Gio'

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - 4 stars:

After my third book by David Foster Wallace, I’ve come to a few conclusions:

1. He loves tennis in a way that’s hard to overstate.
2. He seems to deliberately restrain his sense of humor—perhaps because he found it distasteful or not “serious” enough.
3. He uses 100 words where 10 would do.
4. His nonfiction is great; his fiction, more hit or miss.

On the essays:

• “Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley”: Beautiful, honest, and evocative.
• “E Unibus Pluram”: I know it’s a well-known piece, but I almost DNF’d the book because of it. Exhausting, monotone, and seemingly endless. Just when you think it’s over, another tirade begins.
• “Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All”: Fun, well-written, and eye-opening—a glimpse into a part of America I had completely ignored.
• “Greatly Exaggerated”: Didn’t leave much of an impression.
• “David Lynch Keeps His Head”: Deep, original, and thought-provoking. Made me see Lynch in a completely new light.
• “Tennis Player Michael Joyce...”: The true standout. A brilliant dive into the soul of tennis, written with deep knowledge and an open mind.
• “A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again”: The most accessible piece. Finally, some less constrained humor and a lighter tone—a well-deserved breather at the end of a remarkable, if often exhausting, collection.

Summer of Night – 4 stars

Every sci-fi fan owes Dan Simmons for the Hyperion books, so I was curious to see how he handles horror—and the answer is: mostly well. Comparisons to IT (and The Body/ Stand By Me) are absolutely warranted. The first half is the weakest: Simmons spends too much time meticulously setting the stage, and it starts to feel like it’s getting out of hand. Unlike Stephen King—who often hooks you in the first few pages even if then goes to write very long books—Simmons takes a slow, roundabout approach that doesn’t fully pay off, IMHO. But once the second half kicks in, the pacing improves dramatically. The story picks up, characters act as rationally as horror allows, and it’s just a lot of fun. Solid book overall—it just needed tighter editing.

Pirate Latitudes – Did Not Finish

I’ve always been a huge admirer of Michael Crichton—I still remember reading Jurassic Park in a single afternoon back in 1990. Unfortunately, Pirate Latitudes felt weak and a slog, lacking the tension and engagement of his best work. The plot just wasn’t interesting enough, and I had to let it go midway. One less book from a great writer for me to read.

Interesting how I reacted o this book... After the first 10-15% of the book, I was ready to abandon it. I found it tedious, repeating the same concept again and again with just different words and different examples. I powered through the slog mostly out of curiosity, given the great reviews and finally got to the good part. The tone of the author is perfect, judgement is restrained and there's no self indulgence, and that made the read in the end quite compelling. Probably, as a fiction, it would be a 3 stars, but as a memoir. I think it brings something important in an elegant way, so it gets an extra star from me.

Taken one by one all this little stories are ok, but as a fragmented story I found this book confused with no apparent reasons and the society is described through large numbers if trivialities and stereotypes.