Warning: Extreme Silly Grin Inducing!
Mar. 8th, 2009 03:04 amI feel like the Grinch on Christmas morning. My heart just grew three sizes, swear to god. (via
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( One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey )
I know This Much is True, Wally Lamb
I am so glad I picked this up. The story of the twin brother of the paranoid schizophrenic trying to heal his own anger issues while somehow saving his brother sounds exactly like the kind of Oprah’s Book Club thing I would avoid, but it is beautiful. It ends up all wound up with issues of race in ways I didn’t expect, and it also ends up all wound up in family histories and lies and secrets, which hit me hard. It reminds me ever so vaguely of the things I like best about Faulker, in fact. In any case, it is exactly as sad as you knew it would be- because while Dominic, our narrator, is still capable of healing and creating a life for himself, there is no salvation for Thomas. Some bits might tend toward the overwrought, but I really found this beautiful.
Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
This is something else. Is it a murder mystery? Historical fiction? An apocalypse allegory? A theology musing? A semiotics treatise? Damned if I know. Maybe one day I’ll be smart enough to understand this book; in the meantime, I’m just in awe. Eco plays with metatextuality in his, what, four different framing narratives. William of Baskerville is an amalgam of Occam and Holmes, and works beautifully as such. He is the mouthpiece for fascinating speculation on knowledge, what we can know, how to interpret signs, whether truth can be found. I have no words for the awesomeness of this book.