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richardleis's reviews
535 reviews
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
5.0
The kind of devastating where crying seems so pointless and unworthy, and that only makes you cry harder. The writing is literary, beautiful, and raw. It lets me see my own father differently. It lets me begin to understand how I grew up, how the shadow of a war that had ended could still stay with him and how it could through him affect his children. A book about events alien to me and yet our family history is suddenly more clear, but even more complex than maybe I want it to be.
Persuasion by Jane Austen
5.0
Jane Austen has long been on my list of authors to read, but until I was required to read Persuasion in a literature class, I was no closer to getting started with her work. I'm ashamed now that it took so long and that I should have started the novel somewhat grudgingly. Persuasion was simply fantastic. The humor and sarcasm were so unexpected. By the end I was in a terrible suspense as to what would happen; no wonder I responded with an outburst of emotion at a certain letter written spontaneously near the end of the book.
There is so much to recommend: sharply drawn characters, a wonderful protagonist in Anne Elliot, suspense, comedy, drama, satire, and the very language of the Romantics themselves in Austen's verdant descriptions of Lyme (which now must be added to my list of places to visit someday.) The work becomes melodramatic at times, but it remains grounded, and I think as the storyline becomes resolved, much of the melodrama seems less so in retrospect. The novel was sometimes very aggravating to me, especially in the second volume, when I just wanted the right people to speak to each other to clear up all the miscommunication. But therein lay the tension and suspense, and my emotions at the end were all the more charged by the aggravation until then.
I'm eager to read Austen's other novels!
There is so much to recommend: sharply drawn characters, a wonderful protagonist in Anne Elliot, suspense, comedy, drama, satire, and the very language of the Romantics themselves in Austen's verdant descriptions of Lyme (which now must be added to my list of places to visit someday.) The work becomes melodramatic at times, but it remains grounded, and I think as the storyline becomes resolved, much of the melodrama seems less so in retrospect. The novel was sometimes very aggravating to me, especially in the second volume, when I just wanted the right people to speak to each other to clear up all the miscommunication. But therein lay the tension and suspense, and my emotions at the end were all the more charged by the aggravation until then.
I'm eager to read Austen's other novels!
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
4.0
Too disturbing to give 5 stars but highly recommended, if you can handle it. An incredible inside-the-head-of-a-psycho novel from 1952 that really seems to be more about the wasteland of America after World War II, beneath the fake veneer of the 1950s we think we know. And should be about this, or why would anyone write, or read, a novel with such gratuitous sex and violence against women? Don't answer that. Please. I feel dirty enough for having read it.
Not really spoilers, but below are some words on craft and construction that you may want to avoid if you want to go into the book completely oblivious:
What is most stunning to me about the book is the level of craft Thompson commands. He has the audacity to create a character who speaks in cliches, and it works! Chapter 18 is a jaw-dropping construction that begins with an exacting confession that repeats dreadfully, and Thompson seems to be enjoying slowly reeling the reader in after he has placed the fishhook in the reader's mouth. I knew what he was doing. Thompson was talking to me. HE was laughing at me! Daring me to keep reading. Admitting that he was drawing out this chapter on purpose. Stop it, Thompson! Stop it!
The book is also at times opaque; I'm not sure I understood everything. The final chapters are the least clear to me, but there are visions throughout that I seemed to be reading through dirty glasses, and Thompson put the dirt there himself, on purpose, because he knew exactly how he was going to treat the reader, and the reader was going to keep asking for it. So sick and awful. His captive audience. And then the chapter that implicates the reader directly. So chilling.
Not really spoilers, but below are some words on craft and construction that you may want to avoid if you want to go into the book completely oblivious:
What is most stunning to me about the book is the level of craft Thompson commands. He has the audacity to create a character who speaks in cliches, and it works! Chapter 18 is a jaw-dropping construction that begins with an exacting confession that repeats dreadfully, and Thompson seems to be enjoying slowly reeling the reader in after he has placed the fishhook in the reader's mouth. I knew what he was doing. Thompson was talking to me. HE was laughing at me! Daring me to keep reading. Admitting that he was drawing out this chapter on purpose. Stop it, Thompson! Stop it!
The book is also at times opaque; I'm not sure I understood everything. The final chapters are the least clear to me, but there are visions throughout that I seemed to be reading through dirty glasses, and Thompson put the dirt there himself, on purpose, because he knew exactly how he was going to treat the reader, and the reader was going to keep asking for it. So sick and awful. His captive audience. And then the chapter that implicates the reader directly. So chilling.
Sanctuary by William Faulkner
2.0
The two stars I'm rating the book are likely more about me than the book itself, which is intricately crafted but, to me, too opaque, as if the South itself is a humid atmosphere under which meaning is fleetingly glimpsed. Faulkner describes a wasteland that is alien to me, in a way the other pulp fiction books I've read recently are not. Even at their most evil, the other books contained something I recognized, some grounding elements that kept me in the story. Here I could not figure out who was talking, why they were saying what they were saying, or what was being implied. I could not figure out or understand anyone's motivations. I could not imagine what Faulkner was attempting to say. I don't understand the purpose, but I don't believe for a moment that Sanctuary is just "a cheap idea, because it was deliberately conceived to make money."
The Strain by Guillermo del Toro, Chuck Hogan
2.0
The novel starts promisingly enough with a mystery about an airplane, but it quickly proves to be derivative and melodramatic. Part Blade II and part Salem's Lot, but poorly written, including some truly terrible lines, such as a metaphor near the end that relates vampires to divorce.
Going Bovine by Libba Bray
5.0
Physics, sex, drugs, and jazz or Portuguese love songs.
I wasn't sure what to expect, and that continued throughout the entire book. The genres at play--including elements of urban fantasy, science fiction, philosophy, religion, comedy, drama, pop culture, Cervantes' "Don Quixote", MTV, and more--were as varied as the variegated terrain of emotions on display. Mostly the book was hysterical and it was always vivid and movie-like.
I wasn't sure what to expect, and that continued throughout the entire book. The genres at play--including elements of urban fantasy, science fiction, philosophy, religion, comedy, drama, pop culture, Cervantes' "Don Quixote", MTV, and more--were as varied as the variegated terrain of emotions on display. Mostly the book was hysterical and it was always vivid and movie-like.