Coffeespoons

Keeping track of my progress through Time's 100 Best Novels since 1923. This safely rules out Ulysses. (thank God.) Books in bold are those I've read. Books with links are those with reviews. The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren American Pastoral - Philip Roth An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser Animal Farm - George Orwell Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume The Assistant - Bernard Malamud At Swim-Two-Birds - Flann O'Brien Atonement - Ian McEwan Beloved - Toni Morrison The Berlin Stories - Christopher Isherwood The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder Call It Sleep - Henry Roth Catch-22 - Joseph Heller The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger...

Read: 2/5/09 2/5 stars Another comedy that I don't understand. And no, this book has nothing to do with the Michael Keaton movie of the same title. "White Noise" comes highly recommended. It won the US National Book Award in 1985 and is on the Time 100 Best Novels list. But I believe I've read enough of critically-acclaimed books to know that not all of them are to my taste or even what I would consider good reads. Nevertheless, I persist in my plan of reading these critics' favorites because I would like to decide for myself. My decision on this one is that I am annoyed. White Noise is supposed to be a book of the times, a book that chronicles the state of a nation. So, yes, DeLillo satirizes American consumerism and the ubiquity of media in this post-modern novel. But I seriously never liked post-modernism overly intellectualized, especially when it doesn't tries to be witty but fails horribly. Among the book's characters are a professor who's a l...

Read: 1/22/09 You know how when you read a book, you suddenly stop in the middle, put the book down and stare off into the distance because you're just so struck by the beauty and immensity of what you read? This book had a lot of those moments for me. Like many good novels, the story of this Pulitzer Prize winner can be summarized in just one short paragraph. However, it's the explanation of why and how it happened, told in the most lyrical manner, that captured me. This book is peopled with women, decidedly strange but beautiful for their loss and their understanding of transcience. And I happen to be big on pained yet dignified and stalwart women. Definitely not a fast read, but a highly worthwhile one. 5/5 stars