iahk's reviews
7 reviews

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

4.0

“You have to be with other people, he thought. In order to live at all.”

Die Kinder des Wüstenplaneten by Frank Herbert

2.0

The Consumer by Michael Gira

4.0

Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima

adventurous dark funny reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated

4.5

The Marbled Swarm by Dennis Cooper

challenging dark reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No

2.25

regrettably unimpressed by this one. I tried to warm to the writing style but found it too tedious and almost cringeworthy more often than not, although there are the odd really fantastic paragraphs here and there which motivated me to keep reading. not only did I find the narrator obnoxious - not because of his depravity, actually, but because he often times reads like a teenager with a contrarian complex (oh, wait…). I’m also really not sure whether the inventiveness of both the “marbled swarm” and the labyrinthine structure of both the narrative and language is grossly overexaggerated or not. I don’t find the gruesome aspects of the book worth remarking on - in the sense that although I enjoy reading “”disturbing”” books, I’m largely indifferent to whether it elevates the story or not.

and to be fair, I am not that familiar with the works of, say, De Sade and Bataille (Cooper’s literary heroes) yet, and maybe The Marbled Swarm really isn’t an “inferior” version of a similar sort of story and the problem lies with me.

Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis

dark reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

picked this up because I knew Porcupine Tree’s album “Fear of a Blank Planet” was influenced by Ellis’ book. maybe this set me up with different expectations going in, and indeed I still have a vague craving for a novel that leaned more into the themes that PT’s album made me believe Lunar Park featured more heavily (such as escapism through prescription drugs, social alienation caused by technology and emotional vacuity).
in any case, I generally like Ellis’ writing style, but I don’t think it lent itself to what he tried to do in Lunar Park. I usually love his semi-matter-of-fact, acrid, cynical, sort of long-winded tone, but it made emotional beats, which he clearly intended as unironically, genuinely such, feel flat. by no means was I looking for sappiness, but I just don’t feel like the intended sentimantality worked for me. the horror/mystery aspects also didn’t quite work for me for the same reasons. which is unfortunate, I would have liked to enjoy this book more than I did. 

Cows by Matthew Stokoe

dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

surprisingly readable and well-written reflections by the main character, otherwise uncertain of how I feel about shock value. but i did enjoy ‘cows’ up to the halfway mark quite a bit. it kind of fell apart afterwards, but on the other hand: where even is there to go with a premise like this?
edit: upon thinking about it some time after finishing the book - it does give somewhat powerful food for thought regarding the meat industry