Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth is so bad I have almost nothing to say about it (and so will tell you about my accidental thieving – but first…). Continue reading
Category Archives: American literature
The Good Earth: How I Accidentally Stole from the Public Library
Filed under American literature, Bestseller, Book Club, Prize Winner, Worst Books
Catcher in the Rye: The book my bookclub actually talked about
I re-read J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye for bookclub. It was a good choice for bookclub because a) it was easy to get copies of the book (in fact I read a .pdf version the day-of) and b) it invited sustained discussion (I’ll be the first to admit our bookclub has the tendancy to wander off into talk of breastfeeding and the lastest Justin T. photo-op). S. gave the book high reviews, as did most others (though L. didn’t like it one bit), but in the discussion we circled around how much of liking the book was because we thought we *should* like the book given it’s canonical status (and adolescent attachment for those who had read it in their teen years). Continue reading
Filed under American literature, Bestseller, Book Club, Fiction, Prize Winner
The Last Town on Earth: A Lengthy Post Worth Reading Because Trump Isn’t Mentioned
Thomas Mullen’s The Last Town on Earth opens 1918 in Washington state as the Spanish flu outbreak begins. Historical fiction, the novel imagines the lives of the citizens in the fictious Commonwealth after the town votes to ‘reverse’ quarantine: as no one in the town is yet sick, they vote to forbid entry or exit from the town and post guards to ensure the quarantine is followed. It closely follows the Worthy family, the patriarch of whom, Charles, is the mill owner and unelected leader of the town; the (adopted) son, Philip, is our protagonist. Continue reading
Filed under American literature, Book Club, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Prize Winner
Literary Vice 