Richard Tull and Gwyn Barry: friends/enemies since university; both writers; the first an unsuccessful, unreadable experimental novelist, the second a bland, populist millionaire. Perhaps, given this is an Amis book, it is inevitable that Tull realizes what he must do: “a literary endeavor, a quest, an exaltation–one to which he could sternly commit all his passion and his power. He was going to fuck Gwyn up.” And so it begins. (more…)
26th September, 2009 - Posted by MashPotato - No Comments
I swear, some more art or game-related posts are coming up soon (a short preview: PAWS still chugging along, some paintings being worked on) But for now, more bookish filler!
This may surprise anyone whose only exposure to me has been through my generally art-related (and/or ditzy posts) on internet forums–not to mention, this blog–but my background is science. For true! An Hon. BSc and everything ;) And from my time at university, where I dabbled in areas from neuroanatomy to insect biology, it became easy not only to lose the forest for the trees, but to lose the trees for leaf spiracles. Things have a way of getting dreary. Sometimes, even now, I wonder how I ended up there… but Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything reminded me :) (more…)
1st August, 2009 - Posted by MashPotato - 3 Comments
Toru Okada is a young man in Japan with a wife and home but unsure of his place in life Soon after he leaves his job to discover what he really wants, his cat disappears, then his wife… and to find them, Okada must search at the bottom of a deep well. OF HIS MIND.
Well, not exactly, but close enough ;)
(more…)
23rd June, 2009 - Posted by MashPotato - No Comments
Slowly but surely, I’ll catch up with posting ;)
A sculptor who seeks to create minatures so small they are invisible; a tower so tall that it extends into heaven, and takes generations to climb; a husband suddenly overcome by the abstractness of words. Just a few of the stories in Steven Millhauser’s latest short story collection, Dangerous Laughter. (more…)
24th May, 2009 - Posted by MashPotato - No Comments
Nicholas Nickleby is a young gentleman of “high spirit”, who tries to make his fortune against the odds of poverty, a rich uncle who plots against him, characters who harass his family, and the general foibles which come across his way.
I’m enough of a Dickens fan that I like Dickens even when I’m not liking Dickens, if you get what I mean ;) Nicholas Nickleby is a example of that. (more…)
19th April, 2009 - Posted by MashPotato - No Comments
Imagine a book written about a book written about a non-existant documentary filmed about a house… yep, this is House of Leaves ;) (more…)
27th February, 2009 - Posted by MashPotato - No Comments
I’ve never really been “into” zombies, so while I was interested in the sound of this book, I didn’t really expect too much… I was pleasantly blindsided by the awesomeness :D (more…)
14th February, 2009 - Posted by MashPotato - 2 Comments
I gave fair warning a few weeks ago that I will write my oft-rambling and seldom-insightful thoughts on books I’ve just read, and the first one’s a doozy: Infinite Jest ;). A monster of a book at 1079 pages, it is at times daunting to read, and even difficult to describe. Sure, I could tell you that it’s about a young tennis star-in-the-making at a prestigious tennis academy beginning to mentally unravel; that it’s about a counselor at halfway house for recovering drug addicts wanting more than anything to stay clean; that it’s about a film so entertaining that anyone who sees it becomes fatally addicted to it; that it’s about the groups who want that film for their own purposes, including a militant Quebec separatist group of wheelchair-bound assassins. I could say that the book’s about all that, and, somehow, how they all connect, but Infinite Jest is not so much about the story as it is the telling of the story. (more…)
7th February, 2009 - Posted by MashPotato - No Comments
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