Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey. Francis Orme lives in the Observatory Mansions with a menagerie of maladjusted and eccentrically fascinating characters. When he isn't working as a mannequin (in a wax museum and on the street—a man's gotta bring home the bacon somehow) he is putting together a museum of precious objects in the basement. I wonder why he keeps the museum a secret from everyone?

Generica by Will Ferguson. Finally a book deals with what would happen if a self-help book came out and it actually worked as advertised? According to Ferguson, obviously the apocalypse. This is a great book on the publishing industry as well as a caveat emptor for self-help book customers. The book is also sold with the title Happiness.



The Red Notebook: True Stories by Paul Auster. This is a book that answers the question "why do you write" beautifully. This was my first foray into Auster and it won't be my last. When you are held spellbound by the simple act of losing a dime in one place and finding another (the same one?) somewhere else; you know you are in the presence of a terrific writer.

The Voice Imitator by Thomas Bernhard. Like Auster's book (above), Bernhard's ability to hold you're attention with his stories (these being fiction) stands him amongst the likes of Bruno Schulz, Donald Barthelme and William Gass. The stories are short (a page), sometimes disturbing, sometimes sad. Really worth looking at.


Notable American Women by Ben Marcus. Hmmm. I don't know what to say about Ben Marcus or his book. I enjoyed it, it was bizarre and mentally painful enough to get through that I suspect it was good for me (in the way exercise is—or Buckley's Mixture). In a nutshell, a Fellini'esque view of a Matriarchal world and a slow-witted boy named Ben Marcus imprisoned for his 'seed'. Natch.


The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven by Rick Moody. There is no denying Moody is a great writer. I just have difficulty finding his stories consistantly interesting.Parts of his Demonology: Stories was quite amazing and then bam! I hit the Moody wall. This book, though, I read and found it not too bad, the stories were interesting and well told. I think I'll try Demonology again.


Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates. This woman never ceases to amaze me with how well she writes. I remember seeing her being trashed on a "reader's forum" because she wrote too much and now they were just sick of her. She ain't V.C. Andrews who continued to release new books well into the third year of her death. Oates can throw words with the best of them and with this disturbing little book she takes you into the foggy mind of a serial sex killer. Look into it.

Welcome to the book section. A mixture of reviews, beefs and lists. I considered separating them into topics (non-fiction, fiction, et al) but since that isn't how I read them I listed them as is. This year has been a good year for books. I'd been eagerly awaiting new books by Zadie Smith (Autograph Man), Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby), Dave Eggers (You Shall Know Our Velocity) and Dan Fante (Spitting Off Tall Buildings) and now that I've got them all and have finished reading them I can say that it was worth the wait (in gold). I was surprised to read that the critics were unsatisfied with Smith's book, I found the book more controlled than White Teeth which in my opinion had a poorly resolved ending. The critics have been a lot more friendly to Palahniuk whose book saw a return to the brilliance of his earlier works. Frankly I was disappointed with his last endeavor, Choke, which seemed to lack the balance between the 'facts' and story needed for his style of 'dangerous writing' to coalesce into a believable story. Suspension of belief is needed to enjoy any book, especially so for Chuck's, but a foundation of reality has to be fabricated for his work to shine and in this Choke failed. The reviews for Eggers is mixed and extreme; personally I'm enjoying the book even with the copy-editing mistakes. He is a good writer, there's no denying it. There are some really strong passages in this book that I happily reread a couple of times but in general it's not a masterpiece (and neither was A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, no matter who told you heard otherwise).

Enjoy,
Paul