book reviews

Russian literature is a huge, icy black ocean. You hear people tell stories about it, in a casual, offhand way. ‘Oh yeah, I read War and Peace’ and everybody else in the room just shuts up.

More like Theodore Dreiser-bone. That was a witty quip to connote that he’s boring, and not some kind of reference to a rural raincoat.

Why is this book so wonderful? Without dripping rhapsodic or going into the deep dark recesses of cold hard literary deconstruction, let’s just say that the book somehow slips through the layers of razor-wire cynicism I’ve erected around the black hole where my emotions live.

Oh, the mixed-up, topsy turvy characters you meet in this endless succession of weird situations. How does our intrepid heroine overcome her series of trials? Mostly by virtue of not doing something even worse, such as setting herself on fire.

The harsh, joyless critic who lives inside me put down Huckleberry Finn and thought, ‘more like the NOT-adventures of Huckleberry Finn’

Is there any limit to the lessons we can learn from Gilmore Girls? I personally don’t think so.