Poolside Book Reviews
Poolside Book Review: Sunnyside
Sunnyside, Glen David Gold’s second novel, starts off with the type of magic that one might expect to find in his first novel, Carter Beats the Devil. That is a roundabout and inelegant (did I really just use ‘one’ instead of ‘you’?) way of saying that at the start of the novel, Charlie Chaplin [...]
Poolside Book Review: The Terror
Talking about books is different than talking about movies. When people ask me about movies, I can say, “I watched The Dark Knight” and they’ll usually know what I’m talking about. Or even if I’m talking about an Indie or foreign film, I can say, “I watched an indie or foreign film” and they’ll realize that I’m a pretentious asshole. I can’t do that with books. There’s not really and indie or foreign book scene that has an identifiable presence for most people. So when talking about books, I usually have to give a quick blurb or plot summary to explain what I’m reading. I’ve generally found that the better the blurb, the better the book.
Poolside Book Review: Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
As you may or may not know, next week marks my triumphant return to graduate studies. I’m going back to school for a simple, noble cause: to eventually get bored, drop out and become a three-time graduate school dropout. The threepeat is rarely attained, but I think I’ve got a pretty good shot. Naturally, my last few weeks have been filled with preparation. I’ve reordered cable television, so I have more reasons to procrastinate. I grew a quality graduate school scruffy beard, although I shaved it off earlier today, a process which took a lot longer than I thought it would. I even asked Santa for a stylish tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows. I didn’t get one at Christmas, but there’s always hope that someone will get me one for Pandepoenium. And I also dropped a couple hundred dollars on books, including the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th Edition).
Poolside Book Review: Against the Day
I apologise for taking so long in posting this Poolside Book Review of the TRP’s latest, Against the Day. It’s wicked long and I haven’t been spending all that much time reading. And I’ve spend the better part of today trying to figure out exactly how to express my reaction to the novel. I’ve decided to be blunt: I did not care for it.
It saddens to me to say this, but lil’ Michiko Kakutani’s review perfectly described Against the Day as:
[A] humongous, bloated jigsaw puzzle of a story, pretentious without being provocative, elliptical without being illuminating, complicated without being rewardingly complex.
Poolside Book Review: McSweeney’s 19
I don’t know why I continue to subscribe to McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. I used to enjoy receiving semi-regular collections of short fiction. The stories were usually interesting and the volumes themselves, whether hardbound or paperback, were always of the highest quality. Unfortunately, ever since around Issue 16, things have been going to shit.
Issue 17 was a packet of faux junk mail rubber-banded together. Yes, there was some quality stuff, but just how am I supposed to store junk mail on my bookshelf? I can’t. I should just throw the damn thing out. When I received Issue 19 this morning, I was pleasantly surprised that it came in a square, fairly book-shaped box. But I soon learned that a book-shaped box does not necessarily indicate the presence of a traditional book. Issue 19 is a cigar box.
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