brief book reviews

this is an attempt to articulate my thoughts on some recently read books without pitching formal reviews to venues or deciding on some star-rating like on goodreads. i've spent a lot of time thinking about the role of reviews in 'the online writing community', the centralizing nature of avenues like goodreads, and the 'pointless frustration' of 'submitting' book reviews to places for publication. i want to write a blog post sometime about my feelings on how the internet has changed and what it means for things like promotional work, hype, engaging with readers, etc. but for now i'm just going to use this blog to write reviews, at least for the time being. i like feeling like i have the freedom to write my honest thoughts without feeling like negative or neutral ideas are inherently unwelcome because of the idea that the review should be about elevating/promoting a book/author. it also allows me, having written the stuff below already, to make connections between multiple books, and allows me to write reviews for older books as well as newer books in a way that's more satisfying than adding content to the goodreads database.

here are the 3 books i most recently read and my thoughts:

Faceless in Nippon by Dale Brett (Expat Press): I 'met' dale online through neutral spaces i think, or maybe just on twitter. we talked about shoegaze, which is a shared interest, and we talked about the idea of writing prose in a way that reads like how shoegaze sounds, which i haven't since thought too deeply about, but which is something dale says he's tried to do in a recently released chapbook/zine thing, which i haven't read. i bought Faceless based on kind of being friendly with dale online and some excerpts i read online (i think i only read one excerpt out of what seems like maybe 5-7 that exist online, which feels like a lot of excerpts). i like a lot of the book and read it pretty quickly. i read it during times when i don't normally read, which i've come to understand means i'm enjoying the book more than average, because of how structured my days are. the chapters are very short and there is a general narrative arc with some character-based subplots. i think it could have benefited from some editing (both copyediting and from a larger cutting/keeping/sequencing perspective) - the chapters vacillate between present and past tense, and there are some redundant passages (nearly identical ruminations on rejecting the mortgage/family/suburb life in the beginning and toward the end) and some passages that stifle the flow of the narrative. but that latter part is probably a personally negative thing, as i don't get much from dale's main aesthetic focus of cramming a weird adjective into every noun phrase to describe some setting, but people seem to respond to it online, so whatever. these are front-loaded in the book and I mostly skimmed them when they came about later on. related, there are experiences referenced in the book - going to punk clubs, seeing live music, etc etc. - which don't get any space in the narrative, which is a shame because i think they'd make for really great content with dale's voice/perspective. i think the biggest strengths of the book were the clear and open narratives revolving around the protagonist's love interest and other expat friend, but these sections are in the minority. i think the friend gets like 2 chapters and the girlfriend gets maybe 4. the scenes about riding bikes around and drinking beer, fucking around, feeling lonely but together - these appealed to me, and they really tied together, by the end, what i thought was great about it, which is that it's ultimately a novel about the experience of trying to be an expat - the romantic arc of living somewhere new and, eventually, getting over it. i think this is what makes the book unique, and it's something that i feel we can only really get in indie lit, as opposed to making it more specifically about the relationships between lovers and instead between a person and a place. i also liked the way that dale plays with his power, as an author/narrator, in making shit up. there's a chapter about a strange food/beverage that was really surreal, enticing, confounding, and interesting. the way that he wrote about it from an emotional point of view, and the ambiguous way he described it, made me google it after reading that chapter, but it doesn't exist, which impressed me. i thought this was a powerful move and could warrant a larger critical analysis of this chapter, and others that were similar. it was obvious that he had fun writing some parts of the book, and felt serious during others, which something something something range of styles and emotions from a literary perspective. so, overall, i think it could have been a great book, but as it exists it is a very good book. i could see dale's next book being a great book, especially if he gets more comfortable with cutting the fat. it feels like a debut indie album, where the melodic hooks and guitar sound outweigh the sprawling tracklist and weird production choices. stupid comparison but whatever. but it makes sense, since it's his debut indie book.

Breaking and Entering by Joy Williams (Vintage Classics): Bought some books by Joy Williams based on a tweet by Tao Lin saying that she was one of his most-read authors (and pictures of him wearing a cool purple joy williams tshirt). I had no other expectation in going in, but i ended up thoroughly enjoying it. I can see where she would have influenced his kmart realist/alt lit style in some ways, but her style is in some ways more complex and vague than his earlier work, and in this one especially, i got a lot of, like, pynchon/robbins/general 80's-style 'kooky character'-based dialogue, which i didn't expect. i was most moved by the emphasis on strange details and evocative turns of phrase. i felt like characters were never really 'introduced' and they faded in and out, which, combined with the section-based jumps in time, made it very dreamlike, or like i had skipped a page at times. in this way though, it felt uniquely 'challenging' as a novel-reading experience similar to when i first read thomas bernhard. and speaking of which, i assume he was/is an influence, especially in the way that some 'insane' characters end up monologuing/dialoguing throughout the book, to sort of, just, explore, i think, their madness and communicate it in a provocative way. however, in a way that doesn't seem to exist anymore in indie/alt lit, there are, like, 'twists' and 'reveals' and 'life or death' stakes, especially toward the end. it also felt like there was a good deal of symbolism that could be analyzed if i felt compelled to, but i don't, so i won't. in this way i see it sort of as a bridge between 'typical' big press novels and 'atypical' indie novels. the cover of this edition is, in my opinion, atrocious. it looks like a shitty beach read book for a book club. i enjoyed thinking about its previous owner buying it for that purpose and thinking "what the fuck" maybe 3 chapters in. this is her 3rd novel. i'm excited to read the novels that came before and after this to get a sense of her arc as a writer, and to read 99 stories of God which mike andrelczyk recommended to me and i bought based on some pictures he sent.

Supremecist by David Shapiro (Tyrant Books): Read this really quickly. The pages are really thick, photo-glossy, because of the many photographs. and the chapters are short. i didn't know what to expect going in at all, but ended up really enjoying it. it's very narrative-driven with kind of cliche plot points and the dialogue is often incredibly artificial, like from gilmore girls or an Aaron Sorkin show/movie, which i think is intentional, and i think makes it feel more like a movie. this sounds bad on rereading but i thought it worked fine. like, i could see it being a good little movie. i liked the inclusion of the photographs and the design, an obvious (but good, still) commentary like in the book, on supreme, the brand. and i liked the topic, the 'purpose' of the book is good, concise, clear, unique. i liked the strong characterization of the characters, the narrator, the travel partner, the other people they talk to. it's mostly set in japan, which paired nicely wit Faceless, seeing similar but different articulations of the same kind of things, especially the junk food - i laughed at how much 7/11 beef on a stick the narrator eats. laughed at some other lines and dialogue, the absurdity that he leans into a lot. i felt like the ending was good. i remember telling jessica it was "sweet" how it ended, like, endearing in a way. the artificality of the dialogue is probably its only real 'problem,' and some of it feels shoehorned in, and isn't as good as the bleak little scenes, eg. narrator falling asleep in a running bath in a hotel and then doing express checkout.

ok

trying to think of what else i read recently, running out of energy to write more of these right now. might just start here and continue this in the future, not retroactively write about any other books i read in the recent past. future posts will be about the below books, maybe.

i'm currently reading:
War on X-Mas by Alan Good
Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett
Frowns Need Friends Too by Sam Pink
The Collected Works volume 1 by Scott McClanahan
Imaginary Museums by Nicolette Polek
The Sellout by Paul Beatty

i'm reading them all sort of randomly when out walking the dogs or before bed or sometimes in the afternoon. i also got some books on plant and insect identification, i wanna spend more time with those, too. another book i bought used, on flower identification, is falling apart, the binding has turned to yellow dust. i might cut out some of the nicer looking flowers and use them for an art project with my toddler.