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