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jodiwilldare's reviews
1523 reviews
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
2.0
Since I have encouraged everyone I know to go back and re-read the books they were younger, my Rock & Roll Bookclub chose J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey for our May read. It is one of my sister Ericka’s favorite books. I’m not entirely sure why, especially when you consider she’s a pretty devout Atheist. I’ve developed a theory, or rather am developing it as these letters fall from my keyboard that Ericka’s affection for this book is due, in large part, to her affection for Salinger’s writing and that Salinger’s obvious affection for the Glass family (Franny and Zooey are Glasses) has spilled on to her. Affection my osmosis, so to speak.
I do not have the same affection. Franny and Zooey, originally published in book-form in 1961 after appearing as stories in The New Yorker in the mid50s, is about the fabulous Glass family and young Franny’s existential crisis. Yawn.
Call me a heretic, but two-hundred pages of people talking gets to be a drag after about 100 pages. I was with Salinger during “Franny” while she has a bit of nervous breakdown that may or may not be influenced by (what seemed to me obvious) an unplanned pregnancy. Franny’s at lunch with her boyfriend Lane an Ivy-leaguer/pompous blowhard who spends the meal yammering on about how brilliant he is. Franny will have none of it and tears into his egocentric phony bullshit. It’s pretty awesome. Besides that, there’s all the delicious 50s-ness of the story and the smoking and the three martini lunch. Franny’s a-okay in my book.
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I do not have the same affection. Franny and Zooey, originally published in book-form in 1961 after appearing as stories in The New Yorker in the mid50s, is about the fabulous Glass family and young Franny’s existential crisis. Yawn.
Call me a heretic, but two-hundred pages of people talking gets to be a drag after about 100 pages. I was with Salinger during “Franny” while she has a bit of nervous breakdown that may or may not be influenced by (what seemed to me obvious) an unplanned pregnancy. Franny’s at lunch with her boyfriend Lane an Ivy-leaguer/pompous blowhard who spends the meal yammering on about how brilliant he is. Franny will have none of it and tears into his egocentric phony bullshit. It’s pretty awesome. Besides that, there’s all the delicious 50s-ness of the story and the smoking and the three martini lunch. Franny’s a-okay in my book.
Read More
Blueprints for Building Better Girls: Stories by Elissa Schappell
4.0
Every six months or so for the past decade, I’d randomly type ‘Elissa Schappell’ into Amazon’s search bar and cross my fingers. I kept hoping and hoping that she had released a book that some how slipped by me. I fell in love so hard with her collection of linked short stories Use Me that I longed for something else.
When I spied Blueprints for Building Better Girls on some Fall 2011 release list, I bounced in my chair, fist pumping like a member of the Jersey Shore. I was excited.
I marched right into this collection of interlinked stories with nary a worry. Not once did it cross my mind that this book would be disappointing. I didn’t entertain the idea that maybe this wouldn’t live up to my memories of Use Me. I knew, knew that Elissa Schappell would deliver the goods.
read more.
When I spied Blueprints for Building Better Girls on some Fall 2011 release list, I bounced in my chair, fist pumping like a member of the Jersey Shore. I was excited.
I marched right into this collection of interlinked stories with nary a worry. Not once did it cross my mind that this book would be disappointing. I didn’t entertain the idea that maybe this wouldn’t live up to my memories of Use Me. I knew, knew that Elissa Schappell would deliver the goods.
read more.
A Good Hard Look by Ann Napolitano
2.0
It’s probably a good idea to bone up on the life and times of Flannery O’Connor before you dive into Ann Napolitano’s latest novel, A Good Hard Look. As a fan of O’Connor’s work, but pretty clueless about her life, I struggled with the timing and pace of this novel set in the last few years of the great Southern writer’s life.
While I was well aware that Flannery died young of Lupus, I couldn’t remember if it was in the 50s or 60s. Since I’m an ardent believer that one shouldn’t have Google at the ready when reading a book, and that the author should provide all the information needed, I really struggled to get my feet under me in this one.
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While I was well aware that Flannery died young of Lupus, I couldn’t remember if it was in the 50s or 60s. Since I’m an ardent believer that one shouldn’t have Google at the ready when reading a book, and that the author should provide all the information needed, I really struggled to get my feet under me in this one.
Read more.
Habibi by Craig Thompson
2.0
If you want to read another glowing review about the majesty and mystery of Craig Thompson’s much-awaited, much-ballyhooed new graphic novel Habibi, you should probably just skip this one.
Before I get too far in here, I want to say that this book is beautiful. The art is spectacular. The care and attention that it must have took to draw this book is mind-boggling. I will make no bones about the graphic part of this novel. It’s a masterpiece.
However, the story here? It’s a confusing muddled sort of fable-y, fairy-tale-y mishmash of WTF.
Read more.
Before I get too far in here, I want to say that this book is beautiful. The art is spectacular. The care and attention that it must have took to draw this book is mind-boggling. I will make no bones about the graphic part of this novel. It’s a masterpiece.
However, the story here? It’s a confusing muddled sort of fable-y, fairy-tale-y mishmash of WTF.
Read more.
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
4.0
After reading The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson I have come to the conclusion that I enjoy reading novels about art and artists entirely more than I enjoy art. To back up my argument I’d also submit into evidence What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt and The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd.
Art is hard to process, books are much easier.
The art that Caleb and Camille Fang create in The Family Fang is even harder to process. These two crazy cats like to create happenings. The duo stage these events where they plunge their children, labeled Child A and Child B when the work is presented to the art world, into horrifyingly awkward situations and then film the chaos that ensues. In one piece the children are sidewalk buskers trying to raise money for their dog’s operation only they play horribly and appear to be heckled by a random stranger (it’s their dad) and the agitated crowd turns violent.
Read more.
Art is hard to process, books are much easier.
The art that Caleb and Camille Fang create in The Family Fang is even harder to process. These two crazy cats like to create happenings. The duo stage these events where they plunge their children, labeled Child A and Child B when the work is presented to the art world, into horrifyingly awkward situations and then film the chaos that ensues. In one piece the children are sidewalk buskers trying to raise money for their dog’s operation only they play horribly and appear to be heckled by a random stranger (it’s their dad) and the agitated crowd turns violent.
Read more.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
3.0
Le Cirque des Reves is only open from dusk til dawn, and is filled with black and white tents housing illusions and acts that defy imagination. There’s a wishing tree, a cloud maze, a contortionist, a fortune teller, and the illusionist, a young woman who can change the color of her hair while you watch.
This mystical, magical circus provides the board for a game of wits, for lack of a better term, between Celia, that young illusionist, and Marco, the circus’ manager. From the time they were children, Marco and Celia’s “caretakers” enter them into a sort of magician’s competition. As they grow, both Marco and Celia are trained for this competition though they are never told when it will take place or how a victor is declared.
This is the basic premise of Erin Morgenstern’s much buzzed debut novel, The Night Circus, and beyond that premise you’re not going to find much more than loads and loads and loads and then a few more loads of description.
Read more.
This mystical, magical circus provides the board for a game of wits, for lack of a better term, between Celia, that young illusionist, and Marco, the circus’ manager. From the time they were children, Marco and Celia’s “caretakers” enter them into a sort of magician’s competition. As they grow, both Marco and Celia are trained for this competition though they are never told when it will take place or how a victor is declared.
This is the basic premise of Erin Morgenstern’s much buzzed debut novel, The Night Circus, and beyond that premise you’re not going to find much more than loads and loads and loads and then a few more loads of description.
Read more.
Everybody Sees the Ants by A.S. King
2.0
It’s ironic that a book about bullying can be so full of cruel, negative stereotypes that it verges on bullying itself.
Lucky Linderman, the teenage protagonist of A.S. King’s young adult novel Everybody Sees the Ants, has been routinely bullied by an asshole named Nader McMillan since he was seven years old. Nader’s antics grow ever more cruel until, one day at the pool, he uses Lucky’s face to try to erase the cement.
With a giant wound in the shape of Ohio on his cheek, Lucky’s mom packs them up and heads to Arizona to the safe confines of her brother and sister-in-law. They leave behind Lucky’s father a chef who can only cope with his falling apart family by disappearing into work.
read more.
Lucky Linderman, the teenage protagonist of A.S. King’s young adult novel Everybody Sees the Ants, has been routinely bullied by an asshole named Nader McMillan since he was seven years old. Nader’s antics grow ever more cruel until, one day at the pool, he uses Lucky’s face to try to erase the cement.
With a giant wound in the shape of Ohio on his cheek, Lucky’s mom packs them up and heads to Arizona to the safe confines of her brother and sister-in-law. They leave behind Lucky’s father a chef who can only cope with his falling apart family by disappearing into work.
read more.