Unlikely Words » Books

Andrew McCarthy on Imperial Gardens

aaron cohen — Fri, 28 May 2010 20:14:35 +0000

Weird. Here's Andrew McCarthy who played Clay in the movie version of Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero talking about Imperial Gardens, the sequel of Less Than Zero. "Oh, him. I remember him." The voice you'll hear in the audiobook of Imperial Gardens is McCarthy. I guess he's available.

via sagatrope

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Best Books of the Year?

aaron cohen — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:28:48 +0000

The Omnivoracious blog on Amazon compared their year end top 100 books list, with the New York Times 100 Notable Books and Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2009 to get a composite of the best books of 2009. There were 11 books that were on all 3 lists this year, plus 2 that were not on the Notable 100, but were on other NY Times lists. For what it's worth, there were 13 last year and 11 in 2007. No women authors made the cut, only 2 novels, and 2 graphic novels.

Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
Born Round by Frank Bruni
Cheever by Blake Bailey
Columbine by Dave Cullen
Fordlandia by Greg Grandin
The Good Soldiers by David Finkel
The Lost City of Z by David Grann
Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford
Momofuku by David Chang and Peter Meehan (not in NYT's 100 Notable, but in their best cookbooks list)
The Jazz Loft Project by Sam Stephenson (not in NYT's 100 Notable, but in their Gift Books list)

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Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman

aaron cohen — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 22:00:20 +0000

Hearing how Chuck Klosterman's voice sounds on Bill Simmons' podcasts makes it a little more awesome to read this book. I thought the premise tying this book together was unnecessary, as Spin could have just sent Klosterman on a road trip. It's worth reading even if I don't know whether to pronounce Klosterman as Close-terman or Claws-terman.

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Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

aaron cohen — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:41:14 +0000

This was a great collection of short stories. Although the stories all had different plots, there were strong themes tying them all together. I liked the first story and those towards the end. ###Possibly related posts:Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed In Flames [...] ### Possibly related posts:

Jonathan Safran Foer’s Book About Meat

aaron cohen — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:24:43 +0000

I read Jonathan Safran Foer's piece about eating meat in the NYTimes Magazine's Food Issue and didn't quite get it. The title was clear, "Why Jonathan Safran Foer Chose to Give Up Meat", but that didn't seem to be what the column was about. Admittedly, I skimmed the whole thing, but my sense was that Foer had given up meat several times (every other paragraph, it seemed) and that he had settled on eating it once in a while, but not serving it to his kids. Frankly, the column seemed jumbled and stupid [POT! KETTLE!], an attempt to get a famous writer to talk about their personal psychic struggle with eating meat. So I giggled a little at Bookslut's take on Foer's latest book, Eating Animals:

I am trying so hard to be nice to Jonathan Safran Foer, by which I mean I am trying to forget he exists on this planet. His book Eating Animals, however, is making this goal very, very difficult. It was bad enough when he was writing shitty novels, but now he's indulging in my least favorite form of nonfiction: the "I have never thought about this thing before until now, and despite the fact that other people have thought about this for years and wrestle daily with the implications, I think my brand new thoughts should be shared with the world." Whatever the topic -- religion, marriage, gender, food politics -- the books are always shallow, yet for some reason a lot of people take them seriously.

Via my blogbuddy, who got it from Prettier Than Napoleon who said accurately:

The proper place for deep thoughts on issues that you just started examining but which have already been exhaustively discussed by more informed people is a blog. GYOFB, Jonathan Safran Foer.

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Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (1985)

aaron cohen — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:07:21 +0000

Written using the vernacular of about 165 years ago, there were entire paragraphs of Blood Meridian where I had very little idea what was happening. Then there was the brutality and violence. And yet, I loved it all. ###Possibly related posts:No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy True Blood Season 1 1985 Steve Jobs [...] ### Possibly related posts:

In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien

aaron cohen — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:59:08 +0000

Everything seems to be out there in the open in this book, and yet, I couldn't help shaking a general feeling of uneasiness. I think this was the first of Tim O'Brien's books I read not set in Vietnam (though you could say it was) and the first I read about a soldier after coming home. Easy to read, but not a beach book.

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An Unscientific Survey of Books People Love Annoyingly and Books People Hate

aaron cohen — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:00:10 +0000

Waxy pointed to a question on Metafilter asking What books do people proselytize about and said, "Someone needs to compile this into a list, ordered by mentions." How could I not?

I took every book and author mentioned and compiled a list for both. If a book was listed with an author, this was counted as an entry for the book only. The Metafilter question asked for fiction books only, but this rule wasn't really followed so I counted everything. I did this fast and any errors can be blamed on speed, Drew's Cancer, or both. Finally, it becomes obvious quite quickly, that this list is more about books people don't like, as opposed to books with fanatical fans. This is summed up best by commenter OhHenryPacey, "If this list proves anything it's that assholes are assholes and will be assholes about just about anything or book you'd care to mention." You can't argue with logic like that.

Interesting findings:
-Ayn Rand blew away the competition in the author Category with 11 mentions, while The Celestine Prophecy edged out Harry Potter 8-6 in the Books category.
-There are 124 titles on the Books list and 56 Authors.
-People mentioned Jonathan Livingston Seagull 3 times, spelling the name 3 different ways.
-Twilight had 4 mentions, though I expect this to grow over time.
-Kottke will be happy to note that while Infinite Jest is on the Books list 4 times, David Foster Wallace is not mentioned on the Authors list.
-Looking quickly, Ayn Rand inspires the most assholish proselytizing with a combined score of 16. But what do you expect with a name like Ayn.
-Seriously? The Wizard of Oz? You must not like anything.

Full list below:
Authors:
Ayn Rand 11
Dan Brown 4
Tom Robbins 4
Herman Hesse 3
Hunter S. Thompson 3
Chuck Palahniuk 2
Daniel Quinn 2
Ernest Hemingway 2
Kurt Vonnegut 2
Michael Crichton 2
Robert A. Heinlein 2
Alice Waters
Anne Rice
Baudrillard
C. S. Lewis
Carl Sagan
Carlos Castaneda
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Bukowski
Chris Ware
Chuck Klosterman
Danielle Steel
David Sedaris
Derrida
Ford Maddox Ford
Friedrich Holderlin
Gore Vidal
Henry Miller
House of Leaves
Isaac Asimov
James Joyce
John Milton
Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Swift
Jorge Louis Borges
L. Ron Hubbard
Lacan
Malcolm Gladwell
Michael Pollan
Michel Houellebecq
Neal Stephenson
Neil Gaiman
Nicholas Sparks
Noam Chomsky
P.D. Ouspensky
Philip K Dick
Philip Pullman
Thomas Mann
Tom Clancy
Toni Morrison
TS Eliot
Vladimir Nabokov
William Carlos Williams
William Faulkner
William Shakespeare

Books:
The Celestine Prophecy 8
Harry Potter 6
Catcher in the Rye 4
Infinite Jest 4
~~Nthing 4~~
Twilight 4
Atlas Shrugged 3
Confederacy of Dunces 3
Gravity's Rainbow 3
Jonathan Livingston Seagull 3
Lord of the Rings 3
The Stanger 3
1984 2
Chronicles of Narnia 2
Dune 2
Ender’s Game 2
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 2
On the Road 2
Rubyfruit Jungle 2
Starship Troopers 2
Stranger In A Strange Land 2
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs 2
The Alchemist 2
The Corrections 2
The Fountainhead 2
The Great Gatsby 2
The Jungle 2
The Long Tail 2
The Master and Margarita 2
The Secret 2
The Shack 2
The Woman's Room 2
Ulysses 2
Who Moved My Cheese 2
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
A People's History of The United States
A Remembrance of Things Past
Candide
Capital
Catch 22
Chicken Soup for the Soul
Crime and Punishment
Crowdsourcing
Dharma Bums
Dianetics
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Eat, Love, Pray
Elements of Style
Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas
Fight Club
Foucault's Pendulum
Foundation
Freakonomics
Fuzzy Memories
Getting Things Done
Here Comes Everybody
Holy Blood, Holy Grail
House of Leaves
Illuminatus! series
Last Exit to Brooklyn
Les Miserables
Magic Mountain
Manhattan Transfer
Men are From Mars, Women Are From Venus
Mutant Message Down Under
Nausea
Neuromancer
Night
Night Train to Lisbon
Nineteen-Eighty Four
Notes from the Underground
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Prozac Nation
Siddhartha
Slowness
Snow Crash
Story of O
T the Celestine Prophesy
The 4-Hour Work Week
The Art of War
The Beautiful Room is Empty
The Brothers Karamazov
The C Programming Language, by Kernighan & Ritchie
The Captain
Catcher in the Rye
The Confidence Man
The Crying of Lot 49
The DaVinci Code
The Deep Thoughts series
The Dice Man
The Education of Little Tree
The Elements of Style
The Extrordinary League of Gentlemen
The Foundation series
The Giver
The Giving Tree
The Gor series
The Grapes of Wrath
The Left Behind Series
The Little Prince
The Lovely Bones
The Metamorphosis
The Omnivore's Dilemma
The Power of One
The Prophet
The Sun Also Rises
The Tao of Pooh
The Te of Piglet
The Teachings of Don Juan
The Tipping Point
The Trial
The Turner Diaries
The Warriors series
The Watchmen
The World According to Garp.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
V for Victory
Vampire Lestat
Way of the Peaceful Warrior
What Color is Your Parachute?
White Teeth
Wizard of Oz
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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Lee Child, Nothing To Lose

matt — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:00:20 +0000

When my dad visits, he can always be counted on to leave behind some hyper-masculine paperback trash (what's the counterpart of chick-lit, will "dude-lit" work?). The Reacher series can be summed up as the continuing adventures of an unbelievable bad-ass who goes around doing bad-ass things for, essentially, the sake of pure bad-assery. The writing isn't spectacular, and the plots aren't realistic, but there are worse ways to spend a few hours.

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Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

matt — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:37:45 +0000

Even worse than I expected it to be, which is saying something. (By the way: best ever use for the Kindle app on iPhone? Reading books you'd be too embarrassed to be seen with.) ###Possibly related posts:Rain Fall by Barry Eisler Tony Hendra, Father Joe Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore ### Possibly related posts:

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

aaron cohen — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:44:32 +0000

It might be just me, but I really struggled through the first 125-odd pages of this book until Lincoln got elected (sorry for the spoiler. He dies at the end. Damn it, again!). Kearns has obviously written the book from the perspective that Lincoln always made the right decision, and thus didn't include any decisions he got wrong. That said, Lincoln sure seemed to make a hell of a lot of decisions correctly.

Bonus links:
Lincoln Memorials in NYC, 16 hour audiobook of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates and superpower Lincoln biopic coming in 2011 from Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner, Liam Neeson, and Sally Field, with music by John Williams.

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Al Gore at the Wang Center Boston

aaron cohen — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 04:20:20 +0000

The second event of the 2009 Speaker Series: Live & Uncensored featuring former Vice President Al Gore in conversation with Boston Globe reporter Susan Milligan at the Wang Center was uneventful throughout most of the evening until Miligan became stuck on several questions regarding the (self) importance and likely downfall of newspapers in their current form. While this diversion didn't diminish the entire evening, it struck me as odd and uncalled for. (I wasn't able to Twitter this event, so quotations will be even more paraphrased than usual as I was taking notes with a Sharpie, on the back of an envelope, in the dark, in my terrible handwriting.)

Al Gore was introduced by Boston Phoenix Founder and Publisher Stephen Mindich, who called him 'The truly elected President in the 2000 election' and asked the audience to imagine what might have been had Gore been allowed to serve. Gore who went to college in Boston began his remarks by praising the Wang Center and saying, "They just don't build them like this anymore." From this, he launched into a quasi stand-up routine telling multiple jokes about his time after the White House. This wasn't the boring Al Gore described by the media in the 2000 election.

He was funny, knowledgeable, and informative and spoke for about 25 minutes, giving example after example of how the climate crisis plus the economic crisis have lead directly to the security crisis. And how all 3 can be mitigated by beginning to address energy issues. Gore restated his goal of 100% renewable energy in the US in 10 years and said, "I need your help...This is your challenge...Political will is a renewable resource." I cynically wondered if Gore's humor and deliberate speaking style wasn't a reaction to years of being stung by the media as boring, wooden, and a serial exaggerator and then I chastised my cynical self for being a jerk.

It should have been clear from the first question which direction the night was headed, but I say that with the benefit of hindsight because at that point, Miligan hadn't begun to lose the crowd. The question was some version of "Have you been able to change more because you didn't become President." Gore amicably spoke for a few minutes, essentially answering, "Uh, no, President would have been better."

Regarding nuclear power, Gore says he remains skeptical, but not reflexively opposed and said his concern stems from the fact that rogue weapons programs typically grow out of legitimate nuclear power programs. On whether going green is a luxury, Gore's first sentence was about the need for jobs channeling Van Jones, but stopping short of saying we can't afford NOT to go green.

It was at this point, in my mind, that Miligan began getting squirrely, asking a question about bailing out the auto industry with so much unbridled disdain that Gore began his answer, "If I had known this was a touchy subject." This setting off a sputtering denial of bitterness in which Miligan used the word bitter a bitter 12 dozen times. The entire time, neither Gore nor Miligan noted the irony of castigating the autos while ignoring the bank bailouts (both of whom, it could be argued, have suffered from an enormous lack of personal responsibility).

Gore answered a question on whether lack of personal responsibility is more to blame than deregulation by connecting Democracy and capitalism since their birth in the same year of 1776. Gore said, "I like the market, but we have a right to make laws."

When asking Gore's opinion on Obama, Miligan quipped "Careful, he might fire you like he did Rick Wagoner." (I think this was supposed to be a dig at Obama overreaching, but it was confused by Miligan's earlier attacks about the auto industry, making Miligan seem willing to attack everybody). Gore said, "Well, he can't fire me" and "I think he's doing a great job."

Miligan then asked Gore, a former journalist himself, his opinion on the crisis facing newspapers around the country. Gore's answer appeared to be that Americans are watching too much TV with time they used to spend reading the newspaper. And then there was a follow up. And then another. And then an attack on 'the blogs' and their veracity, and their lack of posting corrections, which is about the time my eyes filled with a white light and my ears a rushing noise. And I can't obviously connect the theme of the talk to this, but about 10 minutes before the evenings abrupt end and 10 minutes after Miligan's self-important rant, people started leaving in 2s and 3s until entire rows were pocked with empty seats.

One question from one reporter to a man who could have been President (but also a former reporter) strikes me as relevant and Gore's head is stuffed full of interesting examples of successes on the internet, but Miligan broke the first rule of interviewing (and giving toasts, incidentally) in that she made the interview about her. Instead of Bostonians filing out of the Wang enthusiastic about making a difference on climate change, they ambled out listlessly wondering who they had paid to see. It was similar to Ann Coulter vs Bill Maher when hecklers attempted to interrupt the evening in a 'look-at-me' bid for attention, except tonight it was Susan Miligan attempting to curry pity and Al Gore was too polite to tell her off. This is the second bad moderator in a row for the speaker series, and I hope Charlie Rose is better for Karl Rove vs James Carville.

(Thanks for visiting Unlikely Words. If you liked what you read Subscribe to RSS, check out our About Page, read some of our favorite posts or Follow us on Twitter)

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24 Season 7 Episode 16 11 PM – 12 AM Live Blog

aaron cohen — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:52:24 +0000

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Big surprise this week, folks. I will be in an undisclosed location from 9 PM - 10 PM EST, but I know the Live Blog must go on. I've arranged for the trusty proprietor of Unlikely Words, Matt, to fill in for the week. I'll be watching the episode tomorrow evening and adding my Live Blog thoughts then. In the meantime, let's remember where we were.

Jack Bauer got his JBKC up to 37 in a 2 against 9 firefight and was able to momentarily capture the bioweapon. However, Sepia Tony was captured, Jack Bauer was exposed to the bioweapon, and the bioweapon was recaptured by Starkwood's assault team. They showed previews of an assault on Starkwood with military helicopters, but I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't happen until next week. In any case, be nice to Matt!

Here are a few more links for you.
Season 7 Episode 14
Season 7 Episode 15
Here is all the Unlikely Words 24 coverage.

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Hey, folks! Matt here. I'm totally psyched for my first ever Live Blog of the Twenty-Four Television Show. As Aaron said, I haven't actually ever watched this show before, but I'm sure the "previously on 24" will catch me up. Right?

(Ooh, neat, House. Never watched that either. Check out the American accent on Bertie Wooster!)

Previously, someone shot Red Forman? And a lady President? And an FBI agent who's been bitten by a vampire? These are very helpful previouslies! With the little name tags and everything?

11:00 PM
Hee! It's a Jack Bauer car wash. I hope he gets the Turtle Wax.
Is that... Janeane Garafalo? The hell?
"It's in our manual." That's... not a cool line, Jon Voight. He's not really bringing the pep talk, is he? I'm assuming these are the bad guys, because they're all wearing black. And punching this gentleman with the cool facial hair.
Jon Voight can't believe he's hearing "give up" from the squirrelly guy? He's the squirrelly guy!

These doctor people? They are... very stilted.

11:10 PM
Who's this girl? The one who looks kinda like Rory Gilmore?
Rick Berman? Isn't he the Star Trek guy?
I have to believe the scripts for this show use ellipses liberally. "Some kind of DUN DUN DUN neurological pathogen."
Aaaand... commercial. Wow, this live blogging is harder than it looks. I'll try to keep up.

11:18 PM
We're back! This is a very emotional scene! I'm sure it's quite powerful if you know who these people are. Are they going to kiss?
Why does she want the gimpy agent? He's all old and brokey.

11:20 PM
"We've just learned that the day doesn't end at 11:20 PM. This is an important breakthrough!"
Mad cow weapon? Rad.
1,500 mercenaries? That would be a very small war in our own backyard.
Listen to law guy. "Congressional approval... from those douchebags in Congress. Laws suck." I have decided that this president's name is Georgina Bush.
Whoah! Squirrelly guy! I did not see that coming.
Well, that was 25 minutes of "suspense," just to find out that Jack's fine. I really totally thought they'd kill off the main character! Because I have never watched series television before.

11:30
OK, now I look like a jackass. I guess Jack is screwed after all. I'm sure he'll be dead before the end of the season. Because I have never watched series television before.
What the hell happened to his chest? Does Jack have leprosy, too?
Are these two going to kiss, too? Everyone's so intense on this show! (I should probably specify who I was thinking of when I typed this, but it applies to just about everyone, so...)

11:34 PM
Is there a single line of dialogue in this show that isn't exposition? This is like a master class in how not to write a television script.
Commercials? Again?

11:40 PM
You... have to ask the president for immunity? Shouldn't they be talking to the attorney-general? Oh, I see, he's Law Douche.
Nice product placement! WebEx... for all of your going-around-the-law needs.
It's not super dramatic when Jeneane Garofalo moves her Logitech webcam around.
There are a lot of commercials on this show.

Let's just recap: we're 45 minutes into the hour, and has anything actually happened, really? Jack's sick, this Tony fellow is up and about, they know where the weapons are, and there are exciting personnel changes afoot in the White House!

11:51 PM
Action Tony!
Wait, if they can intercept government transmissions, why were they interrogating Tony?
Action FBI!
"Check your wireless frequency... jerk!" Man, what stirring rhetoric. Wait, is the guy in the tower not going to tell his boss that the FBI is coming? What a helpfully incompetent henchman!
Dark blurry action!
Ooh, squirrelly guy double-cross! No one could have seen that coming. Seriously, I was completely surprised. Because I have never watched series television before.
Uh, bad guys? You know this is treason, right? What's your endgame?

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Well, that was... an hour of my life. I hope regular 24 fans enjoyed the show and tolerated my second-rate live-blogging! Next week, you'll have the real deal back, don't worry.

(Thanks for visiting Unlikely Words. If you liked what you read Subscribe to RSS, check out our About Page, read some of our favorite posts or Follow us on Twitter)

Wow, that's annoying. I just stayed up an extra hour to do the blog tonight and then lost it all when WordPress decided to log me out. That's pretty frustrating. I'll see what I can remember though. Essentially, the First Daughter is a scumbag and there should be nepotism laws preventing her from being named chief of staff. This episode brought to you by Cisco Webex. The bad guys said at the beginning of the episode that the weapons would be ready in about 2 hours.

I'm also curious to know how someone assembled the Joint Chiefs and the Cabinet in 7 minutes AND wrote a briefing. I thought all along that Seaton was playing Tony, but I thought he was doing it nefariously and not impishly. I wonder how Starkwood got 1500 men to agree to go into the conspiracy and not a single one of them spilled the beans. Those guys aren't going to kill Navy Seals. FBI maybe, though. Jack Bauer has a lot of scars. Renee is annoying. This episode brought to you by Webex by Cisco. They didn't bring enough men to the compound, which for some reason is going to make it so they can't get even more men to rescue them. I don't understand why the writers of '24' are so critical of the Blackwater Military Industrial Complex, are they trying to present Starkwood as sympathetic? And how about that ending, huh? I can't believe we're actually going to go THERE. This is batshit insane territory.
Sorry about the lack of minute by minute, but Matt's accounting definitely does the trick. Jack Bauer didn't get any JBKC's, and I didn't see scenes from next week.

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I Give Up – Why Publishing is in Trouble Redux

aaron cohen — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:50:28 +0000

Last week, I flipped out a little at the news that the Hudson River Hero, Sully Sullenberger, was about to sign a book deal for 2 books and $2.5 Million. Well, it's official and it's worse than I thought. The deal is for $3.2 Million dollars! And the second book is a book of inspirational poems. Last week I wondered if Sully was a 'pilot Hemingway', not even having the balls for the terribly alliterative 'pilot poet.'

Good for Sully. Publishers, you're doing this to yourself.

Oh, and since we haven't talked about it in a couple weeks, Clay Shirky says newspapers are still fucked, too.

Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

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Why Publishing is in Trouble, Part 35

aaron cohen — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:58:33 +0000

Nothing against Sully, but this news that he, "Has already received at least one offer, a two-book deal worth $2.5 million" is wht publishing is in trouble: THEY KEEP PAYING A LOT OF MONEY TO PUBLISH BOOKS NOBODY WANTS TO BUY. Sure, Sullenberger could surprise everyone and be a pilot Hemingway, maybe he's got a Marley inside of him, but who really knows and the idea that anyone would give him $2.5 million to find out is insane (a working definition of which is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result)! Further, he only landed one plane, what could he possibly write about in the second book? To be clear, Sully should get all the book deals and endorsements he can and then laugh all the way to his recliner. The man's a hero, he landed his plane in a river surrounded by cities, but that doesn't make him a writer, and the publisher who signs him will surely see remaindered copies of both books inside the entrance to a Barnes and Noble. /rant

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Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos

matt — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:34:07 +0000

The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
A very well-written and clear explanation of the major topics in relativity, quantum mechanics, and cosmology. It gets considerably less persuasive when the author starts in on string theory; Greene is a string theory proponent, but even his enthusiastic and partisan description of the theory seems pretty speculative. "Yes, there's no experimental evidence, but it's SO COOL" is a big change from the book's earlier sections, and pretty weak to boot.

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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2007)

aaron cohen — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:00:27 +0000

I listened to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao while riding my bike too and from work and so didn't notice the extensive use of footnotes by Díaz. Oscar Wao's greatness is not in the story, but in the fantastic and interesting narrative that featured multiple narrators (confusing to follow at first). There were several sci-fi/fantasy/comic/anime references if that's your thing.

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Sacred Games, Vikram Chandra

matt — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 03:17:04 +0000

Well, that was longer than necessary. Chandra seems to have set out not to write a novel, per se, but a sweeping portrait of contemporary Mumbai/Bombay and India in historical context, which means we get chapter-long digressions from the putative main storyline. Still, if you can get past the fact that the primary mystery is solved and resolved essentially as an aside, it's a well-written book.

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David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed In Flames

matt — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:25:54 +0000

I'm convinced that David Sedaris's books should not be read; rather, they should only ever be listened to. Some of his stories that are darkly funny when read aloud are just depressing on the page. His latest, all 8 CDs of it, is fantastic: his story of quitting smoking is great, and I don't even smoke.

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Requiem for an Assassin by Barry Eisler

aaron cohen — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 18:23:37 +0000

Has Barry Eisler started a new titular pattern with Requiem for an Assassin, replacing "Assassin" with "Rain"? We won't know until his next book comes out. The most psychological of the series as Rain struggles with the one person who could be his greatest foe - himself.

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