Customer Comments

Almeda Roth has commented on (10) products.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Almeda Roth, September 8, 2011

I told my husband that I would turn the nightstand light off after ten more pages, and that was sixty pages ago. I can't stop reading this book, or shaking my head in total astonishment at the RIGHT-ON-NESS of it: the way Egan inhabits her characters' voices, captures the evolution of the American pop-cultural ethos from the early 1980s to today, and locates with great emotional precision the thin line between confused and crazy in a way that will make even the sanest person squirm with recognition. I'm blown away by the simple genius of the book's construction as a collection of chapters each told from a different character's point of view in a different time period, allowing the reader to assemble them into a cohesive whole. This book is funny, tragic, insightful, and absolutely BRILLS.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

report this comment

Life Work by Donald Hall

Almeda Roth, September 8, 2011

I tend to roll my eyes when reviewers say that a book is "a meditation on ________," but I also can't think of a phrase that suits this book better. Hall's Life Work is, yes, a meditation on the definition and significance of work, tracing its meaning through his family's agricultural roots to his own life's work as a poet. From the tools of work to its daily routines to the loss left in a life when work is taken away by illness or financial collapse, Hall's thoughts on his subject are associative, reflective, and ultimately ask the reader to question his or her own relationship to daily tasks and routines and whether work is a chore, as we often think of it, or actually one of life's truest pleasures.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

report this comment

The Artist of the Missing by Paul Lafarge

Almeda Roth, January 4, 2011

An amazing book of layered metaphors and stories within stories, The Artist of the Missing follows a lonely portrait artist named Frank on his odyssey through the dark and curious factories, prison cells, and late-night salons of an anonymous and myth-laden Every City. It's the first book in ages that I started reading again as soon as I finished.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

report this comment

Here Comes Another Lesson: Stories by Stephen Oconnor

Almeda Roth, October 27, 2010

Stephen O'Connor's short stories are peopled with lovesick minotaurs, atheist angels, war veterans and graduate students who seem to step surreally into the reader's brain, move things around, and retreat with a matter-of-fact wave to the world from which they came. The stories in this book will puzzle you, haunt you, and make you laugh out loud weeks later while you're stirring a pot of soup on the stove. Buy this book!

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

report this comment

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Almeda Roth, June 23, 2010

A captivating, elegaic novel about family and transcience and what it means to be at home, filled with startlingly exact and illuminating moments of prose. I wore my pen out underlining sentences.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(9 of 15 readers found this comment helpful)

report this comment