Reademption Literature

I was curious about Will Self as an author since I've seen numerous copies of his books around, and I found the premise of most of his novels to be both strange and promising. I originally began reading Great Apes  last year but found myself not in the mood for it at all, so I sadly had to put it aside. I finally got around to start reading his anthologies first, and Grey Area , I suppose, was a good place to start as any. Comprised of nine tales, this collection was an incredibly odd mix of the bizarrely mundane, the seemingly sinister, and the unintentionally comedic. Self' prose is quite an extraordinary feat of imagination and discipline; a breadth of ramblings that are far too technical and dry to be ever deemed as any kind of literary eloquence.  Frankly, I'm not even sure I wholly enjoyed the experience of reading this book. I think there were times I was too baffled by the style and command of his language and descriptions to ever just connect with a stor...

I have no obvious vices like smoking or drinking but this year, there were two books so far which had compelled me to indulge in these things. Upon finishing  Patrick Suskind's  Perfume: The Story of a Murderer two months ago , I immediately went to the nearest convenience store and bought a single cigarette stick to corrupt my lungs with; even just for that night because the reading experience was quite exceptional and I needed the taste of nicotine in my mouth to preserve it somehow. Now, as I write this review, I suddenly had this overpowering craving to  drink booze, and vodka, I find, has always had a soothing effect on me which was exactly what I needed to suckle on once I did finish the end of this novel. I'm drinking it right now as I type. "The story is always about someone, a man or woman, who didn't seem to fit into the world and always shocked people by misbehaving. There is the rebel who tries to destroy the social order and the follower who tri...

No other book is as infectiously humorous and as enjoyably absurd as A Confederacy of Dunces . I would like to have met its author, John Kennedy Toole, someday, if it wasn't for the misfortune of his suicide eleven years prior to the publication of this cult classic-turned-mainstream sensation. I think this is the third Pulitzer award-winning novel that I have read since Middlesex and The Orphan Master's Son , and so far the streak of such critically-acclaimed pieces has yet to let me down. It took me a whole week to finish this book only because I had X-Men comics books squeezed in to read and review in between, but if they weren't there, I can honestly say that I would've finished Toole's book in just two days because even the grimy parts are so riveting. This was a gripping tale akin to superb situational comedies in television, composed of an ensemble of not-always-likable characters who misunderstand the intentions and needs of others including their own...