First, let me just acknowledge something: my intellectual “vocabulary” is somewhat limited. I am what we used to call a Concrete Sequential, a straight shooter. There’s probably a fancier term these days, but in the end, while I don’t make the pretty things, I do appreciate them, and am happy to balance the checkbooks of those who do so they can continue. My favorite books, the ones I can’t wait to get home to and which are truly occupying my thoughts regardless of what it […]
Nope. And too goddamned long.
I wanted to like this. For the first several chapters the two central characters were compelling, but I kept wondering, since some serious, dramatic, and in some cases profound action was taking place or, for one of the two had recently taken place (World War II, for God’s sake), when things were going to get juicy. Passionate. Passion-filled. Something! Heroic deeds, the beginning of what the author seems to think is the greatest fucking love in history, and zero emotion behind the lovely (and largely […]
Sheep man!
Man, I like Murakami. That being said, I don’t think I understand him. This is a cool book, though. Like A Wild Sheep Chase, it has a Sheep Guy, so there’s that. It has freshly-made doughnuts. It has a wack labyrinth. It has beautiful illustrations and a cool cover. I don’t know what the fuck it’s about, but I’m giving it 4 stars because it’s strange and wonderful regardless, and because I love the way he uses strangely stilted language (or his translator does?) and […]
Pretty good. Not great.
This is “review” #6, and I still don’t know how to do this properly. I’m not really interested in giving a synopsis, but I guess there aren’t any rules, so once again, this is just kinda what I thought about this. On Neil Gaiman’s amazon bio, he says, “I make things up and write them down.” Which is awesome. Obviously (?) he’s being a least a little disingenuous, but with this book it doesn’t seem too far off. I believe this was his first novel, […]