Review: The Year of Magical Thinking

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
227 pages
published by Vintage

It's hard not to like Didion's writing style. It's lyrical and thoughtful. Cyclical yet straightforward. And especially with this book, you just want to give her a hug. Her ruminations on her husband's death border on the cliche but she gives grief new literary life with her obsessive excavation of her memories of the night her husband died.

Review: Hot Pink by Adam Levin

Hot Pink by Adam Levin
256 pages
published by McSweeney's

I haven't read Levin's The Instructions yet but it's on my bookshelf and after reading through a galley of his first story collection, Hot Pink, I'm eager to dive into His Big Book. Though the influence of George Saunders comes through from time to time, Levin's stories are something else entirely. Violence is commonplace. Love is sincere but confusing and misguided. And of course they're all funny.

Review: Habibi by Craig Thompson

Habibi by Craig Thompson
672 pages
published by Pantheon

Brutal and beautiful. The sprawling narrative is a tad overwhelming but forgivably so. But seriously, the artwork is pretty astounding. Thompson is mostly known for his book of equal heft, Blankets, which is a great graphic novel in its own right but Habibi is clearly his most mature and imaginative work to date.

Coming of Age in Hollywood

A Way of Life, Like Any Other by Darcy O'Brien
155 pages
published by New York Review of Books (Classics)

The charm of this slim book comes almost entirely from the narrator. He is young, intelligent, brash, observant, funny and a son of Hollywood.

I enjoyed the novel all the way through but the last few chapters is what did it for me. It is essentially a coming-of-age story and O'Brien gives us an ending that is both open ended and undeniably satisfying.

NYRB Classics rock.

By All Accounts I Should Love Philip Roth

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
274 pages
published by Random House

I've never really understood why I don't like Philip Roth. It seems that I would. But I've read American Pastoral and most recently Portnoy's Complaint and I'm still luke-warm about him. I guess I was expecting to enjoy him because of his storied neuroticism but maybe I've become tired of that dance.

Roth has great moments but I feel they are few and far between. This novel is sexually outrageous and sometimes funny but ultimately forgettable.

Andrew Bird, NORMAN soundtrack

Listen to the new score by Andrew Bird for the film NORMAN on his Facebook.

Tomas Transtromer Wins Nobel, Saves World From Total Destruction

The Swedish poet, Tomas Transtromer (pictured above) just won the Nobel prize for literature. And no one in America has ever heard of him. I can poke fun at him because I'm half Swedish. It's okay. We're cool. Me and Tomas are cool.