Charlie

I think that maybe the greatest compliment I can give a book is that, if I had read it as a teen, it would have been one of my all-time favorites. This book falls wholly within that category. That doesn't mean that it's YA fiction; it was supremely enjoyable as an adult, and some if its content is decidedly grown-up. Anders has a fantastic sense of humor, reminiscent of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett, and she has imbued this book with infinitely more humanism and empathy than the average sci-fi read. This book is so much fun, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

In a review of a different novel, I scoffed at the idea of writing a book about college students on the premise that they are all awful (they are). I am not opposed to protagonists being bad people, but I do insist that I care about them. Generally speaking, college students care so much about themselves that it is hard to inspire a reader to do the same. Batuman has done a fantastic job of surmounting this obstacle in The Idiot, and her primary tool in doing so is the blinding specificity of the narrator's voice. I don't know that I have ever understood and empathized with a character in literature as well as I did Selin. Other reviewers have complained that “nothing happens,” but while I would agree that the plot is pretty staid, I am an absolute sucker for this type of book. The Idiot reminded me of The End of the Story, by Lydia Davis; My Struggle, by Karl Ove Knausgaard; and The Rum Diary, by Hunter S. Thompson, and it just might be the best of the lot.

I had only read one John Green novel prior to this one, and though I didn't like that work (Paper Towns), I have since become a fan of the author as a person and a personality. I decided to read this book after subscribing to his superb podcast and after hearing his excellent interview with Terry Gross. The dominant topic of conversation in that interview was anxiety, both this book's protagonist's and Green's own, and I believe that the book is worth reading for Green's treatment of this subject alone. I didn't love this book, but I know that I would have loved it had I read it in middle school, and that's enough to earn it five stars from me.

I wasn't surprised to hear that R.O. Kwon spent 10 years working on this book, since it is polished to absolute perfection. In addition to its fantastic prose, The Incendiaries gives a different and uniquely dark treatment to the collegiate coming of age novel. Kwon expertly captures the tension between our need to connect and form communities, and the isolating tumult that self-discovery and self-definition can produce. The book reminded me of Elif Batuman's The Idiot, which I also loved, along with some of the elements of the film The Social Network. Although I read it in August, I think that The Incendiaries would make a fantastic winter read, and one could easily finish this little book on a single snow day.

This book has been on my list for a while, but the upcoming TV show inspired me to finally pick it up. I'm not much of a comics reader, but it's easy to see why it remains such a popular story.

I haven't seen the 2009 movie, but I've heard it's not fantastic, which is surprising because I was absolutely blown away by how cinematic the book was. My favorite of the 12 sections was Dr. Manhattan's origin. Moore and Gibbons tell a story with lots of complex temporal and spatial elements, which could really only be done in a visual format.