The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

This image is not the cover that I have for this book. Mine is a simple blue and red cover- like a Penguin classic. I adore this older cover and wish they had kept it. Also, I couldn't find an image of my cover- probably because it is so boring.
Dan Beachy-Quick the poet recommended this book to me after he finished reading it and ever-trusting I bought it the next day. I'd never heard of Auster and since it was in the contemporary literature section of the bookstore, I didn't realize it was a mystery.
Paul Auster's New York Trilogy expresses relationships, obsession, writing, detective work, obligation, and mystery. The stories are much more than simple detective stories- often including some existential catastrophe. I loved the experimental nature of the work. Auster became a character in one story. He created a world by weaving characters through the different stories. At one point he named everyone a color. It is all very successful. I enjoyed it and it made me think. It was written well and I felt better for having read it.
5/5

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

I included both of these book covers because I absolutely hate the cover of the one I read (the movie promo cover with Leonardo DiCaprio.) Some in my American Prose since 1900 class, the class that I happen to be reading the book for, said that the image on the cover didn't match the book and I have to agree. When I looked for other covers I found the one with the people turned away which is so much more consistent. So what's all the rabble about the book covers? I complained about it in my last post and I'm going to complain about it again. They packaged the book as if it's some kind of uplifting love story and it's just not. Put a picture of a god damn syringe or glass of whiskey on the cover, not an intimate moment.



About the book - Yates has a terrific grasp of language. It's painful at times. With phrases like "The floor rode under his feet like the deck of a moving ship" the book is just dreadfully beautiful. The book is about a young family in the 1950's, not wanting to fall into the trap of suburbia.
Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstance might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were.

5/5

Joust by Mercedes Lackey

Wanting to become better read in my favorite genre of genre fiction, that is, fantasy, I picked up a random Mercedes Lackey Book. That book happened to be called Joust and have a hunky man on the cover in a loin cloth with a beautiful red dragon. How could I not? I'll start by stating the books overwhelming flaws with the intention of eventually dismissing them as being out of the author's control. Firstly, the cover, while accurate, portrays basically the eventuality of the book. It is actually an image of what is achieved by the end of the novel. I'll try to explain. The main character is a young serf. Serf's are not aloud to cut their hair so it's obviously him on the cover. He goes to work for a dragon compound where the highest honor is to be a jouster. He's holding a jousting lance on the cover. Do you get the gist here? And for the duller readers, the back is basically a one-page summary of the book. At this point there's really no point in reading it since you know exactly what is going to happen. You can't root for the underdog because staring you in the face every time you pick up the book you know he will be victorious. Maybe I'm being overcritical here. But like I said, it's not Lackey's fault.
Also there are a ton of typos. Like 4 that I've caught and I'm no editor. Some are quite blatant. Again, not Lackey's fault...really.

So why did you read the book, Nicole? Is your love for dragons so strong that you will read a story you already know the entire plot and ending to? Probably, yeah, but what really kept me is Mercedes Lackey's ability to tell a story. I'm not saying it's groundbreaking work or anything but Lackey studied birds to compare them to dragons. She is consistent and her imagination for the world is thorough without being dull.

Maybe Fantasy novels get pushed unfairly into this mass-market, highly disregarded section. Or maybe they deserve it. But then again the publishers aren't giving as much time to these books as to the best selling "literature." If they can't even make sure a book goes out without typos and if instead of praise the book is covered in its entire plot then I don't know how far it can actually get.

4/5

Fat City by Leonard Gardner

Gardner spent four years on Fat City and it shows. The prose is moving with stunning observations like out the window there were "pigeons the color of the street." A story about failure, false hopes, masculinity, and pride, Fat City breaks the heart with achingly eloquent words. It's not a feel-good book but it has influenced many writers for good reason. Apparently you should stay away from the movie.

4.75/5

Antwerp by Roberto Bolaño

Here is a chapter from Bolaño's short work Antwerp


#4. I'm My Own Bewitchment

The ghosts of the Plaza Real are on the stairs. Blankets pulled up to my ears, motionless in bed, sweating and repeating meaningless words to myself, I hear them moving around, turning the lights on and off, climbing up toward the roof with unbearable slowness. I'm the moon, someone ventures. But I used to be in a gang and I had the Arab in my sights and I pulled the trigger at the worst possible moment. Narrow streets in the heart of Distrito V, and no way to escape or alter the fate that slid like a djellaba over my greasy hair. Words that drift away from one another. Urban games played from time immemorial..."Frankfurt" ... "A blond girl at the biggest window of the boarding house" ... "There's nothing I can do now"... I'm my own bewitchment. My hands move over a mural in which someone, eight inches taller than me, stands in the shadows, hands in the pockets of his jacket, preparing for death and his subsequent transparency. The language of others is unintelligible to me. "Tired after being up for days" ... "A blond girl came down the stairs" ... "My name is Roberto Bolaño" ... "I opened my arms" ...


I wept.

5/5