J$ aka “Yo Ass”. Post-neoluddite. 🏓, 📖, 🎶, ⊫¬∀∃, ؎, 🐈, and 💓 while it lasts. Once upon a midnight dreary, it tolls for thee.
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[Fiction / Fantasy / Contemporary] What would you change if you could go back in …
A little gem of a book, given to me by a bright and doomed girl in loving affection - so how could it not resonate?
The Rules of Attraction is a satirical black comedy novel by Bret Easton Ellis published …
New Hampshire. Against a background of social desolation and family dysfunction, we get the internal perspectives of a group of young adults - that manage to flunk courses for which the only real examination consists of being able to open a door.
Disdainfully they fuck left, right, and center, working through mountains of abusive substances.
No matter! They are masters of the universe offspring, and bound to form the next generation of a bored, nihilist elite, lacking even the remotest sense of entitlement.
Funny how these perspectives don’t even relate, even though they cover the same events. A mesh of misunderstanding rooted in total lack of empathy.
Until the end, that is; which, in my reading, is the end of the road (pun intended) for the apex asshole amongst this joyless band of little shits.
This is not BEE’s finest. It lacks the focus, the pain and the urgency of …
New Hampshire. Against a background of social desolation and family dysfunction, we get the internal perspectives of a group of young adults - that manage to flunk courses for which the only real examination consists of being able to open a door.
Disdainfully they fuck left, right, and center, working through mountains of abusive substances.
No matter! They are masters of the universe offspring, and bound to form the next generation of a bored, nihilist elite, lacking even the remotest sense of entitlement.
Funny how these perspectives don’t even relate, even though they cover the same events. A mesh of misunderstanding rooted in total lack of empathy.
Until the end, that is; which, in my reading, is the end of the road (pun intended) for the apex asshole amongst this joyless band of little shits.
This is not BEE’s finest. It lacks the focus, the pain and the urgency of the peaks of his oeuvre. I remember reading it, decades ago, and getting swept by the flow, the rhythm, of the narrative. I did not find that mood again.
Set in Los Angeles in the early 1980's, this coolly mesmerizing novel is a raw, …
This I reread, after being swept by The Shards. It’s been a ling time.
What I remembered and experienced again: the desolation of the insanely rich narcist brats. The substance abuse. The emptiness, the pervasive, stiffling sense of boredom of those free to pursuit anything, no limits. Also: the glimpse of humanity.
I did not recall the viscersl cruelty that much. Even so, the language is mesmerizing, powerful.
This is not a happy book. Many books are not.
Brideshead Revisited, but different. The inside of an ultra-spoiled brat, an adolescent putting on oversized britches while self-regulating anxiety and emotions by means of mountains of pills and other substances. The scene is known, a setting that immediately brings back not just Less than Zero but more importantly timewarps me back into the younger self reading it.
Which, I guess, would be the point of this autofiction. It holds up a mirror, but it’s a broken mirror giving a fragmented reflection. Not reality, but still revealing, truthful. Now I’ll reread that debut; the slight melancholy merits an extension.
Zo’n boek dat je niet kiest, en inkijkt met een andere houding. Nou, ik ben om. Dit boekje greep me, maakte duidelijk en inleefbaar, en ontredderde.
Fijn.
Na Het Zoutoad, dat me over een streep trik, kreeg ik Landlijnen in handen. Meer van hetzelfde? Vast wel. Ik heb het hier en daar ademloos gelezen.
Begeesterd. Begeesterend.
Onderhoudend, evenwel wat… vlak, op het banale af. Verwacht geen Kafka, Vian, Cortázar en dan valt het wel mee.
Pageturner!
"In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant …
Every Vonnegut reread is a fresh and wholesome new read. I fully intend to keep rereading until I either drop dead or the inevitable chaos of utter boredom with life itself overcomes me.
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (lit. 'The Most Secret Memory of Men') is a 2021 novel by Senegalese writer …
Love (2003) is the eighth novel by Toni Morrison. Written in Morrison's non-linear style, the …
Love, it said, and then a story of lives entangled in hate unfolded. So much of it that even a cathartic recovery still left the bitter atoma of hate permeating the air.
So it goes.
Een trouvaille in een bibliotheej aan de weg bleek een uitkomst bij het wachten. Fijne novelle.
Where the Crawdads Sing is a 2018 novel by American author Delia Owens. It has topped The New York Times …
In this collection of short stories, firmly rooted in a tradition of lucid supernaturalism mixed with a bout of the surreal, some of the stories are little gems, hitting their mark with a sober accuracy that feels fresh and true.
However, not all of them. The opening story, for example, succeeds in setting a macabre scenery that succeeds in feeling immersive (and very creepy), but then… just goes nowhere. Neither Borgès, Marquez, Murakami nor Conrad would have abided that - well, in any case, that does not work for me.
That first story sets a tone, a mood, a frame of expectations that for me took a few jolts to shake off as I read in, and in the end there turned out to be a lot to be enjoyed in this book.
Perhaps my perception of this tome would have benefited from reading the first story last.
