I can't quite decide on a star rating for this book. For most of it, I thought it was on the way to a four-star rating for me. It seemed to me that this book had the kind of dark humor that managed to avoid crossing into "too dark." Until it did. Without spoiling, I will just say that there was ...
I first learned about Brock Clarke, and subsequently his novels, because he was my creative writing professor for four quarters at the University of Cincinnati. Therefore, having known him personally, I had preconceived notions about what his writing might be like. He was an enjoyable teacher, and I...
If you're in an airport, and you don't have anything to read, and you are in one of those airport bookstores, and you don't see anything else you want to read more, you could buy this book and it would get you through your trip. Or you could just make up stories about the crazy ass people in the air...
When I mark this as "finished," I mean I'm finished with it, not that I completed reading the entire thing. I got less than 50 pages in and was unwilling to read further. At first it was charming and funny, but that wore off fast. The satire is mostly lame, and I did a lot of eye-rolling. The concep...
An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is best read as a spoof of fictionalized memoirs. Some reviewers haven't liked this novel; my guess is that they are reading it straight rather than as a parody of the genre. Of course the protagonist acts stupidly. Of course the characters are ei...
I am more often surprised by the ends of books than not these days. Am I losing my plot-fu? Am I narratively challenged? This is the second book in a year which has discombobulated me. (The first was Mark Watson's Bullet Points.) The narrator was so bland, so dreary that I wasn't prepared for the su...
This book was so contrived and repetetive that I put it down after about 160 pages.
Irony is alive and well in upstate New York. This is an amusing and entertaining tale that comes off sounding like the wise-ass little brother of Jernigan by David Gates. Lamar Kerry Jr. does not know pain, and even goes as far as to get himself beaten up, because he feels that he deserves it. He is...
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