Everything Matters!

I really love this book. It has its issues, but I’m a fan of the omniscient second-person, and the countdown to the end, and even the sort of epilogue and the way it doesn’t fix everything, doesn’t really fix anything. I am all for Currie’s writing, just about always.

4.5/5

Late Nights on Air

I have very little patience for novels that decide to use dreams and memories to flesh out their characters instead of bothering with proper characterization, and this is one of the most heinous offenders I’ve ever seen. Nor does it help that I don’t care about any of the characters enough to want to know anything more about them, and that the drudgery of those characters is surrounded by the drudgery of the Yukon landscape, which this book tries—and fails—to make interesting.

1.5/5

Funny Boy

I’m always interested in a view of Sri Lanka after falling in love with Michael Ondaatje, and this does offer that, if not much else to distinguish itself from other coming of age queer stories, just another set of being different and realization of what that interest is, and veiled sexualities of supporting characters.

3/5

The Book of Salt

I really dislike books that decide to use minor historical figures and flesh them out—make it really dislike when those historical figures are Gertrude Stein and her lover, Alice B. Toklas. I think I can settle for Stein’s actual writing, instead of a stupid, shallow book that decides to take the viewpoint of her chef, and only distinguish itself from another mediocre whiny book by the fact that Truong decides to steal Stein’s fame to bolster her own.

2/5

Beat the Reaper

This is fun reading at its best; sharp, smart, and full of shark tanks. The asides are brilliant, the events are just ludicrous enough to work, and the narrator is just unlikeable enough. Though maybe I could have done without a bone knife.

4/5

Dangerous Laughter

Millhauser has some really really interesting ideas, unfortunately, he doesn’t have a very discerning editor. Each of his stories intrigues me for a short time, then loses its appeal, and then really, really wears out his welcome. If this collection was half the length or had twice the stories, it’d be a good one, as it is, Millhauser needs a new editor, or an ability to viciously cut the chaff.

2/5

Zami

Lourde is a poet, so it’s not surprising that Zami is often poetic. It’s lucky, actually, because that poetic musing is about the only thing that saves it from being yet another autobiography that carefully tells the reader all about the author’s sex and love life.

3/5

Green Zone

Green Zone doesn't move out of the broad "Iraq war film and not much else" category that is taking up a huge niche in American filmmaking right now. It's a very serviceable war film, albeit one that drags on too long, and sometimes sacrifices interesting implications for ones that carry more metaphorical weight. It's one of the more anti-war films I've seen lately, but that gets muddled by a sort of suspense plot that paradoxically is less interesting, and in the end, it doesn't make much of an impression in the huge canon it has fallen into.

2.5/5

Oryx and Crake

I’m so impressed by Atwood’s ability to create this dysfunctional, screwed up world, where sex and violence (both transgressive and genuine) are just another thing to fill the time, and counting all the extinct species and destroyed indications of human growth turn into games. The aftermath, I’m less in love with, but there is nothing in here that isn’t well-done.

4/5

Cereus Blooms at Night

Taylor, you say, seriously, what’s with all the incest you’re reading? I know, young comrades, I know, I’m curious about the link between queer fiction and incestuous subplots myself. But luckily, this moves out of the “queerqueerqueerINCEST” trope it has fallen into, if only because its written beautifully, if, perhaps, the subject matter isn’t exactly to my taste. Again.

3/5

You Are Not a Stranger Here

Ugh and ugh. This is one of the few books that gets relegated to the “abandoned” folder, and, for me, with good reason. Haslett looks into psychological disturbance, mental illness, and is relentlessly depressing in his portrayal of it. Which would be okay! Really, it would! It’s just that all his accounts are so monotonous, that I couldn’t bother myself to stick with it.

1/5

What We All Long For

I’m going to admit I’m biased here, because this book takes place in Toronto, and everyone loves to see their city laid out on the page. But this is lovely, focusing on truly human characters with human problems, on the never dwindling issues of race in a multi-cultural city, on the implications of family and how abandoning those implications is just about impossible.

4.5/5

Elle

This is yet another new take on Robinson Crusoe, but a woman and in Canada! Hooray! The only thing that keeps this from only being yet another take on Crusoe is the fact there is a nice, sharp sense of humour to this that separates it from the others.

3/5

Gummo

I'm going to show my stodgy side, but any film that takes a long time focusing on killing cats to make a quick buck is not going to be my kind of film. Neither will a film focusing on prostituting a mentally disabled girl, on killing a woman on life support, on the lack of morals or control in a town burdened with tragedy and idiocy. I was often interested in Gummo, but a lot of that interest was disgust.

1/5

All Quiet on the Western Front

I cannot stress how in love with this book I am. I pretty much devoured it, barely looking up from its pages for hours, and there’s something so gorgeous about it, about the moments of silence between the moments of agony, of the torture of leave when your friends are on the front lines, and you don’t fit in anywhere except with them, of the bond of comradeship, which Remarque describes as closer than between lovers. I want to read this over and over and over again. This is, by far, the greatest war account I have ever read.

5/5

Dance Dance Dance

This probably shouldn’t have been my first outing with Murakami, as it seems to be a fairly minor work of his, but I was interested in his style, if not in the little suspense story woven in, one that I figured out fairly early (me! Who never figures out any suspense ending!), and if not his wanderings into the world of the sheep man. But I liked his writing enough to give him a chance on something that has nothing to do with hotels haunted with sheep men. I think.

3/5

In the Lake of the Woods

This isn’t for anyone who wants a straightforward narrative or a pat ending, because it absolutely refuses any sort of closure or simplicity of meaning, however, it is an extremely interesting view of both the aftermath of a disappearance and the aftermath of Vietnam. O’Brien is always interested in Vietnam, and I am always interested in his narratives of Vietnam; brutal, ugly and human. When O’Brien writes about the aftermath, it’s less interesting, but that’s not actually saying much; O’Brien’s pretty damn interesting whatever he’s writing.

4/5

Dubliners

I was so giddy to actually finish something by James Joyce, even though I know this is absolutely nothing like Ulysses in either style or function. What it is, is a telling little portrait of Dublin, rife with pederasty and poverty and mean-spiritedness, mostly, but sometimes nice things, maybe, sometimes.

3/5

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital

Have I mentioned I’m in love with Lorrie Moore yet? Because I am totally in love with Lorrie Moore. In most people’s hands, a story about a summer in a sixteen year old’s life, and then a few days in her life twenty years later, well, that would be unspeakably boring. But somehow Moore takes things that should be unspeakably boring, and turns them into something heartfelt and heartbreaking and beautiful. She’s really, really good at that.

4/5

Animal Farm

Maybe I would have liked this better if I'd read it in my formative years like everyone else I know. It's certainly a classic for a reason, and its implications haven't lost their weight, though a good amount of the allusions to communism don't hold up as much in modern times. I get where everyone who loves it is coming from? I have just read one too many "communism is bad!" tracts. Not that I disagree! But I can only agree for so long before I become one of those damned sheep.

3/5

Identity

Identity isn't as strong as the other Kundera works I've read, partly because of the unlikeable nature of the protagonists, a common occurrence in Kundera's works but one that is much more fundamental here, and, it seems, much less satirical. This is just people fucking up badly while trying to fix things, and I've never been very good at watching trainwrecks. Despite this, as always, Kundera remains immensely readable.

3/5

Once

I appreciate Once's absolute refusal of many of the romantic tropes it could have easily fallen into, but in sacrificing that, and yet still remaining somewhat sentimental, Once loses both the romance and the edge it could have contained. Once sacrifices the romance but not the sentimentality, and as a result, it is somewhat muddled as an effort.

2.5/5

A Boy's Own Story

White's sort of autobiography is interesting, particularly in the way he doesn't build himself up in any way, however, it's not particularly memorable. Already a lot of the details are fading, only a couple weeks later, and the only thing that distinguishes it is that instead of echoing a bildungsroman, it ends fairly early, oh, and has gay sex. And stuff.

3/5

Dream Boy

Well, this was an odd experience. I'm not going to spoil the ending, though I'm not sure what that would ruin, however, the ending was sort of a confused attempt at lack of closure, and a lot of the threads picked up in the story, such as what appears to be a case of molestation, are hinted at, then suddenly disappear. Grimsley doesn't seem sure whether he wants a love story, a ghost story or a story of child abuse, and frankly, I'm not sure either.

2/5

Salvation Army

My stodgy side reappears! A memoir that ruminates for a long time on the author's giant crush on his older brother, and doesn't really contain much other than that, except his parents' fights and this Swiss guy he fucks for awhile, and then doesn't. There isn't much of substance here, and I am willing to admit that the incest threw me out of the narrative, but frankly, there wasn't much of a narrative to begin with.

2/5

The Red Badge of Courage

I read the great illustrated classics version of this when I was about seven or so; the only reason I remember that is because it absolutely haunted me, with its stories of death. This time around, Crane doesn't haunt me. Crane doesn't even affect me. He has created such an unlikeable protagonist, a coward who takes all of the credit and none of the blame, a man who looks the injured in the eyes and sees himself as equal, that I could barely get through this. It doesn't help that it's downright boring a lot of the time.

2/5

The Hurt Locker

Hurt Locker is rendered in a world of beige, taupe and tan, a world that seems washed out, which works wonderfully with its narrative. In this bleached world, slow moving and then frenetic with motion, every action has extreme importance, except when it doesn't. My favourite moment, a moment in a grocery store washed in brilliant colours, shows how out of place soldiers are in that world, busy with nothing meaningful, and this moment serves as an allegory for what is an extremely rich study of monotony and danger, often at the same time.

4/5

Sexing the Cherry

I was excited by this, as I'd love Winterson's previous outing, however, there were serious issues in this narrative. The first, and most irritating, was the use of two point-of-views, a choice that would not bother me had Winterson differentiated the voices used. As it is, however, it is impossible to immerse yourself in a story when every time the point of view alters, you spend several pages trying to decide who is speaking.

3/5

Oranges are not the Only Fruit

For its tiny size, Oranges packs a lot of delight. Winterson's cutting humour about her life, her masterful inclusion of fairy-tale like fragments, and her sheer ability make this one of the biggest pleasures I've read all year.

5/5

Obasan

Obasan was read in a straight rush before class, a three hour drag at the library. I actually don't remember much of it, but I can't think I was missing much, as the lectures rang of making something out of nothing, pulling posttraumatic stress and histiographic metafiction out of a very simple narrative of the mistreated. Yes, Kogawa was the first to address the treatment of Japanese Canadians during World War II, and Obasan wrought change in policy, which is impressive, but as a novel, as a piece of artwork, Obasan adds little to the genre it has fallen into.

2/5