catching up
Slowly but surely.... actually, it was Friday Night Lights that held me back. It's good, but I didn't love it -- you've pretty much got the idea in the first third of the book, and then there are a couple of pretty slow chapters about West Texas and the wild '80s. I understand that they're supposed to provide context, add to the drama, etc., but I thought the chapter on Midland in particular was overkill. The second half of the book is just more of the same melodrama to which you've already become accustomed -- that probably sounds horrible, because the reality is that this is what people in Odessa (and the region in general) were actually like, and that's what's supposed to be shocking to us, gripping, etc. -- so I don't mean to sound like their emotions and actions are false... but it didn't hold me the whole way through.
Anyway, after FNL was J-Pod, Douglas Coupland's latest. It was fine, but I preferred Microserfs, which was a little more grounded and to me, more realistic(the secondary characters and their antics in this one were just absurd... of course, I don't live in Vancouver, so how do I know, maybe life really is like that up there). Anyway, J-Pod is also very self-referential, which makes me wonder whether Coupland's getting sick of writing these novels, or sick of his critics and imitators (are there many? I'm not really sure). In the end, I'd still like to read Generation X since it's considered such a seminal work, but I don't know that I'll pick up anything else he comes out with.
Running with Scissors was a pretty quick read -- warped, but oddly enough, not quite as warped as I was anticipating. I hadn't realized that he grew up in Amherst and Northampton, so it was kind of nice to recognize some of the places he talked about. I wonder what Burroughs is really like nowadays, because it'd be fairly amazing to come out of the childhood he describes with any kind of normalcy... although he does convey the sense that the chaos and craziness of his surroundings begin to pale as he grows up, gets used to them, and he and one of the other characters look for more normal paths.
So now I'm on At Risk, which is a new Patricia Cornwall. I have to say that for a book that's only 170 pages in relatively large type, not all that much has happened in the first 40-50 pages. I'm not sure I like the writing that much, and I never paid enough attention to the plot-driven Scarpetta series to know whether she's always written like this, or whether it's a new style to go with the new character (I'm not under any illusion that the Scarpetta books were literary, but they were plot-heavy enough that I don't remember them as being bad... sort of like the Dan Brown books. Just follow the action, don't look at the verbal scenery). And as usual, there's always much, much more waiting.
Anyway, after FNL was J-Pod, Douglas Coupland's latest. It was fine, but I preferred Microserfs, which was a little more grounded and to me, more realistic(the secondary characters and their antics in this one were just absurd... of course, I don't live in Vancouver, so how do I know, maybe life really is like that up there). Anyway, J-Pod is also very self-referential, which makes me wonder whether Coupland's getting sick of writing these novels, or sick of his critics and imitators (are there many? I'm not really sure). In the end, I'd still like to read Generation X since it's considered such a seminal work, but I don't know that I'll pick up anything else he comes out with.
Running with Scissors was a pretty quick read -- warped, but oddly enough, not quite as warped as I was anticipating. I hadn't realized that he grew up in Amherst and Northampton, so it was kind of nice to recognize some of the places he talked about. I wonder what Burroughs is really like nowadays, because it'd be fairly amazing to come out of the childhood he describes with any kind of normalcy... although he does convey the sense that the chaos and craziness of his surroundings begin to pale as he grows up, gets used to them, and he and one of the other characters look for more normal paths.
So now I'm on At Risk, which is a new Patricia Cornwall. I have to say that for a book that's only 170 pages in relatively large type, not all that much has happened in the first 40-50 pages. I'm not sure I like the writing that much, and I never paid enough attention to the plot-driven Scarpetta series to know whether she's always written like this, or whether it's a new style to go with the new character (I'm not under any illusion that the Scarpetta books were literary, but they were plot-heavy enough that I don't remember them as being bad... sort of like the Dan Brown books. Just follow the action, don't look at the verbal scenery). And as usual, there's always much, much more waiting.