What Are You Reading Now?

[Donuthole]

Just an audio-book related observation: Adobe Digital Editions Overdrive is a piece of garbage. Unfortunately, this is the format my local library uses for its audiobook downloads.

[SteelBlue]

Just finished Swamplandia!. Quirky and dark.

[Topper]

Just finished Swamplandia!. Quirky and dark.

What shade of dark? Dark as in cynical about human nature, the future of man or the depravity of the human soul?

[Topper]

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

What is this about?

[BigPiney]

Just finished Swamplandia!. Quirky and dark.

I liked it, but it was a bit weird.

[SteelBlue]

What shade of dark? Dark as in cynical about human nature, the future of man or the depravity of the human soul?

What is this about?

It's about a family who runs an alligator wrestling show on a small island they own called Swamplandia!. The family has established, through three generations, a whole mythology about their heritage and their show and they've instilled this into their three children who rarely get off of the island. The kids are home schooled and really spend their whole day working the show or otherwise engaged in the family business. The book has a split narrative where you hear from the youngest daughter Ava (around 13 years old) in the first person and then it follows the oldest son (about to turn 18) in the 3rd person. Their mother is the show's star attraction, and dies of cancer at the book's beginning. I don't think it's a spoiler to say the book is about the failure of each of the characters to adapt to their mother's death and of the eroding of the family mythology upon which the children's lives have been based (I actually wondered if the author was making some kind of a point about organized religion, but at this point I don't think so). It's dark, but I don't want to reveal too much about how or why.

The book gets really mixed reviews from readers but got consistently positive reviews from professionals. Some readers don't like the split narrative, some felt the story was too slow, many felt the book was too dark. The darkest scene has been pretty controversial, and imo is the biggest reason for most bad reviews. It was a Pulitzer finalist in 2012, the year no prize was awarded. I really liked it.


Edit:

Ah crap, Topper I just realized you were asking about The Pale King. I'll just add it here. The Pale King is David Foster Wallace's final novel published posthumously. It was also one of the 2012 Pulitzer finalists. The book is about IRS agents in Peoria Illinois. Seriously. The book's central theme was boredom. Wallace used one of the most boring possible jobs staffed with some of the most boring people to drive his point home that most of life isn't filled with highs or lows, but day to day tedium, and those who learn to thrive in these boring conditions are the ones who have life figured out. This was a theme he hit on frequently in interviews over the past 10 years or so. Since he committed suicide in 2008, there's no way to know how the novel would have looked had he been able to clean it up. I'm guessing that much of the boring content was intentional, to make his point. But I have to believe there would have been less of it. Overall a good read but there are some tough slogs. The guy was brilliant, and I really enjoy listening on youtube to the various interviews he gave. If you're interested, here's a commencement speech he gave in which I can hear him developing the theme of The Pale King.

[ERCougar]

Just finished the Orphan Masters Son, on your recommendations. I don't care at all for the writers style, but I can't put my finger on why. He teaches creative writing at Stanford, so you would think he would have the mechanical stuff down, but I found him making a lot of mistakes a good editor should have caught--unclear pronouns and speakers and the like. Aside from the nit picking however, the book is worth the read for the look inside North Korea. I will no longer see Kim Jong Il as a quirky, sort of comical dictator. That regime is pure evil.

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[Non Sequitur]

A friend's daughter was recently called to serve in the Dominican Republic, and it got me in a mind to read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Best book I've read in a very long time. I can't recommend it strongly enough.

[wuapinmon]

http://www.amazon.com/American-Natio...erican+nations



It's fascinating and helps me understand why I've always looked down on my middle-Georgia relatives' politics and world view. And, why I really dislike Yankees. Also, linguistic maps make a lot more sense too.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Just finished the Orphan Masters Son, on your recommendations. I don't care at all for the writers style, but I can't put my finger on why. He teaches creative writing at Stanford, so you would think he would have the mechanical stuff down, but I found him making a lot of mistakes a good editor should have caught--unclear pronouns and speakers and the like. Aside from the nit picking however, the book is worth the read for the look inside North Korea. I will no longer see Kim Jong Il as a quirky, sort of comical dictator. That regime is pure evil.

CS readers, Pulitzer judges, and all of the critics somehow missed all those errors. Good catch!

[wuapinmon]

A friend's daughter was recently called to serve in the Dominican Republic, and it got me in a mind to read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Best book I've read in a very long time. I can't recommend it strongly enough.

I teach that novel every 2-3 years. It's much better than This Is How You Lose Her. The Yunior character is fascinating, and I think the comparison of the Trujillo Regime with Sauron and the minions or Mordor is really fun literature. The code switching back and forth between Spanish and English, mid sentence, and sometimes writing in English using Spanish syntax, isn't so much that someone who doesn't speak Spanish can't understand at least the gist of what's being said.

I'd love to teach an elective class on Oscar Wao, Tolkien, and 1970's science fiction. I'd have to spend a couple of years outside of work reading and annotating Oscar Wao and the related texts to be able to do it, but it'd be a fun course. But, I want to teach one on The Wire first. I'll be working on that as a side project during my sabbatical.

[ERCougar]

CS readers, Pulitzer judges, and all of the critics somehow missed all those errors. Good catch!

Sorry....next time I'll just cut and paste the glowing reviews. I loved it! It was life changing and illuminating!

Another thing I really loved about the book--the completely believable deep love Jun Do/Ga had for Sun Moon, a woman he had never met, but who looked hot in some movies he saw. That really drew me in.

The Pulitzer is notorious for awarding academic pedigrees and timely political issues. I think this author capitalized on both. It's not a bad novel--it just seemed a little clunky for an award winning one. I'd still recommend it to anyone, just with a little reservation. It definitely opened my eyes to horrors I had no idea existed (assuming they're real--there are times when this feels like something the North Korean regime might write about the West).

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[eldiente]

CS readers, Pulitzer judges, and all of the critics somehow missed all those errors. Good catch!

What's with the criticism of critical reviews? You seem a little touchy lately. Website numbers in decline?

[Jeff Lebowski]

What's with the criticism of critical reviews? You seem a little touchy lately. Website numbers in decline?

I couldn't care less if he didn't like the novel. I was just teasing him a little about catching all those errors that slipped by everyone else. But he cleared it up: massive conspiracy by the literature community.

[cougjunkie]

What's with the criticism of critical reviews? You seem a little touchy lately. Website numbers in decline?

If website numbers were down why would he disagree with posters? He would be kissing some ass if he really cared about numbers.

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