Charlie

As a 5-year-old I asked my father, “What's a prostitute?” He said to me, “A prostitute is somebody who makes a living by listening to other people's problems.” I asked him, “What's a mafia guy?” He says, “A mafia guy is like a landlord but he collects money from houses that he doesn't own.”—Etgar Keret on Fresh Air, 16 June 2015

I had the pleasure of seeing Keret give a reading from this collection earlier this year. What I love about him, in his writing and in person, is his gift for making people consider seemingly familiar things from a completely new perspective. Keret's surreal style is informed in part by his tendency to look at the world through a childlike lens, free from the jaded, calcified preconceptions of most adults. For this reason, he's an excellent writer of children, and they often feature in his stories. My favorite from this collection is the title story, which is also the first. Keret isn't for everyone, but this slim volume would be the perfect place to start.

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.

I can see why this book is considered a classic of the management genre, but its content was extremely broad and lacking in detail. It'd be just as effective as a longish article in HBR if all the fluff were cut out (and it's mostly fluff). Still, the overall message is a good one, and I'm glad I read it.

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.

I'm trapped in a vicious circle, wherein P.G. Wodehouse keeps writing the same book over and over again, and I keep giving it five stars. It only makes sense that I leave the same review each time:

Fans of the series will delight to find many familiar hallmarks here: country houses, unwanted engagements, Anatole's cooking, and Jeeves saving the day.

I have yet to hide an entire review due to spoilers, but I felt I had to do so for this book. This novel is unlike anything I've ever read, and while I loved parts of it, I absolutely hated others. The first half of the book tells the story of Sarah and David, two high schoolers who couple and decouple amidst the sometimes crazy circumstances of their lives, including their cultish school for the arts. At page 131, the perspective changes, and it is revealed that the preceding pages were an excerpt from a quasi-autobiographical novel written by the “Sarah” character. This was an interesting twist, and I initially enjoyed this next section of the novel, which is written from the perspective of one of the minor characters from the first part. Unfortunately, this portion of the book climaxes with the narrator, “Karen,” shooting a man 14 years her senior with whom she had a relationship as a child. While I would normally applaud such an action, “Karen” went about this by switching a prop gun in a play for a real gun, which is probably the laziest writing I have ever read, and is the sole reason I am giving this book three stars instead of five. The last section of the book was very good; it deepened the mystery and made the whole thing worth reading. Overall, I would recommend this novel.

This book was the perfect little literary snack, and I finished it in one sitting. The novel gives the reader a window into the lives of Virginia and Leonard Woolf as the title character would have experienced them. That is, the scope is thoroughly domestic and doesn't touch on the Woolfs larger influence except as can be gleaned from their circle of friends. When I eventually break down and buy a summer house in an English village, it will be because of books like these.

My knowledge of Greek mythology begins with some hazy recollections of Edith Hamilton and ends with Rick Riordan, so it is not an exaggeration to say the only thing I knew about Circe going into this book was “turns men into animals.” I absolutely loved this novel. The prose was unlike anything I'd ever read: epic and ancient, yet completely accessible to the modern reader. The book was filled with beautiful poetic images that could have come straight out of Homer (and maybe they did, I've never read The Odyssey). I don't know how this book escaped my attention last year (it absolutely crushed the competition in Goodreads' 2018 Fantasy poll), but I eagerly await Madeline Miller's next work.

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.

The Shakespeare Requirement is a strong sequel, and well worth the read. While it's less inventive in its form than Dear Committee Members, its more traditional structure brings a lot of benefits, particularly in endowing the non-Fitger characters with more depth and solidity. I love humorous novels, and this one is just darn funny. Schumacher may be the funniest living novelist, and I can't wait for her next book.

A beautiful book, and one of the best love stories I've read in a while. Aciman juxtaposes Elio's internal fervor and manic desire with the setting of a gorgeous and languid Italian town, as well as Oliver's easy-going exterior.

The conclusion was masterful, as well. The reader has a strong sense from the beginning that the relationship is doomed, and although that is the case, Aciman manages to deliver a satisfying end, with just the right mixture of happiness and melancholy. I look forward to reading the sequel, which is due out later this year.

This is a delightful, short novel that deals with grief and religion. I really enjoy Jewish literature, principally the works of Michael Chabon and Etgar Keret, and this novel was the most deeply steeped in the religion itself of any that I've read. Its themes, however, are relatable to anyone, and include the obligations of belonging to families and communities. I had the pleasure of seeing Englander at the Virginia Festival of the Book last year, and he is one of the most energetic and engaging authors I've ever met. While Kaddish.com is full of humor, it is much more subdued and restrained than his last novel, and drew on his talent as a superb short story writer.

Frankly, I found this book to be disappointing. The Little Mouse finds a fruit of some kind (perhaps a cherry, given its size relative to the protagonist) and buries it, whereby it becomes the titular secret. LM deflects inquiry after inquiry regarding the nature of what he's buried, and, after some time, the fruit grows into a tree. I thought I knew where the book was going, with the tree as a visual metaphor for Walter Scott's famous aphorism, “O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!” That is, our secrets can take on lives of their own and balloon to an unmanageable size. The ending of the book came out of nowhere, as fruit falls from the tree and mouse's friends (and former inquisitors) consume it. The moral of the story appears to be that our secrets can bear fruits, and I take the whole thing to be a tacit endorsement of modern day mass surveillance, by which the keeping of one secret provides for the well-being of society on the whole. Not a good message for children. One star.

I went into this book with high expectations for a humorous, easy summer read, but it didn't really impress me. The humor was pretty scant and while the plot sounded hilarious (it's built around an upcoming wedding at the central family's ancestral home), it was actually closer to homey. In places, the author really excelled at evoking nostalgia and at others those attempts elicited nothing more than a shrug or an eye-roll from me. At its best, I felt like I was back with the Weasleys at the Burrow; there's just something about large families in ramshackle country houses that is extremely appealing to me. In that sense, this book WAS a great summer read, but the good was counterbalanced by a mediocre story.

I came to A Brief History of Seven Killings after finishing James' Black Leopard, Red Wolf. While both novels are long, violent, and complicated, I much preferred the latter.

A Brief History of Seven killings comprises five parts, the first two of which take place over the course of two consecutive days, and the last three of which are separated from the first two and each other by years. A multitude of characters narrates the book, trading off perspectives each chapter, and what begins as a beautiful chorus devolves into cacophony by the middle of the book.

The first two parts, “Original Rockers” and “Ambush in the Night,” chronicle the events leading up to and immediately following an assassination attempt on Bob Marley. These sections are perfect. One could rip out the last 400 pages of the book and it would still be deserving of every accolade it has won. The blended and diverse narration is fantastic, connecting events on the streets of Jamaica to Cold War geopolitics.

I found the two middle sections, which deal with the drug trade in the late seventies and eighties, to be a bit of a slog. I love long books, and I almost always become more invested in the characters as I progress; that was not the case with this novel. Once the tension of assassination attempt breaks, the narrative bloats and becomes unwieldy. Additionally, in these sections, two of my favorite characters (the ghost and the CIA agent) were scantly utilized, understandably but regrettably. I did enjoy the last section, which includes a series of one-on-one encounters between several of the characters and does an excellent job of ending the book.

Ciment divides this book into two parts, the first starting with jury selection and ending with the verdict, and the second dealing with the aftermath of the trial. I thought that the first part was all-around excellent; highlights included the case itself, the feeling of constriction accompanying the sequestration of the jury, and the maintained anonymity of the jurors, with the author referring to them only by letter and number.

The second part of the book, in which the protagonist faces the fallout of her decisions, both her affair and her conduct as a juror, was quite sad, and initially led me to rate the book four stars. After sitting with the ending for a while (I'm writing this review approximately three weeks after finishing the book), my initial feelings have mellowed and I've come to really appreciate the latter half of the novel. In this section, the anonymity the protagonist relished in the first part is dramatically obliterated at great cost to her, her lover, her husband, and the accused whose fate she determined.

Despite the fact that it takes place in Florida, this is not a feel good summer read. Nevertheless, I would highly recommend it.

I enjoyed, but did not love, this book, the sequel to Murakami's first novel, Hear the Wind Sing. As always, Murakami's prose is captivating, but his writerly vices are particularly pronounced. He has caught a lot of well-deserved flak for his treatment of women, and this book has the most egregious case I've seen, in which the narrator has a relationship with a nameless pair of twins who are literally indistinguishable. While the pinball plot was intriguing, mysterious, and surreal, the Rat subplot was utterly unremarkable, and seemed to have been inserted only to tie the book more closely to its predecessor.

I love the Jeeves/Wooster novels, but this one was not among my favorites. I don't usually take much note of the plots, which are generally just delivery mechanisms for Wodehouse's situational and rhetorical humor. In this case, however, the plot and prose lacked the vivacity of previous installments. After finishing the book, I read that this was the penultimate Jeeves/Wooster novel, published when the author was 90, and perhaps this is the reason for the lost luster. Even still, fans of the series will delight to find many familiar hallmarks here: country houses, unwanted engagements, Anatole's cooking, and Jeeves saving the day. While I haven't read the last Jeeves/Wooster novel, this one had a sweet ending and would have served well as a finale.

This is a quick, informative read. Sobel deftly conveys the complexity and difficulty of the longitude problem in layman's terms, and describes several of the solutions proposed, some of which are quite humorous. The prose is for the most part clear and concise, though it is sometimes accented by superfluous poetic flourishes. I wish that the end of the book offered more specifics about Harrison's impact on horology, and I think it could also have benefited greatly from annotated pictures of the movements of his machines.

The Name of the Rose was a tough, tough read. The prose is very dense, often archaic, and interspersed with an alarming amount of untranslated Latin. I found the mystery at its center to be very compelling, as well as the themes undergirding the book's conflicts. It's as beautiful and labyrinthine as the abbey where its events take place, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a book to get immersed in.

My Sister, the Serial Killer is a dark, funny novella that explores relationships within and without families. The story is fun and inventive, and I very much liked the ending. The book was not particularly gory, which I always appreciate, but having the murders take place away from narrator also served to give her the flimsy excuses she needed to believe her sister's narrative, which added to the book's humor. This was a quick read, and I'd highly recommend it.

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'm normally turned off by post-apocalyptic fiction, but this book came highly recommend from a number of sources that I really trust. I'm glad I listened, because this book exceeded all of my expectations.

I divide fantasy into the worlds with rules and the worlds without (I'm not sure how this fits into the more commonly referenced high/low framework). Jemisin‘s is a world with rules, by which I mean that the reader knows that there is so much more to the world than what was put down on the page. After finishing the book, I don't know which I want to read more: the sequel to The Fifth Season or the Stillness's Silmarillion. That said, I don't want to make the novel out to be some sterile world-building exercise, because the story is also fantastic; I raced through the last 200 pages in one sitting.

My one complaint was the use of second person for Essun's chapters. It really grated on me in the beginning, and though I got used to it I still wasn't sold in the end.

I very much enjoyed this little book. I haven't read very many epistolary novels, and I thought it was an interesting choice to have letters from only one character, with no replies or responses included. In my opinion, that decision paid off beautifully for two reasons. Firstly, many of the letters are letters of recommendation, which inherently have that screaming-into-the-void quality about them. But also, I got the impression that replies wouldn't have had even the smallest impact on Fitger, the letter writer. The risk with the approach, of course, is that hearing only one voice for the entirety of the book would get tiresome, but Schumacher handled it beautifully, balancing Fitger's snark with a healthy dose of sincerity. I'm hoping that the fact that Goodreads lists this as Fitger #1 means that there's a sequel on the way.

This book is proto-Murakami through and through. Though it lacks the surreal elements that characterize many of his later works, Hear the Wind Sing succinctly captures his style and writerly ethos. While it is not my favorite of his works and I would not recommend that someone read this one first, the book is great for what it is. Fans of Murakami may find it worth reading for the introduction alone, in which he tells the story of how he became a novelist.