Saturday, July 10, 2010

june reading

(shall we be brief?)

Juliet, Naked

by: Nick Hornby

Fine and funny and sad. Absurd and hopeless, as life is, and ridiculous with desire. Portrait of inertia. Of age. Oh my god, here comes a sappy ending, but wait, no, I think we've glanced off of it now and it seems to be there, just to the right of us, in the distance.

Doing It
by: Melvin Burgess

Sex. Messy, awkward, imaginary, gorgeous, fantasized, humiliating, wonderful. Is that really what teenage boys think about? Disarmingly brilliant novel. Should be on some high school reading lists, or, at least, required reading for teachers. Brutally humane.

American Gods
by: Neil Gaiman

Road trip fantasia, plus an intermission in terrifying Midwestern winter. Gods everywhere. My favorites: Egyptian deities dressed up as undertakers. Coin tricks. Cons. That discomfiting feeling you get when you start out tasting something strange, and then you forget what's strange about it half-way through and all the important bits somehow turn out to be true.

The Billionaire's Curse

by: Richard Newsome

Indiana Jones meets classic English story about children with oddly absent parents and an excess of adventure. Slightly blocky characters. Bloodthirsty. A policeman shot in the bum with darts tipped with sleeping potion on one end, flowers on the other.

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