Showing posts with label tropper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tropper. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Books 46 & 47 of 2011's 64

47/64: Everything Changes by Tropper, 4/5 Stars
Entertained Me: High / Made Me Think: High

With the very first paragraph of this book I was captivated. Why? Because for the past few weeks (maybe even months) I've been waking up to sense an invisible form next to me in bed--a longing for a reality that simply isn't there. Here, I adapted the first paragraph to show you what I mean:
"I instinctively reach over for her, but it isn't her, of course, it's no one. There have been a few brief times when it was her. And yet, lately, whenever I wake up, my first, dazed instinct, before real life comes back into focus, is to assume that it's her in the bed beside me. I suppose that in my dreams, not the one or two that I can recall, but the millions that vanish into oblivion like flies when you've barely even begun to move your cupped, ready hand in their direction, in those dreams, she must be mine, over and over again. So there's always this vaguely troubling notion when I wake up like this, this sense that I've somehow been transported to an alternate universe where my life took a left instead of a right because of some seemingly insignificant yet cosmically crucial choice I made, about a girl or a kiss or a date or a job or which Starbucks I went to... something."
This book had 5 stars written all over it through the first few chapters. Its characters were slices of all the parts of my life. But then, I started to see--maybe to feel--myself creeping back into the dark (You know what I mean? I haven't shared many of those dark words with y'all yet, but they've been written). The last couple of years haven't been easy, but I'm not there anymore. The book was me. And because it's me and I'm not yet back to full steam, I can't give it 5 stars. So, I could see myself doing those things because I'd considered some pretty crazy things to get others to understand me. I had to recover from that while reading (I had a hard time putting it down. Finished it in 24 hours). Enough said. On to the end, which is probably an account to how things will work out for me someday, not literally, but in a great and immediate similar surprise as two people suddenly see eye to eye... as I wake up to find not the invisible form, but the real woman in bed next to me.

46/64: A Brave New World by Huxley, 2/5 Stars
Entertained Me: Med / Made Me Think: Med

It surprises me how the books that I enjoyed in my younger years do little for me now that I've grown older. Reading ABNW this time around felt disjointed. It failed to live up to the greatness that I remember. But, so go many things in life, right?

Book #36 = The Dead Town by Koontz, 2.5/5 Stars
Book #35 = Lost Souls by Koontz, 3/5 Stars
Book #34 = Dead and Alive by Koontz, 2/5 Stars
Book #33 = City of Night by Koontz, 3/5 Stars
Book #30 = The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls, 3.5/5 Stars
Book #29 = The Fisher King by LaGravenese, 2.5/5 Stars
Book #28 = The Passage by Justin Cronin, 2/5 Stars
Book #27 = I Hope They Have Beer in Hell by Tucker Max, 0/5 Stars
Book #26 = Diary of a Wimpy Kid, by Jeff Kinney, 3/5 Stars
Book #25 = Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by Rowling, 3/5 Stars
Book #24 = Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince by Rowling, 3/5 Stars
Book #23 = Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by Rowling, 4/5 Stars
Book #22 = Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by Rowling, 2/5 Stars
Book #21 = Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by Rowling, 3/5 Stars
Book #20 = Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by Rowling, 3/5 Stars
Book #19 = Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by Rowling, 3/5 Stars
Book #18 = For an Architecture of Reality by Michael Benedikt, 4/5 Stars
Book #17 = The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs, 2.5/5 Stars
Book #16 = Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis, 3/5 Stars
Book #15 = Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, 5/5 Stars
Book #14 = This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper, 4/5 Stars
Book #13 = After Dark by Haruki Murakami, 1.5/5 Stars
Book #12 = Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster, 3.5/5 Stars
Book #11 = Travels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster, 1/5 Stars
Book #10 = American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, 3/5 Stars
Book #09 = Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen, 4.5/5 Stars
Book #08 = The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson, 3/5 Stars
Book #07 = The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson, 5/5 Stars
Book #06 = What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Murakami, 4/5 Stars
Book #05 = Existentialism by Steven Earnshaw, 1/5 Stars
Book #04 = The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav, 1/5 Stars
Book #03 = The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, 5/5 Stars
Book #02 = The Zen of Social Media Marketing by Shama Kabani, 2/5 Stars
Book #01 = Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, 3/5 Stars

See 2010's list of 40 books.
See 2009's list of 53 books.
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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

In the words of Tropper...

I sometimes feel this way...
"You're out at a bar on a cold Friday night with your two best friends, feeling inferior and hopeless because one is the indisputable stud and the other is newly married and just along for nostalgia's sake, to bask in the utter irrelevance of it all. So one has nothing at stake and the other has nothing to prove and you're in the middle, with plenty at stake and everything to prove and no real prospects of success. It's been eight months since your last relationship and six months since you've had any kind of sex, and that was of the desperate, rebounding nature, and you're starting to feel invisible in the Big City, wishing you could go back home to your small town, where it was so much easier and the girls were so much more approachable, so much less jaded. Except that you don't come from a small town; you come from here, or, at best, a soulless suburb of here, and there's nowhere to go back to, so you're just going to have to soldier on, get over your fear of rejection, and find someone who will somehow recognize that thing in you, that thing you can't even recognize in yourself but you know is there, that will make you seem like a worthwhile investment, the thing that will somehow inspire a woman to take you home and exchange fluids and then stories and then secrets, in the hope of finding a love that will fill you both up to the point where you can stop looking for it."
- Jonathan Tropper, Everything Changes
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Monday, January 31, 2011

14/64: This Is Where I Leave You

This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper, 4/5 Stars
Entertained Me: High, Made Me Think: Mid

Definitely a "life gave me lemons" book, and maybe we get some good lemonade of it, but first we have to fondle the lemons, squeeze them, zest them for a few minutes... then stomp on them, squirt the juice in someone else's eye, cut a finger slicing them up, and bleed all over the counter top, the lemons, our shirts, and life. "Hold your finger up over your head, son, and it'll stop the bleeding." Tropper's style is great for quick reading. I laughed out loud several times in this book; also gasped a few. And, in a change from most of the books I've been reading lately--I truly loved the ending.

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Book #13 = After Dark by Haruki Murakami, 1.5/5 Stars
Book #12 = Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster, 3.5/5 Stars
Book #11 = Travels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster, 1/5 Stars
Book #10 = American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, 3/5 Stars
Book #09 = Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen, 4.5/5 Stars
Book #08 = The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson, 3/5 Stars
Book #07 = The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson, 5/5 Stars
Book #06 = What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Murakami, 4/5 Stars
Book #05 = Existentialism by Steven Earnshaw, 1/5 Stars
Book #04 = The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav, 1/5 Stars
Book #03 = The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, 5/5 Stars
Book #02 = The Zen of Social Media Marketing by Shama Kabani, 2/5 Stars
Book #01 = Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, 3/5 Stars
See 2010's list of 40 books...
See 2009's list of 53 books...
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