Ian started at Avid in June of 2019, just short of celebrating his 20th year in Athens. He spent most of the last 2 decades tending hipster bars and playing loud music (some folks would say you could swap those adjectives). In fact, he’s often spotted reading in dark, noisy bars. Most of his free time is spent nose-in-book, playing old video games or rewatching classic talkie films like Midnight Madness and Cabin Boy.
In my opinion, it's very rare to see the STORY-WITHIN-A-STORY-WITHIN-A-STORY format pulled off as gracefully as Mr. O'Brien did here. And to top it off, it's a brilliant and sneaky comedy. So many re-readable character interactions... Loved it.
This book reads like a blueprint for the best of the dirtiest and darkest early Western films. It's all here: The questionable and faulty hero. The local cowards and drunks. Miners on the verge of strike. Multiple showdowns. The sacrifices of/for "Family" and/or "Friends". Way better than the movies...
Markson takes us into the mind of either A) someone suffering the trials of dementia, or B) the last person on Earth. Both scenarios worked for me. It's a highly entertaining view into cabin fever of the human brain.
Who/what were the Visceral Realists? Though bookended by the protagonist's tale of curiosity, the meat of this book sandwich is an amassment of varying opinions on its two founders that spans three decades and four continents. It reads like journalistic nonfiction which forms a bond between reader and aforementioned truth seeker. Good eats!
Wow... I'm still processing this one. It's sensory overload in three acts. ACT ONE: a bit of Primer for what's to come. ACT TWO: a brutal nightmare-journal documenting multiple creative deaths of our narrator. ACT THREE: a rollercoaster dia/monologue reminiscent of Godard's 'Weekend' or 'Contempt'. A discussion-worthy ending to boot!
In theory, there's nothing funny about war, feverously managing a trading post in the middle of the jungle, going mad working on an automobile assembly line OR scraping away a living as a broke doctor in the slums, but this snarky protagonist makes it all so in this adventure.
Here are four unique character studies, each one longer than the previous. I felt an emotional attachment for all four of the subjects which grew in intensity from story to story, so look forward to reading more Sebald in search of that fifth story or/and character.
The tale of a once-thriving ghost town told by its 'surviving' ghosts. Each apparition's narration slightly overlaps to cofabricate a shuffled timeline and scattered outcome. I tossed it into my 'Highly Re-readable' bucket.
A few glimpses and side-glimpses of a side-world in which born-into castes predetermine each character's role, but not their fate. Almost every piece of the chessboard's story is told. Loveded it.
Though it was his 'Forty Stories' collection that gatewayed my obsession with D.B., it was the story 'The Balloon' (pg. 46) that would have been all I need to get hooked. These are Death Stars™ served up as Gobstoppers™. Please don't sue me.
A must-read-and-reread for kids AND adults. A permanent resident of TopTenTerritory. Don't be fooled by the simplistic cartoony look of the Bone cousins. Both the artwork and story grow darker and more complex as the adventure advances. And hilarious? Yes, it's hilarious. "Out From Boneville" is the first collection in the series.