Scan barcode
jodiwilldare's reviews
1523 reviews
Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel
2.0
I usually have a strict 100-page rule for books. If after 100 pages I don’t care, am dissatisfied, or bored by the book I chuck it aside and move on. I didn’t do that with Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama and I kind of wish I had.
I stuck with it for two reasons. First, my love for Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic can not be adequately expressed using mere words. Not only is the book amazing, but it also holds a sentimental place in my heart. It was the first non-superhero graphic thing I’d ever read. Okay, it was the second. But I hate Ghost World with a kind of fire that erases it from my memory. Anyway, Fun Home was a sort of “Owen Meany” experience for me. If not for Fun Home, I’d have never discovered Maus or Persepolis or, heaven forbid, Scott Pilgrim. It opened the door to the world of graphic novels for me, and for that I just couldn’t abandon Bechdel.
Read more.
I stuck with it for two reasons. First, my love for Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic can not be adequately expressed using mere words. Not only is the book amazing, but it also holds a sentimental place in my heart. It was the first non-superhero graphic thing I’d ever read. Okay, it was the second. But I hate Ghost World with a kind of fire that erases it from my memory. Anyway, Fun Home was a sort of “Owen Meany” experience for me. If not for Fun Home, I’d have never discovered Maus or Persepolis or, heaven forbid, Scott Pilgrim. It opened the door to the world of graphic novels for me, and for that I just couldn’t abandon Bechdel.
Read more.
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
3.0
Recently, one of the members for my Rock & Roll Bookclub wanted to re-read some Kurt Vonnegut. Since I’m a great lover of Vonnegut, I wholeheartedly supported this idea. I lobbied hard for Cat’s Cradle or God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, which are my favorite.
For reasons I cannot remember we landed on Breakfast of Champions. It was interesting to re-visit nearly twenty years after that summer I spent shoving every Vonnegut book I could get my hands on right into my brain. Because much of my Vonnegut reading was during the summer of 1993, all his books have coalesced in my memory into a murky Vonnegut stew of characters and lines and vague plot summaries. So it goes.
Read more.
For reasons I cannot remember we landed on Breakfast of Champions. It was interesting to re-visit nearly twenty years after that summer I spent shoving every Vonnegut book I could get my hands on right into my brain. Because much of my Vonnegut reading was during the summer of 1993, all his books have coalesced in my memory into a murky Vonnegut stew of characters and lines and vague plot summaries. So it goes.
Read more.
This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz
4.0
Last weekend I got an email from Christa who was twenty-five pages from the end of Every Love Story is a Ghost Story and she didn’t want to finish it because she knew what was coming.
I tried to empathize with her plight but I couldn’t. “Right now I’m immersed in the new Junot Diaz collection & want to call people Spanish words that I don’t even know the meanings of, but I know they’re bad. Like morena.”
That’s what reading Junot Diaz does to you. It turns you into someone who wants to swagger about and throw around Spanish slang as if you know what the words mean and you aren’t a forty-something white woman from Minnesota. (Aside: I looked up morena when I was done reading according to the Urband Dictionary it just means dark-skinned Latina. I thought its meaning would be closer to sucia. Now I want to call everyone sucio or sucia.)
read more.
I tried to empathize with her plight but I couldn’t. “Right now I’m immersed in the new Junot Diaz collection & want to call people Spanish words that I don’t even know the meanings of, but I know they’re bad. Like morena.”
That’s what reading Junot Diaz does to you. It turns you into someone who wants to swagger about and throw around Spanish slang as if you know what the words mean and you aren’t a forty-something white woman from Minnesota. (Aside: I looked up morena when I was done reading according to the Urband Dictionary it just means dark-skinned Latina. I thought its meaning would be closer to sucia. Now I want to call everyone sucio or sucia.)
read more.
If You Knew Then What I Know Now by Ryan Van Meter
4.0
One of the things that drive me nuts in reviews and workshops is when the critic critiques a story based not on what it is, but rather what he or she wanted it to be. Right now I have to resist the urge to become the very thing I despise.
I wanted more from Ryan Van Meter’s If You Knew Then What I Know Now. Not because the book itself is lacking anything, but because I’m a greedy, greedy reader who could not get enough of his lovely, bittersweet prose.
read more
I wanted more from Ryan Van Meter’s If You Knew Then What I Know Now. Not because the book itself is lacking anything, but because I’m a greedy, greedy reader who could not get enough of his lovely, bittersweet prose.
read more
Disquiet by Julia Leigh
4.0
Whenever you take a fiction workshop you are guaranteed that at some point someone will say about some story, “This isn’t the title.” Oftentimes, I want to punch that person in the neck because I am not one of those people who spends a lot of time pondering titles (incidentally, I am also one of those people who cannot remember the names of songs). But Disquiet the title of Julia Leigh’s novella is the kind of fucking brilliance that you can’t not think about it.
Read the rest on MN Reads
Read the rest on MN Reads
The Wonders Of The Invisible World by David Gates
4.0
When I think about just how much I enjoyed reading David Gates’ The Wonders of the Invisible World, I have to laugh. I got the book completely by mistake. I mooched it thinking it was a collection by David Schickler who wrote Kissing in Manhattan, another book I loved.
I find it difficult to write about books that I liked. It’s hard because I often come up, “I liked it because it was good” which is just about the lamest most unhelpful thing to say. It also doesn’t help that I recently read Salon’s bunch of bullshit about the death of literary criticism.
Read the rest on iwilldare.com
I find it difficult to write about books that I liked. It’s hard because I often come up, “I liked it because it was good” which is just about the lamest most unhelpful thing to say. It also doesn’t help that I recently read Salon’s bunch of bullshit about the death of literary criticism.
Read the rest on iwilldare.com
Atonement by Ian McEwan
4.0
I have no idea why I lifted my ban on “buzz” books to read Ian McEwan’s Atonement this week, especially now that the movie’s out, but I’m really glad that I did.
I spent a good portion of my time while reading Atonement fretting. The book came highly recommended by my writing teacher Dale. Despite an inexplicable penchant for Alice Munro, I really respect and admire Dale’s taste. So when I found myself wondering, while reading, what in the hell it was that made this book so special, I worried. First I worried that I got suckered into reading some sort of shitty Alice Munro-like book that was supposed to be all quiet and beautiful or some such bullshit. Second I worried that maybe I would have to reevaluate my perceptions of Dale’s taste.
read more
I spent a good portion of my time while reading Atonement fretting. The book came highly recommended by my writing teacher Dale. Despite an inexplicable penchant for Alice Munro, I really respect and admire Dale’s taste. So when I found myself wondering, while reading, what in the hell it was that made this book so special, I worried. First I worried that I got suckered into reading some sort of shitty Alice Munro-like book that was supposed to be all quiet and beautiful or some such bullshit. Second I worried that maybe I would have to reevaluate my perceptions of Dale’s taste.
read more
The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
4.0
It’s only June but I have to put the rest of the books of 2012 on notice. You’re gonna have to work really hard to knock The Age of Miracles from the ‘Most Favorite Novel of the Year’ spot.
Holy shit, I fell fast and hard for Karen Thompson Walker’s debut novel about a young girl, her family, and an event that could spell the end of the world.
Julia is just eleven when the slowing begins. It seems the Earth has slipped off its rotation and extra minute are pouring into the day. People immediately lose their shit, crying about the apocalypse. The sunrise and sunset has become unpredictable. Daylight can last for 12, 15, 18 hours at a time. The government doesn’t know what the hell to do. There’s a great chasm between people who live ‘by the clock’ — those who conduct their lives according to what the clock says — and the ‘real timers’ — those who conduct their lives according to the rising and setting of the sun.
read more
Holy shit, I fell fast and hard for Karen Thompson Walker’s debut novel about a young girl, her family, and an event that could spell the end of the world.
Julia is just eleven when the slowing begins. It seems the Earth has slipped off its rotation and extra minute are pouring into the day. People immediately lose their shit, crying about the apocalypse. The sunrise and sunset has become unpredictable. Daylight can last for 12, 15, 18 hours at a time. The government doesn’t know what the hell to do. There’s a great chasm between people who live ‘by the clock’ — those who conduct their lives according to what the clock says — and the ‘real timers’ — those who conduct their lives according to the rising and setting of the sun.
read more
Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind by Gavin Edwards
4.0
If Rob Lowe’s memoir is the biggest, best issue of Tiger Beat ever, then Gavin Edward’s Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind is the saddest.
River Phoenix was a beautiful, doomed neo-hippie with a heart full of music, hopes of saving the world, and a hardcore drug habit he was intent on hiding. It’s hard to believe it’s been twenty years since the twenty-three-year old actor died outside of the Johnny Depp-owned Hollywood club, The Viper Room, but there you have it. Read more.
River Phoenix was a beautiful, doomed neo-hippie with a heart full of music, hopes of saving the world, and a hardcore drug habit he was intent on hiding. It’s hard to believe it’s been twenty years since the twenty-three-year old actor died outside of the Johnny Depp-owned Hollywood club, The Viper Room, but there you have it. Read more.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
2.0
There used to be a time where you could have a personal preference and it was okay. It was okay to like Diet Coke more than Coke or Diet Pepsi and stating that you did, indeed, prefer Diet Coke was in no way a condemnation of anyone who chose to drink other kinds of sodas. It was a glorious time.
So with that in mind, here goes: I don’t care for the work of Neil Gaiman. It’s okay if you do, we can still be friends. I can see his appeal. I can see how his magical stories might enthrall people. However, his writing does nothing for me and, frankly, kind of bores me. read more.
So with that in mind, here goes: I don’t care for the work of Neil Gaiman. It’s okay if you do, we can still be friends. I can see his appeal. I can see how his magical stories might enthrall people. However, his writing does nothing for me and, frankly, kind of bores me. read more.