Yearly Archives: 2010
Exit Finkler
Perhaps it’s appropriate that I finished The Finkler Question–a novel about a non-Jew wanting to assume a place among the Jews he knows–on Christmas day. After a busy morning of presents with the family, an afternoon of dinner preparations, and … Continue reading
Holiday Ex Machina
One of the comics series I’ve been meaning to read for some time has been Brian K. Vaughn and Tony Harris’s Ex Machina. This is an important one, and I feel a little guilty that it’s taken me so long … Continue reading
Questioning Finkler
Having put aside Infinite Jest, at least temporarily, I’ve picked up instead two other books: Sean Wilentz’s The Rise of American Democracy and Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question. I particularly wanted to read the latter for a few reasons. First, … Continue reading
Deferring Jest
I’m putting Infinite Jest on hold. I’m 200 pages into the novel, and it’s just not grabbing me on a gut level. I can appreciate what Wallace is doing, and at times I find the narrative fascinating. But I’ve found … Continue reading
Walk This Way
Having finished The Cookbook Collector, I’m turning back to Infinite Jest, determined to plow my way through. At the same time, I started rereading Kirkman’s The Walking Dead series. I had started it several years ago, soon after it first … Continue reading
Cookbook Collector Worth Collecting?
I finished Goodman’s new book, The Cookbook Collector, just the other day, and while overall I thought it was okay, it really didn’t hit me in a memorable way. Perhaps her earlier novels and story cycles are too much in … Continue reading
Thanksgiving Reading
A Thanksgiving message to all my friends, provided by the always incisive, and often ironic, Philip Roth in his Pulitzer Prize-winning American Pastoral: “[I]t was never but once a year that they were brought together anyway, and that was on … Continue reading
Goodman or Wallace?
I had planned on spending a good part of my Thanksgiving week doing some reading, and initially I had thought I would make some headway on David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. However, the more I get into this novel, the … Continue reading
No Jest
It’s been fourteen years, but I’ve finally decided to take on David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. I had gotten this behemoth novel when it first came out in 1996, while in grad school at Purdue, thinking that I would read … Continue reading
Tingling Spidey
At the same time that I’m slogging through Heylin’s biography, I’m also turning to several comics collections. Earlier I was catching up on Morrison’s Batman and Robin as well as other recent Batman volumes. Now it’s Spider-Man and the two-volume … Continue reading