, as this odd book should.
]]> 53925
~publisher's web site]]> 568 Mario Vargas Llosa 0571139612 Adam 5 4.24 1981
author: Mario Vargas Llosa
name: Adam
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1981
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/04/23
shelves:
review:
Another tale of mayhem, history and the macabre from Vargas Llosa. Whereas Death in the Andes was compared to a Diane Arbus styled portrait the visual artists this book evokes is Heiryonmous Bosch or Breughal. A medieval meets the wild west landscape(turn of the century Brazil) of prophets, bandits, water witches, droughts, a storytelling dwarf, flagellants, miracle healers, madmen, plagues, vultures, rats, a revolutionary phrenologist, pariah dogs, Barons whose time has past, circus freaks, a utopian colony, and marauding destructive army. Festooned with grotesques and corpses this is a book of violence and horror but it is a conflation of real history and not fiction. A historical novel in the tradition of Tolstoy, McCarthy, and Lampedusa. Exhaustingly long but worth it.
]]> 12764 The Death of Artemio Cruz is Carlos Fuentes's haunting voyage into the soul of modern Mexico. Its acknowledged place in Latin American fiction and its appeal to a fresh generation of readers have warranted this new translation by Alfred Mac Adam, translator (with the author) of Fuentes's Christopher Unborn.

As in all his fiction, but perhaps most powerfully in this book, Fuentes is a passionate guide to the ironies of Mexican history, the burden of its past, and the anguish of its present.]]> 307 Carlos Fuentes 0374522839 Adam 5 3.88 1962
author: Carlos Fuentes
name: Adam
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1962
rating: 5
read at: 2007/11/15
date added: 2014/04/23
shelves:
review:
70 years of Mexican history are covered in Fuentes�� fever dream of a novel. Featuring narration that’s part Beckett, part Stern, and part Citizen Cane, Cruz recounts his life while rotting on his death bed with first person morbid reflection, second person rants, and third person remembrances. Bitter and profane at times and pretty relentless dark, but this is such a thoroughly realized book with the experimentation serving the ideas at every chance.
]]> 56899 118 Carlos Fuentes 9580469717 Adam 5 3.87 1962
author: Carlos Fuentes
name: Adam
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1962
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/04/23
shelves: horror-disguised-as-literature
review:
I just remembered this 2nd person nightmare by Fuentes...terrifying and gripping and near genius.
]]> 264891
A unique and epic history, Eduardo Galeano's Memory of Fire trilogy is an outstanding Latin American eye view of the making of the New World. From its first English language publication in 1985 it has been recognized as a classic of political engagement, original research, and literary form.

“Memory of Fire is devastating, triumphant... sure to scorch the sensibility of English-language readers.�� (New York Times)

“An epic work of literary creation... there could be no greater vindication of the wonders of the lands and people of Latin America than Memory of Fire.�� (Washington Post)

“[Memory of Fire] will reveal to you the meaning of the New World as it was, and of the world as we have it now.�� (Boston Globe)

“A book as fascinating as the history it relates.... Galeano is a satirist, realist, and historian, and... deserves mention alongside John Dos Passos, Bernard DeVoto, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.�� (Los Angeles Times)]]> 336 Eduardo Galeano 0393317730 Adam 4 heart-of-darkness 4.39 1982
author: Eduardo Galeano
name: Adam
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/04/23
shelves: heart-of-darkness
review:
A beautiful book that exist in the strange ground between Howard Zinn”s People’s History and Borges’s Brief History of Infamy. It featured the rage and the unpeeling of the veneer of nostalgia and romance of history of the former and the irony, pocket novels, morbid humor of the latter. This is not a scholarly or popular history though the author does show his research, but more in the realm of epic poem and Borges, a savage and beautiful book. I can’t wait for the rest of the trilogy.
]]> 71490 700 Álvaro Mutis 0940322919 Adam 5 4.34 1993
author: Álvaro Mutis
name: Adam
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2007/12/21
date added: 2014/04/23
shelves:
review:
A beautiful and comic voyage of a book that at different times will evoke Heart of Darkness, Greek tragedy, Moby Dick, Sinbad’s voyages, King Solomon’s Mines, narratives of Proust and Nabokov, the rogue casts of Pynchon and Dickens, Don Quixote, Journey to the End of the Night, and Borges. These seven novellas form one novel are filled with stories that are comically absurd, fraught with menace or existential doom, and or both at the same time. The at times anachronistic feeling of the narrative, mix with the timelessness of the themes in a very effective way, and its underworld setting of rotting ports, abandoned and deadly mines, steaming jungles, whorehouses, army outposts, and rusty tramp steamers with its cast of terrorists, suicides, dreamers, psychopaths, homicidal dwarfs, drug dealers, soldiers, and the blind, are an endless riot, Adventure stories fill with wide eyed wonder but wrapped in a dreamy melancholy with ontological concerns. One of the great books of our time which I recommend wholeheartedly.
]]> 2941279 317 Ignácio de Loyola Brandão 0380845334 Adam 4 3.88 1974
author: Ignácio de Loyola Brandão
name: Adam
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1974
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/04/23
shelves: black-comedy, heart-of-darkness, horror-disguised-as-literature
review:
Zero is a wild, profane, irreverent, surreal novel written in Brazil’s years of lead during a repressive military dictatorship. The author uses collages, random illustrations, textual experiments, cinematic technique, faux documentary and textbook appropriations, advertisements, hilarious footnotes in a exuberant style that resembles Dos Passos , the over the top dark humor of Vonnegut or Pynchon, torture sequences worthy of de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom, Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius adventures, and foreshadows Junot Diaz, while creating a funny vibrant, and very black humored indictment of his time period that still feels fresh.
]]> 1478325 256 Virgilio Piñera 156886017X Adam 4 4.02 1985
author: Virgilio Piñera
name: Adam
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/04/23
shelves: horror-disguised-as-literature
review:
Piñera crafts an odd allegorical novel. A parody of coming of age novels or the novel of education, he has his young man Rene coming to self realization in a very twisted version of our own world, where people are obsessed with eating meat (Piñera was a vegetarian I believe), a school teaches its students to suffer in silence (electrocuting them in chairs with muzzles on), murder is legal, people are paid to be surgically rendered as people’s identical doubles (also everyone seems to have a mannequin), and secret societies fight over the distribution of chocolate. A parade of grotesque characters (Skeleton and Ball of Meat, the king of meat), odd encounters, a surreal dead pan orgy out Marquis de Sade, and general absurdity is the state of affairs in this novel. Resembles very little, except possibly Kobo Abe’s bizarre novels of the seventies (Box Man, Secret Rendezvous) and Burroughs (though more linear). Not for the faint of heart.
]]> 454294
"My stories have no logical structures," Hernández wrote, and indeed they proceed in a most uncanny fashion. Concatenations of images, skeins of sensations, startling metaphors like raids on the unconscious—these are the pathways through Hernández's fluid and animistic world. People and things, memory and fantasy are form-shifting aspects of one another: a statue stops taking its "role" seriously in order to spend time "playing with the pigeons"; a splashing Italian fountain foretells the astonishing part that water will play in a bereaved woman's life; curtained windows haunt a room as though they were twin maids dressed alike in lace and drapery; a man greets his wife by saying, "I always forget to bring a lens and have a good look at the plants in the greens of your eyes. I know how you get your complexion, though: by rubbing olives in your skin."

Though logic is not imposed on his stories from without, there is nothing arbitrary about Hernández's gentle surrealism. These tales unfold with the authority of dreams of childhood reveries, ready at any moment to take over from the rigorous banality we work so hard to enforce. Hernández's ear for the hidden language of the world is always strange and surprising. The delicious secret of his work is here revealed to English-language readers for, amazingly enough, the very first time.]]> 260 Felisberto Hernández 0941419541 Adam 4 surrealism-dada-classics 4.21 1993
author: Felisberto Hernández
name: Adam
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/04/23
shelves: surrealism-dada-classics
review:
The weird world of Uruguayan fantasist Felisberto is like one of his book flaps states, a look into "slightly different but parallel dimension", oddball humor meets phantasmagorical prose. Bizarre sketches etched with autobiographical authenticity that resemble Proust's capturing of time and memory, automatic writing of the surrealist school, and the goofball antics of silent film comedy. The highlights are definitely "Daisy Dolls" and "The Flooded House". The former takes place in weird house next door to a mysterious factory, and filled with eccentric servants, mirrors(which one of the characters is terrified of) and lifelike human size dolls(some in display cases acting out scenes which reminds of Raymond Rousell's Locus Solus")It is a full plunge into a world of erotic pathos and and very bizarre ideas. The missing link between Hoffman's "The Sandman" and Landolfi's "Gogol's Wife" The latter is another odd dream were a possibly blind, obese women has an author slowly paddle her around her designed flooded house where she occasionally holds her own wake and waxes eccentricities about the nature of water. Other stories feature men who think they are horses,ushers whose eyes glow in the dark, companies that inject commercials into you by syringe, and a woman who can never leave her balcony.
]]> 134360 182 Diane Arbus 0893816949 Adam 5 4.03 1972
author: Diane Arbus
name: Adam
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1972
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/04/22
shelves:
review:

]]> 341879 Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.]]> 304 Patti Smith Adam 4 4.19 2010
author: Patti Smith
name: Adam
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/04/22
shelves:
review:

]]> 59397 196 Arthur Machen 1598184377 Adam 4 3.99 1895
author: Arthur Machen
name: Adam
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1895
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/04/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 110237 301 Ken Bruen 1932112472 Adam 4 3.76 2006
author: Ken Bruen
name: Adam
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/01/18
shelves: black-comedy, heart-of-darkness, noir
review:

]]>