Take a photo of a barcode or cover
jonscott9's reviews
205 reviews
No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
4.0
“Not everyone has to be literate, there are some great reasons for resisting language, and one of them is love.”
So goes the lilting logic in Miranda July's self-fashioned world of wonder and regret and pain and hilarity. One wishes continually when flipping through this book that he could be part of her microcosm. Playing observer to the tragicomic plights of her characters is damn good fun, though.
The wrenching-yet-light "The Shared Patio" leads off, sufficiently whelming from the start. July renders the fine line between utter sadness and true joy to a blur. It's the bearable lightness of being that gets her characters through, and that maybe gets her through too. One can see how these short stories are a form of self-therapy for the scribe.
And what a whimsical pen it is that she wields:
“That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I’m being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea. When I drink relaxing tea, I suck it down as if I’m in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest. Or if I’m in a hot tub with some other people and we’re all looking up at the stars, I’ll be the first to say, It’s so beautiful here. The sooner you say, It’s so beautiful here, the quicker you can say, Wow, I’m getting overheated.”
I am hardly doing her justice. Even so, a recap of a few of the tall, lean tales she weaves: "The Man on the Stairs" is actually spellbinding stuff in the vein of Roald Dahl or Edgar Allen Poe (no, really). "The Sister" is chuckle-inducing before and after it is immensely sad. "Making Love in 2003" is perhaps the most taut of the longer stories, and July hilariously introduces the children's fantasy writer Madeleine L'Engle as one of her characters (it's not really her, and L'Engle herself actually just left our swiftly tilting planet in 2007).
The people populating these stories are flawed and fabulous. You want to know them all, even the disagreeable ones. Through the sharp eyes and tart tongues of her creations, July relays her thoughts on love, romance, pain, and more. Her takes on friendship are most real and convincing of a lot of real and convincing statements. She simply adds a real lightness to the weight of being human. We could all learn from that.
“Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the earth again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet day after day, alone.”
So goes the lilting logic in Miranda July's self-fashioned world of wonder and regret and pain and hilarity. One wishes continually when flipping through this book that he could be part of her microcosm. Playing observer to the tragicomic plights of her characters is damn good fun, though.
The wrenching-yet-light "The Shared Patio" leads off, sufficiently whelming from the start. July renders the fine line between utter sadness and true joy to a blur. It's the bearable lightness of being that gets her characters through, and that maybe gets her through too. One can see how these short stories are a form of self-therapy for the scribe.
And what a whimsical pen it is that she wields:
“That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I’m being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea. When I drink relaxing tea, I suck it down as if I’m in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest. Or if I’m in a hot tub with some other people and we’re all looking up at the stars, I’ll be the first to say, It’s so beautiful here. The sooner you say, It’s so beautiful here, the quicker you can say, Wow, I’m getting overheated.”
I am hardly doing her justice. Even so, a recap of a few of the tall, lean tales she weaves: "The Man on the Stairs" is actually spellbinding stuff in the vein of Roald Dahl or Edgar Allen Poe (no, really). "The Sister" is chuckle-inducing before and after it is immensely sad. "Making Love in 2003" is perhaps the most taut of the longer stories, and July hilariously introduces the children's fantasy writer Madeleine L'Engle as one of her characters (it's not really her, and L'Engle herself actually just left our swiftly tilting planet in 2007).
The people populating these stories are flawed and fabulous. You want to know them all, even the disagreeable ones. Through the sharp eyes and tart tongues of her creations, July relays her thoughts on love, romance, pain, and more. Her takes on friendship are most real and convincing of a lot of real and convincing statements. She simply adds a real lightness to the weight of being human. We could all learn from that.
“Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the earth again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet day after day, alone.”
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
3.0
This suburban tragedy reaches its climax in the first chapter, but it's not all downhill from there. A young teen is brutally attacked by a neighbor, and for the rest of the novel, she looks down (from somewhere) on her family as they cope with the loss, and on that neighbor as he seeks to cover his tracks. It's suspenseful but credible: You could see this happening anywhere.
I was at a loss as to what to make of a late-breaking encounter between the murdered girl, Susie, and her friend Ray, but the rest of it holds up.
Though more so in her memoir Lucky, Sebold no doubt drew on her own experience as a rape victim in college to write this first novel. The book has a certain cadence to it that keeps you engrossed. You simply want to know how it ends.
The last page had me sitting in silence for a few minutes after finishing it. Quite the closing lines.
I was at a loss as to what to make of a late-breaking encounter between the murdered girl, Susie, and her friend Ray, but the rest of it holds up.
Though more so in her memoir Lucky, Sebold no doubt drew on her own experience as a rape victim in college to write this first novel. The book has a certain cadence to it that keeps you engrossed. You simply want to know how it ends.
The last page had me sitting in silence for a few minutes after finishing it. Quite the closing lines.
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
3.0
This is a compendium of a year's worth of Hornby's columns about books bought and/or read in The Believer magazine. The tone is colloquial like whoa, a bit skittish. Hornby, who's penned About A Boy and A Long Way Down, among other novels, is (unlike much of what he attempts to read) high readable himself. This little jam of a book flies over 140 pages.
Yes, it is fun to commiserate with a for-real writer who laments things like being given book recommendation (or, worse, being gifted books outright):
“Usually, of course, I treat personal book recommendations with the suspicion they deserve. I’ve got enough to read as it is, so my first reaction when someone tells me to read something is to find a way to doubt their credentials, or to try to dredge up some conflicting view from my memory. (Just as stone always blunts scissors, a lukewarm “Oh, it was OK,” always beats a “You have to read this.” It’s less work that way.)”
The title comes from the moniker he's given an imaginary (or are they?) squad of Believer mag honchos who issue edicts to him as to how he will write his column. (One stipulation: Abandon any book that's not going well, and DO NOT mention it by name.) He imagines them in flowing robes, 12 of them (6 of each gender of course); of course this is meant to drum up the Polyphonic Spree, those be-robed indie choir rockers, as Hornby (also author of Songbook and High Fidelity; need I say more?) is some kind of music snob.
This book (I was -- gasp -- gifted it!) is hardly necessary but sometimes insightful and often amusing. Poignant and yet funny are his thoughts on books about autism; his own son has the condition. He gushes over Dickens and Vonnegut and more, interspersing some poems and excerpts he loves amidst his own columns/chapters.
Here's Hornby on novels, their epic and lengthy qualities:
“But there comes a point in the writing process when a novelist—any novelist, even a great one—has to accept that what he is doing is keeping one end of a book away from the other, filling up pages, in the hope that these pages will move, provoke, and entertain the reader.”
And on how one can Wiki his way to impressing others:
“A good chunk of coming across as educated, after all, is just a matter of knowing who wrote what: someone mentions Patrick Hamilton, and you nod sagely and say, Hangover Square, and that’s usually enough. … ‘the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.’”
I honestly feel better on the other side of thumbing through this read. That's what he intended, and that's what matters.
Yes, it is fun to commiserate with a for-real writer who laments things like being given book recommendation (or, worse, being gifted books outright):
“Usually, of course, I treat personal book recommendations with the suspicion they deserve. I’ve got enough to read as it is, so my first reaction when someone tells me to read something is to find a way to doubt their credentials, or to try to dredge up some conflicting view from my memory. (Just as stone always blunts scissors, a lukewarm “Oh, it was OK,” always beats a “You have to read this.” It’s less work that way.)”
The title comes from the moniker he's given an imaginary (or are they?) squad of Believer mag honchos who issue edicts to him as to how he will write his column. (One stipulation: Abandon any book that's not going well, and DO NOT mention it by name.) He imagines them in flowing robes, 12 of them (6 of each gender of course); of course this is meant to drum up the Polyphonic Spree, those be-robed indie choir rockers, as Hornby (also author of Songbook and High Fidelity; need I say more?) is some kind of music snob.
This book (I was -- gasp -- gifted it!) is hardly necessary but sometimes insightful and often amusing. Poignant and yet funny are his thoughts on books about autism; his own son has the condition. He gushes over Dickens and Vonnegut and more, interspersing some poems and excerpts he loves amidst his own columns/chapters.
Here's Hornby on novels, their epic and lengthy qualities:
“But there comes a point in the writing process when a novelist—any novelist, even a great one—has to accept that what he is doing is keeping one end of a book away from the other, filling up pages, in the hope that these pages will move, provoke, and entertain the reader.”
And on how one can Wiki his way to impressing others:
“A good chunk of coming across as educated, after all, is just a matter of knowing who wrote what: someone mentions Patrick Hamilton, and you nod sagely and say, Hangover Square, and that’s usually enough. … ‘the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.’”
I honestly feel better on the other side of thumbing through this read. That's what he intended, and that's what matters.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
3.0
Oh, bloody -- in more ways than one. One who's read The Kite Runner (and I am one) knows what he's getting into by opening this follow-up novel. The estro-version of the former book here stars tragediennes Miriam and Laila, both born into peril and pain and, somehow, happiness, and both married off to Rasheed for different, unfortunate reasons. Theirs is a Naomi-and-Ruth tale of similar biblical proportions. Afghanistan in the 1980s, '90s, and into the 21st century was no woman's friend. These two band together to diffuse their husband's pent-up rage at the war-ravaged hard times, at the political and economic upheaval blazing around them.
They know they cannot blunt his wounded maniacal self forever. Rasheed is one ugly dude. If Assef from Kite Runner rubbed you raw, Rasheed is something like seeing Assef go home to wives and children. He's patriarchal Afghan brutality at the most local level. Much blood and many tears are shed in the book. It's violent and sad and lovely, just how Hosseini likes it.
Thankfully it's more believable -- the tragedies, the pleasures, all of it -- than it was in Kite Runner. Where that book erred in relaying a host of contrived coincidences, this one's more realistic. It's essentially Miriam's story, starting and then returning at the end to her poor, beautiful childhood. How she manages and then meets her end in the book makes it a redeemable read.
The plot is quite predictable, and Hosseini recycles his bland mantra from Kite Runner ("There is a way"). I wanted to quit the book at two different times but stuck it out. I'm mostly glad I did. It finishes well, perhaps too well for what's happened. The last 30 or so pages seem a half-baked, hasty coda to what's transpired, culminating in what is basically the epilogue for Laila & Co.
Hosseini certainly had plenty of strife (international, regional, national, local strife) to mine for this, and as the book moves as far forward as 9/11 and thereafter. I won't likely read anything else from this author -- I get it: war is hell -- but in the end I'm not sorry I read this. He is a gifted storyteller, though not a terribly good writer.
If I want some Persian lit from now on, I'll check out Rumi.
They know they cannot blunt his wounded maniacal self forever. Rasheed is one ugly dude. If Assef from Kite Runner rubbed you raw, Rasheed is something like seeing Assef go home to wives and children. He's patriarchal Afghan brutality at the most local level. Much blood and many tears are shed in the book. It's violent and sad and lovely, just how Hosseini likes it.
Thankfully it's more believable -- the tragedies, the pleasures, all of it -- than it was in Kite Runner. Where that book erred in relaying a host of contrived coincidences, this one's more realistic. It's essentially Miriam's story, starting and then returning at the end to her poor, beautiful childhood. How she manages and then meets her end in the book makes it a redeemable read.
The plot is quite predictable, and Hosseini recycles his bland mantra from Kite Runner ("There is a way"). I wanted to quit the book at two different times but stuck it out. I'm mostly glad I did. It finishes well, perhaps too well for what's happened. The last 30 or so pages seem a half-baked, hasty coda to what's transpired, culminating in what is basically the epilogue for Laila & Co.
Hosseini certainly had plenty of strife (international, regional, national, local strife) to mine for this, and as the book moves as far forward as 9/11 and thereafter. I won't likely read anything else from this author -- I get it: war is hell -- but in the end I'm not sorry I read this. He is a gifted storyteller, though not a terribly good writer.
If I want some Persian lit from now on, I'll check out Rumi.
Frommer's Rome Day by Day by Sylvie Hogg
4.0
I'm not one for having a book tell you exactly what to do - whether you have one, two, or three days in a city (or more) - but I doubt anyone truly follows these directions step by step. (And those who do are not people I want to know.)
Compared to Frommer's Complete guides (the regular series), these Day by Day books are colorful (4-color, to be exact) and photo-laden. They're just a pleasure to look at, which departs significantly from the bulk of travel guides.
This Rome book was no exception. We got to a Mediterranean beach 40 minutes outside Rome by train without any fanfare, and we found the to-be-relished Spanish Steps and its shopping area (Prada, anyone?) with relative ease. The Pantheon and Piazza Navona were also highlights aided by this read.
In truth, this read was more of a glance. The train-system and city-street maps inside the covers were of great help. All the material's wonderfully brief and compact, with entries about dining, accommodations, attractions, shopping, and more that speak to almost anyone's interests. Some sections seemed given short shrift, but that all depends on your niche and what you're looking for.
I'll gladly pick up a Day by Day guide for my next voyage. The series has been going for about three years now and keeps adding new titles. (I just edited Edinburgh & Glasgow Day by Day, which was a joy, and I've got Chicago DbD - 2nd edition - on tap.)
Compared to Frommer's Complete guides (the regular series), these Day by Day books are colorful (4-color, to be exact) and photo-laden. They're just a pleasure to look at, which departs significantly from the bulk of travel guides.
This Rome book was no exception. We got to a Mediterranean beach 40 minutes outside Rome by train without any fanfare, and we found the to-be-relished Spanish Steps and its shopping area (Prada, anyone?) with relative ease. The Pantheon and Piazza Navona were also highlights aided by this read.
In truth, this read was more of a glance. The train-system and city-street maps inside the covers were of great help. All the material's wonderfully brief and compact, with entries about dining, accommodations, attractions, shopping, and more that speak to almost anyone's interests. Some sections seemed given short shrift, but that all depends on your niche and what you're looking for.
I'll gladly pick up a Day by Day guide for my next voyage. The series has been going for about three years now and keeps adding new titles. (I just edited Edinburgh & Glasgow Day by Day, which was a joy, and I've got Chicago DbD - 2nd edition - on tap.)
London For Dummies by Donald Olson
3.0
Some of the info in this book seems redundant - the same info housed in two or three different sections - but it's also quite useful. Entries on the Tate Modern Museum (aka the best place ever for art) and Piccadilly Circus, among others, were notable. The Tube map on the inside cover made for a great aid. Unfortunately some of the info already seemed dated, or was surely dated, gauging by the experience, and this was particularly troubling in light of it being the latest edition of the book (and one I edited, at that).
I definitely prefer Frommer's travel books - and Day by Day guides, specifically - to Dummies Travel titles. I should've packed London Day by Day instead, but I wanted to use a book I'd worked on. Dummies seems better suited to consumer titles (gardening, pets, divorce, knitting, whatever). Plus, who wants to lug around a big yellow book on vacation?
I definitely prefer Frommer's travel books - and Day by Day guides, specifically - to Dummies Travel titles. I should've packed London Day by Day instead, but I wanted to use a book I'd worked on. Dummies seems better suited to consumer titles (gardening, pets, divorce, knitting, whatever). Plus, who wants to lug around a big yellow book on vacation?
Sinners Welcome: Poems by Mary Karr
4.0
Mary Karr shares my mother's name and birth year and strength and fragility. That's about where the comparisons end, as my mother is a lifelong conservative Wesleyan, and Mary Karr became a Catholic at 40 after lifelong literary liberalism (which she retains). My mother's had some choice words for people at times, particularly heartbreaking times, and Karr herself pulls from that reserve with abandon. (One poem here about a relationship gone sour ends with the poet-memoirist tagging herself as a "dumb cunt.")
Okay, so the comparisons don't quite end. Admittedly, I wished at times that I had a literary mama like Mary Karr. She obviously loves her only son (reminds one of Anne Lamott and her Sam stories) and writes beautifully about raising him, her "15 years' son" and then her "20 years' son," and about his departure to university and release from her grip forever, into this often-harsh world.
Karr interweaves "Descending Theology:" poems into the mix that have to do with the Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, among other topics. These works are fresh and inspiring. I really can't pick out just three to five poems to lift out from this 76-page tome of delights. It's an amazingly taut, lovely collection, one I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys literate, funny, touching, heartrending, sometimes-vulgar poems.
I learned of Mary Karr from Linford Detweiler, one-half of the folk band Over the Rhine, when I interviewed him in October 2007 (http://www.stereosubversion.com/interviews-features/08-22-2007/over-the-rhine-2/), and I haven't been disappointed. Also enjoyable was an NPR interview I listened to in which she reads from and discusses this latest work (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5481647).
Have at her if you dare. I doubt you'll regret reading from this "scrappy little beast" (Salon.com's words). She's controversial in the poetry establishment, favors content over poetic style (fewer metaphors and showy references, please), but her content is unique and invigorating. I'm eager to see more.
Okay, so the comparisons don't quite end. Admittedly, I wished at times that I had a literary mama like Mary Karr. She obviously loves her only son (reminds one of Anne Lamott and her Sam stories) and writes beautifully about raising him, her "15 years' son" and then her "20 years' son," and about his departure to university and release from her grip forever, into this often-harsh world.
Karr interweaves "Descending Theology:" poems into the mix that have to do with the Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, among other topics. These works are fresh and inspiring. I really can't pick out just three to five poems to lift out from this 76-page tome of delights. It's an amazingly taut, lovely collection, one I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys literate, funny, touching, heartrending, sometimes-vulgar poems.
I learned of Mary Karr from Linford Detweiler, one-half of the folk band Over the Rhine, when I interviewed him in October 2007 (http://www.stereosubversion.com/interviews-features/08-22-2007/over-the-rhine-2/), and I haven't been disappointed. Also enjoyable was an NPR interview I listened to in which she reads from and discusses this latest work (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5481647).
Have at her if you dare. I doubt you'll regret reading from this "scrappy little beast" (Salon.com's words). She's controversial in the poetry establishment, favors content over poetic style (fewer metaphors and showy references, please), but her content is unique and invigorating. I'm eager to see more.
Everything Else in the World: Poems by Stephen Dunn
3.0
I'm no poet, not even an aficionado, but I do like it. It grew on me thanks to the Irish poets Seamus Heaney and Eavan Boland (read in an Irish lit class at university). Thanks also go to scattered Plath and Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins that I've picked up, as well as anything The Bard created.
Stephen Dunn arrives in my life due to a friend (hi, ARose) imposing him on it. (Postcards, and poems scrawled on them, can do so much.) I read an interview with Dunn at Books & Culture (http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2008/002/24.26.html) that I really liked, and thus I gave him a go.
Everything Else In The World is Dunn's latest, although his best is probably the Pulitzer-tapped Different Hours, which I'll read next. The poems are alternately solemn and light, grave and fun, and they have the motif running through them of coping with the realities of this "already brutal century" at hand for us. I can't say much was memorable, but it often made for pleasant reading in the moment. With hope, his Different Hours harbors more crisp pieces, and if I don't find better stuff there, I'll stick to reading the poet Mary Karr's bookography (she's my latest find), as well as everything from Hopkins.
Stephen Dunn arrives in my life due to a friend (hi, ARose) imposing him on it. (Postcards, and poems scrawled on them, can do so much.) I read an interview with Dunn at Books & Culture (http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2008/002/24.26.html) that I really liked, and thus I gave him a go.
Everything Else In The World is Dunn's latest, although his best is probably the Pulitzer-tapped Different Hours, which I'll read next. The poems are alternately solemn and light, grave and fun, and they have the motif running through them of coping with the realities of this "already brutal century" at hand for us. I can't say much was memorable, but it often made for pleasant reading in the moment. With hope, his Different Hours harbors more crisp pieces, and if I don't find better stuff there, I'll stick to reading the poet Mary Karr's bookography (she's my latest find), as well as everything from Hopkins.
Atonement by Ian McEwan
3.0
First, I will say this is overrated to be on TIME mag's list of the top 100 novels of all time. I feel like McEwan has better novels in him even, though I haven't read them. (Here's hoping Enduring Love is amazing when I get to it.)
It doesn't achieve liftoff so speedily, that's sure. The first third of the novel almost made me sick. As in, can these privileged offspring (chiefly Cecilia and Briony) whine any more? And can these young and old adults sit around in the summer heat and sip cocktails and complain any more in their so-horrible silver-spoon lives? Ugh. (Disclosure: I write this as I watch the Olympics in my air-conditioned apartment while sipping chilled red wine. Hypocritical much?)
Then the middle third revolving around Robbie Turner's wartime experiences happens. It's gripping, flooring WWII stuff. The British troops are about to lose France to the Nazis, and London's bracing for the Blitz. You nearly want to roll into a ball and sleep it away. Obviously McEwan did his research, as evidenced in the acknowledgments at back.
The romance between Robbie and Cecilia is convincing and heartrending. There is a consummation, a misunderstanding, a betrayal, a crime, a cover-up, and an apology. All these things don't necessary involve them, at least not directly. (Though it may seem confusing, that's one reason for the title, Atonement.)
There is not really a forgiveness to be found here. McEwan's behind-the-eyes depiction of 13-year-old sister Briony is sometimes astounding. Perhaps her life is most tragic among all the unfortunate persons and events here. The last third of the book about her wartime nursing occupation is likewise persuasive. (McEwan was accused a couple years ago of plagiarism for some phrases seemingly lifted from a WWII nurse's memoir - a memoir he acknowledged - but the majority of the literati stood up for him.)
The "present-day 1999" epilogue seems a bit tagged on and doesn't quite finish with a flourish. I wanted more, if not better, for and from these people and their stories. A certain point about the way this book was written, or the perspective it was written from, is revealed late in the book, and it makes one feel manipulated. The main source for that manipulation charge is that one crucial aspect of the story has been tilted on its side; I soured to this novel when that was revealed for what truly happened.
It doesn't achieve liftoff so speedily, that's sure. The first third of the novel almost made me sick. As in, can these privileged offspring (chiefly Cecilia and Briony) whine any more? And can these young and old adults sit around in the summer heat and sip cocktails and complain any more in their so-horrible silver-spoon lives? Ugh. (Disclosure: I write this as I watch the Olympics in my air-conditioned apartment while sipping chilled red wine. Hypocritical much?)
Then the middle third revolving around Robbie Turner's wartime experiences happens. It's gripping, flooring WWII stuff. The British troops are about to lose France to the Nazis, and London's bracing for the Blitz. You nearly want to roll into a ball and sleep it away. Obviously McEwan did his research, as evidenced in the acknowledgments at back.
The romance between Robbie and Cecilia is convincing and heartrending. There is a consummation, a misunderstanding, a betrayal, a crime, a cover-up, and an apology. All these things don't necessary involve them, at least not directly. (Though it may seem confusing, that's one reason for the title, Atonement.)
There is not really a forgiveness to be found here. McEwan's behind-the-eyes depiction of 13-year-old sister Briony is sometimes astounding. Perhaps her life is most tragic among all the unfortunate persons and events here. The last third of the book about her wartime nursing occupation is likewise persuasive. (McEwan was accused a couple years ago of plagiarism for some phrases seemingly lifted from a WWII nurse's memoir - a memoir he acknowledged - but the majority of the literati stood up for him.)
The "present-day 1999" epilogue seems a bit tagged on and doesn't quite finish with a flourish. I wanted more, if not better, for and from these people and their stories. A certain point about the way this book was written, or the perspective it was written from, is revealed late in the book, and it makes one feel manipulated. The main source for that manipulation charge is that one crucial aspect of the story has been tilted on its side; I soured to this novel when that was revealed for what truly happened.
Different Hours: Poems by Stephen Dunn
4.0
Ever hate the fact that you've finished a book, that there's no more for your eyes to eat? That's what I've experienced with the last two books of poetry I've read, Mary Karr's Sinners Welcome and this tome.
I must say, I appreciate a poet who's not afraid to give alliteration a solid workout in his stuff. As with a nifty pop hook in indie rock music, alliteration (and some other devices) should be embraced in writing, used well if sparingly.
At 120 pages, this is a rather lengthy poetry book. It's also amazingly taut. I cannot highlight just one poem here. I'd want to paste a dozen of them in this space, maybe more. The fourth set of poems in Different Hours is particularly moving.
Dunn's poems are often startling, sometimes jarring. He's been described by some in the know as "one of our indispensable poets." This is his eleventh collection (of 14), probably his best. It took the Pulitzer in 2001. I read this and saw why.
Three of Dunn's poems here are based around quoted excerpts or typos from some of his students' work. It could be kitschy but is remarkable, how he riffs off those sentences.
The titular phrase, Different Hours, refers not only to those in one's own life, but also to all the historical and existential and philosophical moments that comprise Life on the whole. A few pieces here come from Dunn's observations of everyday life in New Jersey (burying a cat, for one), and they're stirring even as they depict seemingly mundane happenings.
"A Postmortem Guide" (written for Dunn's eulogist to come; he is approaching age 70) makes for a fitting closer. I have trouble recalling other individual poems now (call it congruous) and will certainly give this set another go soon. Some golden stanzas and phrasings contained here, some turns of phrase that just leave one quiet and pondering for a few minutes.
I must say, I appreciate a poet who's not afraid to give alliteration a solid workout in his stuff. As with a nifty pop hook in indie rock music, alliteration (and some other devices) should be embraced in writing, used well if sparingly.
At 120 pages, this is a rather lengthy poetry book. It's also amazingly taut. I cannot highlight just one poem here. I'd want to paste a dozen of them in this space, maybe more. The fourth set of poems in Different Hours is particularly moving.
Dunn's poems are often startling, sometimes jarring. He's been described by some in the know as "one of our indispensable poets." This is his eleventh collection (of 14), probably his best. It took the Pulitzer in 2001. I read this and saw why.
Three of Dunn's poems here are based around quoted excerpts or typos from some of his students' work. It could be kitschy but is remarkable, how he riffs off those sentences.
The titular phrase, Different Hours, refers not only to those in one's own life, but also to all the historical and existential and philosophical moments that comprise Life on the whole. A few pieces here come from Dunn's observations of everyday life in New Jersey (burying a cat, for one), and they're stirring even as they depict seemingly mundane happenings.
"A Postmortem Guide" (written for Dunn's eulogist to come; he is approaching age 70) makes for a fitting closer. I have trouble recalling other individual poems now (call it congruous) and will certainly give this set another go soon. Some golden stanzas and phrasings contained here, some turns of phrase that just leave one quiet and pondering for a few minutes.