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Jul. 18th, 2008 08:46 amI ran out of library books the other day and was scanning the gigantic piles of books my room for something to read. These two won the lottery! (If you can count being dragged to New York, shoved into bags, tugged out on the subway, propped up in front of plates of food, and so on as 'winning' for a book. Perhaps it is more like losing! Someone clearly needs to make a 'Brave Little Toaster'-style movie about books to convince us all that what books really want is to be loved and take away our feelings about abusing them. Except without the traumatic junkyard scene.
. . . Anyways.)
Steven Millhauser's Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-195 by Jeffrey Cartwright (yes, that is all part of the title) was a book that my dad gave to me and told me to read when I was in my early teens. It made a major impact, and also freaked me the hell out - it's one of those books that, when rereading, I kept stumbling across passages that I knew, that stuck with me out of context. Now that I have reread it, I can safely say that yes, it still has the capacity to freak me the hell out, in the best of ways. As the title probably suggests, it's a fictional biography of a brilliant novelist who died at the age of eleven after completing his Life's Work, written by his constant companion Jeffrey, for whom the biography is his Life's Work. This is not a book about cute little precocious children. It's a book about obsession, and twisting real life to suit the tropes of fiction, and how kids can be scary. And also about cartoons. It's a funny book, also, and much of the humor verges on the black. Highly recommended; not, however, highly recommended to those who might be sensitive to the macabre deaths of several cute precocious children.
In the process of finishing that, I had in fact acquired some library books, but I decided to read Harry Kemelman's Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry anyways, because I had bought it about a year ago out of gleeful hilarity at the concept of a Rabbi Detective and it was languishing around my room unread. Sadly, despite the fun of the concept, I kind of thought Rabbi Small ( was an asshole. )
So, no more Rabbi Small for me, I think. What about you guys? Any books you've read recently that you've loved in concept but hated in practice?
. . . Anyways.)
Steven Millhauser's Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-195 by Jeffrey Cartwright (yes, that is all part of the title) was a book that my dad gave to me and told me to read when I was in my early teens. It made a major impact, and also freaked me the hell out - it's one of those books that, when rereading, I kept stumbling across passages that I knew, that stuck with me out of context. Now that I have reread it, I can safely say that yes, it still has the capacity to freak me the hell out, in the best of ways. As the title probably suggests, it's a fictional biography of a brilliant novelist who died at the age of eleven after completing his Life's Work, written by his constant companion Jeffrey, for whom the biography is his Life's Work. This is not a book about cute little precocious children. It's a book about obsession, and twisting real life to suit the tropes of fiction, and how kids can be scary. And also about cartoons. It's a funny book, also, and much of the humor verges on the black. Highly recommended; not, however, highly recommended to those who might be sensitive to the macabre deaths of several cute precocious children.
In the process of finishing that, I had in fact acquired some library books, but I decided to read Harry Kemelman's Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry anyways, because I had bought it about a year ago out of gleeful hilarity at the concept of a Rabbi Detective and it was languishing around my room unread. Sadly, despite the fun of the concept, I kind of thought Rabbi Small ( was an asshole. )
So, no more Rabbi Small for me, I think. What about you guys? Any books you've read recently that you've loved in concept but hated in practice?
