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STAN SMITH'S BOOK REVIEWS
MY PROMISE TO YOU: I will review EVERY SINGLE BOOK I READ THIS YEAR....um, starting in April. And pretty much continuing on past a year in to the next one. Or, really, all the books I read from now on.
These are either books people have sent or just happen to be in my rotation. If you have an advanced copy of your book, send it to (600 N. 36th St. Suite 330. Seattle, WA 98103-8699) and I'll probably review it.
THE RULES: The dates are based on when I finished a book, and they are all in real-time order. No skipping or adding stuff in later, or reviewing books I read a long time ago. I pledge to review every single book I read, no matter how pointless or embarrassing over the next year. All books are given a numerical grade/rating from One to Ten Stans, based on widely accepted international guidelines.
INTERNATIONAL "STAN-CLAD" BOOK REVIEW GUIDELINES (Also available in Esperanto)
10 Stans-Astonishingly good. Powerful. Beautiful. Will read it to my grandchildren, an absolute masterpiece.
9 Stans- Pretty damn great. Innovative, daring, honest. Totally in command of it's craft and intent. Just slightly below a true classic.
8 Stans- Has style, chops, verve, poise. There were a few glitches in tone or consistency, but this is still exceptional writing.
7 Stans- A variety of solid stuff that made me want to like it more than maybe I
really did. Needs some direction. Endearingly flawed. Still totally worth reading, and probably a better book than most.
6 Stans- I liked some of it okay. At least four or five good ideas. Still, a
lot of it was tiresome and I was sorta glad when it was over.
5 Stans- Harlen Coben, but without the subtlety or depth. Made me sleepy and suddenly nostalgic for James Frey.
4 Stans- Pointedly off. Bad idea, bad prose, bad binding. Bad.
3 Stans- Gave up in less than a chapter.
2 Stans- The sort of moldering tripe that makes you wish you were on an airplane reading the in-flight magazine.
1 Stan- Only one Stan! The Absolute Worst Book Ever Written! I threw this into the ocean, and it washed immediately back. A sea turtle ate it and it gave him the burning shits for two months.
8-24-10
Ablutions by Patrick deWitt 7.9 Stans
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I've said in other reviews that I could pretty much go the rest of my life without reading another novel set in a bar. And this one does have all the bar-book cliches: the surly bartender, the sad drunken teachers, the deteriorating regulars, the old lady that's really a man, the friendly homeless guy, the former child actor, the solo road trip. With all that said, I still really enjoyed it. The voice is rendered in a deadpan-poetic style to that manages to feel fresh. The details all feel authentic to the point of memoir. The utter emotional disconnect of regular drinking, the self-delusion, the giddy fatalism. It has a few odd tics and self-indulgences, but nothing that diminishes how well it captures the unspoken rules of bar culture. Other reviews have called this book "Bukowski Lite", which to me feels almost criminally lazy. It's nothing like Bukowski. If anything it felt like a gamier rendition of James Salter's lyric vignettes. There is a genuine brilliance to the scene at the rodeo, by far the best in the book, as well as an epic lyricism to the level of self-hatred that sort of behavior requires. Ugly in all the right ways.
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8-20-10
The Aderall Diaries by Stephen Elliot 0.0 Stans
8-16-10
How to Sell by Clancy Martin 7.0 Stans
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I really enjoyed the first two thirds of this look at the long con of jewelry sales. The writing is clean and brisk. There is a healthy comic undertone to the seediness and greed. The narrator is likeable in his self-delusion. Martin is very clever in the way he makes the narrator unreliable, but reliably so. He obviously knows this business, and each of these scams, from the inside. But the book never goes beyond a certain point of dissolution. The love story stalls, and then falls apart. The scenes begin to repeat. Motivations are never clarified, and then it just ends. |
8-15-10
The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen 5.8 Stans
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Franzen is smart and funny and these are mostly interesting and self-deprecating essays about his teen years and a very self-aware look at that time's lack of self-awareness. It's also pretty insular and at times a bit dull. See the Peanuts essay. The best, and truly affecting piece, is the one about selling his dead mother's home. Pretty uneven after that. |
8-8-10
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon 7.7 Stans
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Economic and stylishly written thriller that is more lit than thrill. Mostly, it's a meditation on the nature of identity written like a series of short stories. The background on the Hayden character was the best part of the book, really fascinating. Would have rated higher, but the end did feel a bit slight. |
8-2-10
Jernigan by David Gates 7.9 Stans
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This is a fantastically self-loathing book that fits firmly in Fred Exley's A Fan's Notes oeuvre. Very funny, very honest, very depressing. I am not one of those people who feels a narrator has to be likeable, and Jernigan is certainly not on most levels. But the way Gates is able to get inside his head is remarkable, making his behavior entirely understandable, if not easy to empathize with. This is a book well worth reading, particularly by other authors trying to get a better handle on realistic interiority. |
7-20-10
The Magic Christian by Terry Southern 5.6 Stans
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No doubt this was daring, and even subversive, when published in 1959. It's a book I've been meaning to read for many years, possibly put off by having yawned through the Peter Sellers version of the movie as a pre-teen. Nevertheless, the book has not aged well. Essentially one long and tedious joke, it attempts to lampoon the very wealthy through a series of gags that aren't particulalry funny. The characters are beyond cardboard, speaking in mannered language, every line a set up for a joke. "Consumer Society" is punctured with a very dull knife. At least it's not long. |
7-18-10
The Subject Steve by Sam Lipsyte 7.1 Stans
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This book feels a whole lot like it was written under the influence. If it was, it's amazing it's as coherent as it is. If not, it's a brilliant job by the author of creating that meta-world of being utterly zonked, re-arranging molecules in your own head, speaking faster than your mouth, concentrating on tiny details that would otherwise go ignored. It's a satire. A mess. Tons of great, clever lines. A good bit of self-indulgence. Definitely pretty original. And totally unafraid of offending you, boring you, alienating you. Ultimately the greatest flaws are that the characters almost don't exist. They are minimalist dialog vehicles. A book that reflects nicely the purposelessness of the culture whose balls it is euphorically busting. |
7-14-10
Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis 8.3 Stans
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Brilliant graphic novel about the turn of the century search for the foundations of mathematics and the search for certainty in a new system of logical thought. Bookended by a speech by Bertrand Russell, this book covers the period of Russell's childhood, through his ten year effort to produce Principia Mathematica, to his handing of the baton to Ludwig Wittgenstein. Throughout is a very accessible discussion of the divergent Aristotelian and Platonic schools, as well as the theories proposed by Frenge, Hilbert, Von Neumann, Godel, Peano, and Poincare. All of it beautifully told and far more compelling than it must sound from this paragraph. Is there an independent mathematical reality which can be known and utilized, or are the answers outside the scope of the limitations of the human brain? Time to bone up on set theory. |
7-11-10
Wilson by Daniel Clowes 7.0 Stans
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The usual hilarious depression and odd sense of foreboding from Dan Clowes. Wilson is a miserable character, completely unaware of the way he is perceived versus the reality of his interactions with people. This is handled very deftly, and there are almost as many laughs as winces as he says another horribly mean thing to a hapless stranger. |
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