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Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Rachael P.:
Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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Customer Comments
Erin Tuzuner has commented on (65) products
300 Arguments Essays
by
Sarah Manguso
Erin Tuzuner
, February 27, 2018
If you got an Oscar Wilde impersonator high and had them write fortune cookies, they might sound like these. Some profundity, some insipid life stuff collecting like algae blooms on the slick surface of a dream.
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The Hazel Wood
by
Melissa Albert
Erin Tuzuner
, February 27, 2018
The acrobatic meta narration of fairy tales in contrast with modern New York hipster teenagers has its moments ... of charm, of eye rolling earnest name dropping of whatever band, book, contemporary touchstone while meandering the forests of an AI generating familial road story with murderous ideations of the collective unconscious.
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House of Impossible Beauties
by
Joseph Cassara
Erin Tuzuner
, February 27, 2018
I feel this is a book for straight people who have never seen/heard of Paris is Burning. The baby gays coming up on RuPaul's Drag Race who speak exclusively in "gagged, tea, shade" should definitely give this a perusal, but as many novels inhabiting the nascent AIDs ruination of New York, this feels very incomplete.
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Mrs Caliban
by
Rachel Ingalls and Rivka Galchen
Erin Tuzuner
, February 06, 2018
A truly weird novella, stretching a fantastic short story into the realm of almost a novel, but still retaining its bizarre phantasmagorical mist. Acidic humour, LSD in the suburbs banality in a shotgun pellet burst into your chest. This tiny weirdo emerges from the depths fortutiously with the release of "Shape of Water" (totally and categorically unrelated) to forever remind us that villains are we, hairless bipeds with charming vocabularies and endless infatuation with our supposed magnificience on the cosmos and the food chain. Is there anything more monstrous than the suburbs? The dark humour cracking like fine china under the weight of expectations both banal and ordained by the convention of wedded bliss.
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Trust No Aunty
by
Maria Qamar
Erin Tuzuner
, February 06, 2018
Trust No Aunty has it all: recipes, advice, gorgeous and hilarious illustrations. This how-to-guide navigates the East meets West dynamics with a 21st century and feminist edge.
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The Pisces
by
Melissa Broder
Erin Tuzuner
, February 06, 2018
An astringently mordant glimpse of obsessions attempting to fill the widening, endless holes of manufactured desire with ... a merman. Bleakly, ridiculously, hilariously illustrating selfcare culture, heteronormative mating rituals for less youthful females, academia, online dating - this is a beach read for someone who may or may not casually consume pharmaceuticals not prescribed to them, or indulge in mild kleptomania, or for those looking for something in between masturbatory naps stretching the shadows marking time of a passing afternoon.
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The Perfect Nanny
by
Leila Slimani
Erin Tuzuner
, February 06, 2018
There's not an analogue for toxic masculinity; more the insidious expansive mist of expectation for women. Emotional labor hardly claws the surface of beading blood. This incisive character study leaves "why" and tiny bodies in its wake.
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We Cant Help It If Were from Florida New Stories from a Sinking Peninsula
by
Shane Hinton
Erin Tuzuner
, February 06, 2018
Split and briny, oysters and hearts. Few places inspire environment as character like Florida. Sure New York proliferates the good schools and manners of the urbane world traveler mired in Salinger forsaken dialogue mining for a heart of substance and a line of gin soaked wit. Florida is the expanse of divorced parents, rehab bound gagged and discarded, childhood stretched and bent like gum in summer. This collection was truly excellent; young voices that I hope will become smokier, louder, and a bit less weary.
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Bonfire
by
Krysten Ritter
Erin Tuzuner
, November 25, 2017
I really wanted this in audio, read by the author, but the wait was unbearable enough so I just READ it in my approximation of her voice. It's a face paced slow burn (curse the easy and obvious fire related adjectives, but they are there). You'll finish quickly, mesmerized at the pace and unraveling of a decades old mystery brought back into focus. Enjoy!
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Goodbye Vitamin
by
Rachel Khong
Erin Tuzuner
, November 25, 2017
An exquisitely arranged life of trivia, heartache, loss, and joy swirling through an open window in a fast car on an empty highway.
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Arbitrary Stupid Goal
by
Tamara Shopsin
Erin Tuzuner
, November 25, 2017
A gorgeous and affecting tribute to a New York that is no longer. A memoir of a grease smudged fantastical chaos-riddled hole in the wall lovingly sketched by a lifer.
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Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
by
Roberto Aguirre Sacasa, Robert Hack
Erin Tuzuner
, November 25, 2017
Satan serving teenage hijinx, with compelling stories and dark imagery.
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Get Your Sh*t Together
by
Sarah Knight
Erin Tuzuner
, November 25, 2017
No bullshit coping mechanisms masquerading as snarky advice.
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Young Jane Young
by
Gabrielle Zevin
Erin Tuzuner
, November 25, 2017
Witty, insightful beach read highlighting the patriarchy, slut-shaming, and identity.
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La Belle Sauvage: Book of Dust 1
by
Philip Pullman
Erin Tuzuner
, November 25, 2017
The wait was brutal, the payoff was glorious, and the thrill of ANOTHER one looming in hopefully the not so near future...
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Twin Peaks The Final Dossier
by
Mark Frost
Erin Tuzuner
, November 25, 2017
Far more enjoyable than the previous and obvious tie-in with the "did we REALLY need this" third season, this is a gently closing of the red curtains for both the Black Lodge and the show.
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My Favorite Thing Is Monsters
by
Emil Ferris
Erin Tuzuner
, November 25, 2017
An utterly gorgeous punch to the throat. The turbulence of the sixties refracted through the Holocaust, horror comix, and the grotesquerie of adolescence are all beautifully rendered through exquisite illustration and sophisticated storytelling.
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My Best Friends Exorcism
by
Grady Hendrix
Erin Tuzuner
, November 25, 2017
Rather than the comparisons that are being made between this and other (better?) books, I'd settle on the author not being sure what he wanted either and tried to make this several things instead of sticking with one goodish thing. The almost supernatural rupture during adolescence, the ruination of friendships as we rend our flesh and burst forth as less a fully formed adult and more a gelatinous and cruel putty setting as age hardens us like clay.
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Heather, the Totality
by
Matthew Weiner
Erin Tuzuner
, November 25, 2017
Both economical and philosophical, Weiner's literary debut (though I will admit I find Mad Men to be a Great American Novel) converges like the infamous freshman thought experiment with two colliding trains. The lingering unease after you close the book is reason enough to pick it up and endure it all over again.
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Meddling Kids
by
Edgar Cantero
Erin Tuzuner
, August 16, 2017
Pastiche and nostalgia riding an abandoned miner cart into the darkness. You know the premise and the legally different but not really distinction in this homage(?) to a gang of young detectives and their dog of yesteryear. While there is some fun to be had, the winking nudge infinity loop does grow weary. The explosive reveal is much like an actual firework; build-up, noise, and then a puff of smoke.
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Make Trouble
by
John Waters
Erin Tuzuner
, July 29, 2017
The size, length, and charming illustrations make this a must have physical object for your office or home library. It's a wonderful reminder that being strange and working hard for yourself can ensure a unique sort of freedom. John Waters has made a career out of storytelling. His stand-up, his novels, and of course, his films, have a manic glee of obsession riding shotgun with structured anarchy. He is the best kind of famous, best kind of celebrity.
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Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
by
Ada Calhoun
Erin Tuzuner
, July 29, 2017
A less politicized Rebecca Solnit, this deceptively dense collection ranges from poet who died almost 1,000 years ago to Taylor Swift. It's all over the place in the best possible way, because that's what love allows.
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All I Want to Do Is Live
by
Trace Ramsey
Erin Tuzuner
, July 29, 2017
Personal and affecting prose stripping meat off the bone and asking you to stay a little longer.
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White Fur
by
Jardine Libaire
Erin Tuzuner
, July 29, 2017
"Just as other ideas lately have shed onion skins to reveal a wet heart..." The writing is elegiac, smoke rings around a solidly told story of young lust, expectation, and the inevitable.
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Witches Sluts Feminists Conjuring the Sex Positive
by
Kristen Sollee
Erin Tuzuner
, July 29, 2017
An engaging intellectual analysis of the concurrence of feminism, witchcraft as practice, lance, and commerce, and potency of language hovering in the periphery of sex positivity.
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(2 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
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All the Lives I Want
by
Alana Massey
Erin Tuzuner
, July 29, 2017
The elegant phrasing and the focused examination of misogyny glittering like blood in the sand. The intersection of highbrow, lowbrow, and nobrow celebrities of literature and popular music through the lens of Massey's experiences.
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Yawn: Adventures in Boredom
by
Mary Mann
Erin Tuzuner
, July 29, 2017
A superficial glance of the swirling abyss above, below, and contained within the soporific sphere of the human mind that causes it to dull and glisten with interest and attention.
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Amp'd
by
Ken Pisani
Erin Tuzuner
, April 03, 2017
Comedy comes from darkness, so when people use "darkly funny" I suppose that means you are going to spelunk into someone's psyche and hope you don't hit the ground. This novel gives you all the Bad Santa, Harold and Maude, Life Aquatic tragicomedy. There are puns, death, and Vicodin!
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Natural Way of Things
by
Charlotte Wood
Erin Tuzuner
, April 03, 2017
Though a bit uneven, the pacing and underlying themes of the all encompassing patriarchy propel this novel into a long sinking think well after you have closed the pages.
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Ninety-Nine Stories of God
by
Joy Williams
Erin Tuzuner
, April 03, 2017
These are exquisite. Precise, dark, humourous exchanges.
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Always Happy Hour: Stories
by
Mary Miller
Erin Tuzuner
, April 03, 2017
Sharp lines that occasionally draw blood, much like irregular ice cubes interfering with the pure alcohol inhalation of a last call happy hour.
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When Watched Stories
by
Leopoldine Core
Erin Tuzuner
, April 03, 2017
Lines like snapshots of moments fat with promise and cruelty and acutely aware of its disappearing grace.
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Crapalachia
by
Scott McClanahan
Erin Tuzuner
, April 03, 2017
Such a gorgeous gut-punch of a novel. Tender and bleak and over too quickly.
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History of Wolves
by
Emily Fridlund
Erin Tuzuner
, April 03, 2017
Superbly written with a dense story of connection and loss filtered through both remembrance and consequence.
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Heartbreaker: Stories
by
Maryse Meijer
Erin Tuzuner
, April 03, 2017
These are some dark and savage tales. Greasy, naked emotion that rubs like sandpaper and saltwater.
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My Father, the Pornographer: A Memoir
by
Chris Offutt
Erin Tuzuner
, March 29, 2016
The ache of childhood reminiscing burns like cheap bourbon. The eyes water and the sting burns in the back of your neck as shame eases down your limbs. It's dark, the father memoir with enough nuance and strangeness to anchor the common ache of childhood tainted by megalomania, narcissism, and bullying.
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Tender
by
Belinda McKeon
Erin Tuzuner
, March 29, 2016
Tender is so apropos for the tone and theme of this novel. Another T-Word that comes to mind is tragic. The nascent longing mingled with desire that CANNOT be reciprocated, with the all too knowing and reprehensible feelings of possession and cache. What a beautiful book, Jaysus.
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Perfect Days A Novel
by
Raphael Montes
Erin Tuzuner
, March 29, 2016
A well written modern day horror story about attachment, obsession, and violence. A beach read worthy of Jaws fans.
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Dragonfish
by
Tran, Vu
Erin Tuzuner
, September 30, 2015
A 40s noir rife with cigarette smoke and predictable alleyways. That being said, it is a fun read with danger, mysterious women (arent they all), and men who are unable to articulate their feelings so they hit things.
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Ongoingness
by
Sarah Manguso
Erin Tuzuner
, September 14, 2015
What an incredible collection of deceptively simple thoughts and articulations that converge to caress your throat and tighten your chest, or perhaps the other way around
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The Invaders
by
Karolina Waclawiak
Erin Tuzuner
, September 14, 2015
Dual narratives of class warfare waged within, the definition of outsider re-worked for a country club, and an ambiguous ending in which nature asserts her dominance.
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Shore A Novel
by
Sara Taylor
Erin Tuzuner
, September 03, 2015
The poetic language complements the eponymous environment in which we meet our violent, mystical cast. Nature, especially the treacherous and strange shore, replete with southern wildness and nuance, provides the necessary character to house the sweeping tales of women and the feral men around them. The body as synecdoche for nature, consequence and lineage are a sweating literary glass of bourbon on a sticky summer evening.
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This Is How It Really Sounds
by
Stuart Archer Cohen
Erin Tuzuner
, September 03, 2015
The gaps in between the bigger bits of this novel I found to be the most satisfying. The theme of identity, fame, and strangely, feeling sorry for wealthy white men all coalesce into this narrative of security and what the end is and what it will cost and what you will piss away in order to learn that.
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Pinkies Stories
by
Shane Hinton
Erin Tuzuner
, September 03, 2015
These hyper realistic short stories are the scent of lightning in an upcoming storm. The hot rain distorting the sun, Hinton's novel, certain to appear from the intensity and purpose of these stories, will be the calm petrichor that comforts the isolation of zany southern citizenship. The alligators vacating sewers, smoking cigarettes and dragging limbs across the lonely interstate 75.
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The Sellout
by
Paul Beatty
Erin Tuzuner
, September 03, 2015
An incisive and hilarious novel about race. As in who wins and who watched and how there is no way to fix such a broken system. With humor comes clarity, and this darkly hilarious novel packs plenty of heat.
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Captive Condition A Novel
by
Kevin P Keating
Erin Tuzuner
, September 03, 2015
Bleak, intellectual descent into the vagaries of the small town dynamics made insular and claustrophobic. X-Files and Twin Peaks without the charm of government employees, this novel contains the fetid darkness of a town resigned to profane distractions. Keating's prolix descriptions of the macabre class warfare and the various machinations of despair, vice, and grim pronouncements of terminally unvarying life weave a delightfully dark and erudite indictment of modernity in perpetuity.
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The Life and Death of Sophie Stark
by
North, Anna
Erin Tuzuner
, September 03, 2015
Absolutely flawless lines that comprise an intricate and engaging story around an enigmatic cypher mistaken for genius. Compulsively readable and certainly unforgettable. A powerful examination of identity, creativity, and ultimately, the self
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Binary Star
by
Sarah Gerard
Erin Tuzuner
, September 03, 2015
An extended metaphor of gravity; exuding and expanding an orbit of dependency and illness. Sharp, sterile insights generated with a hum of amphetamines and self denial.
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The Second Sex
by
Michael Robbins
Erin Tuzuner
, June 18, 2015
High brow, low brow knowhow. Hive mind recall of Latin, literature, and the sacred pop lyric bubble burst flow into your brain and out of your mouth like ice cream sundae school.
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Dark Sparkler
by
Amber Tamblyn
Erin Tuzuner
, June 18, 2015
Personal, affecting, dark, gorgeous... all of these apply to this incisive and brief examinations of ever expanding body count of FAME. Feminine, bold, ephemeral: analogous to the Hollywood starlets portrayed.
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I Found My Friends: The Oral History of Nirvana
by
Nick Soulsby
Erin Tuzuner
, June 15, 2015
Repetitive at times, there are some great stories hidden among the "they were alrights" and "Kurt was a normal guy" type anecdotes. For all that has been wrung out of that man, there are a few salient bits about the community at large, and the diverse inhabitants of a misunderstood "explosion" out of the Pacific Northwest.
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Gutshot
by
Amelia Gray
Erin Tuzuner
, June 15, 2015
Dark. Absurd. Violent. As a fan of Night Vale and literature, I enjoyed (most) of these short horror shows. The hyper tuned domesticity pulses to an unbearable pitch.
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The Strange Case of Rachel K
by
Kushner, Rachel
Erin Tuzuner
, June 15, 2015
Amuse bouche notwithstanding, these nuggets burn with the intensity of "larger" works.
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Delicious Foods
by
James Hannaham
Erin Tuzuner
, June 15, 2015
Novels have the ability, and some the responsibility, to provide illumination for paths darkened by ignorance, avoidance, and flimsily construed lines of separation. The beauty of language arranged around hideous and toxic environs invites the reader to get their hands dirty while the comfort of words eases them into the deep crevasse of unfamiliar horrors. Some prefer the misdirection of the supernatural to inject socially aware tropes. Few allow their illumination to be lit by a blowtorch, rather than lightning. This is their novel. The murky and unrelenting temperatures of the American South provide synecdoche for the emotional weather of race relations and narratives on a timeline that frustratingly appears unchanging. The stark unspoken quotidian conditions endured by many are deftly rendered in this important novel. Familial ties, resilience, self destruction and the constant satellite of guilt tether the characters with their particular gravity in a constellation that resembles a crow. I couldn't put this down and now that I'm done, I'm pressing this gorgeous paperback unto anyone capable of withstanding the blowtorch that allows this novel to glow
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Dept. of Speculation
by
Jenny Offill
Erin Tuzuner
, May 05, 2015
Hurtling towards the destruction of domestic fiction. The concise chipping away of time and affection, the transformation that dissolves relationships like acid rain in an industrial city.
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Why Are You So Sad
by
Jason Porter
Erin Tuzuner
, May 05, 2015
Such a dark and clever tease of a read. The modern world rendered into survey answers and the detritus of the purge of empty surfeit desires.
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Everything I Never Told You
by
Celeste Ng
Erin Tuzuner
, September 22, 2014
Juliet Capulet and Laura Palmer have proven that dead teenage girls generate an audience. Celeste Ng uses one as well to illustrate and examine the kaleidoscope of grief through the permutations of time and narrator. The prosaic humiliations will resonate with any age, as shattered glass informs a stone cast in haste. The familiar fractured family may remind you of the Virgin Suicides, the Ice Storm, the Secret Friend, with good reason. The spider webbing of past regrets inflicted on the present generation is powerful for its catharsis and relatibility; the plot points reading as family history.
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Shining Girls
by
Lauren Beukes
Erin Tuzuner
, September 22, 2014
The scariest part of this book was how the ending could be so predictable when the premise was so fantastic. Disappointment aside, the glitteringly inexplicable violence of a time traveling misogynist peppered with insightful one liners makes for an exciting Saturday night. There are some missteps in the formulaic mismatch of old/young boy/girl that are forgivable, yet unnecessary. Reach exceeding grasp in the case of a fascinating premise but safe execution.
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Noise
by
Peter Wild
Erin Tuzuner
, February 13, 2014
Better in concept than execution, this short story collection provides a VERY mixed bag of talent and skill. Kevin Powell and Katherine Dunn were worth it, as they often are.
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Idiot Girls Action Adventure Club True Tales from a Magnificant & Clumsy Life
by
Laurie Notaro
Erin Tuzuner
, February 13, 2014
I found this while shelving books at the library (where I am employed) and passed an easy Friday reading this at the desk. I had no expectations for this and was pleasantly surprised when I laughed uproariously and Instragrammed select paragraphs to my moderately amused followers. Dysfunction has never looked so sunny. Must be the desert air.
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My Education
by
Susan Choi
Erin Tuzuner
, February 13, 2014
Obsessive love can be excellent fodder for a novel. In this case, it was not. The immaturity, the college allusions to Foucault/Lacan etc, and naturally THE POTENTIAL are all par for the course when reading about college, but Choi accidentally uses synecdoche to illustrate her points. There are flashes of brilliance, usually in a well crafted sentence, but her dialog and characterization of every character except the protagonist are paltry and disappointing. The last quarter of the novel felt phon(i)ed in.
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Everything Was Fine Until Whatever
by
Chelsea Martin
Erin Tuzuner
, January 15, 2014
I would have to create several shelves to accommodate the incredible depth of strange and non linear processes contained within. I'm too lazy to do that, but I'm hopeful you will be tempted to devour and quickly discard this beautiful glimpse of honest, varied, insanity.
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Encyclopedia of the Exquisite
by
Jessica Kerwin Jenkins
Erin Tuzuner
, January 15, 2014
I want to buy several copies of this and give them to people I love who live faraway. That is hardly an endorsement, per se, but really, this is an excellent compendium of underrated history and salacious historical tidbits. There are recipes, anecedotes, and history. I loved it. I need it. I need to give it to others.
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Holy or the Broken Leonard Cohen Jeff Buckley & the Unlikely Ascent of Hallelujah
by
Alan Light
Erin Tuzuner
, January 15, 2014
This would have worked better as an essay, because even the brilliance of Hallelujah sounds like a circle jerk for 200 pages. I get it, it's like the first time you have sex in that everyone has something to say about it. Everyone feels the need to embellish, enunciate, exclaim. This is just a perfect song. Leonard Cohen is a genius. Rufus Wainwright is an adorable prince. Jeff Buckley is the great unknown because dying young gives you that glow. There is too much trivia, and as someone who enjoys trivia, perhaps it's just boring? And there's WAY TOO MUCH amanda palmer.
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In Love
by
Alfred Hayes, Frederic Raphael
Erin Tuzuner
, January 15, 2014
Read this again in January, 2014. This book is incredible. The poetic nature of a disintegrating relationship in Hayes' capable, elegant voice. "Or even possibly a gentle attempt to hang myself from some convenient chandelier, would have satisfied her that I was truly in love." "Sometimes, hating the violent dispossession of my which love brought on, I would wish to be elsewhere" "Too much feeling, finally, makes us experience a sensation of unreality as acute as never having felt at all." "when everything remains suspended and anticipatory, and the snow falls through the air of a city whose ugliness is temporarily obscured, and the cab itself seems to exist inside a magical circle of quiet heat and togetherness and motion; and i suppose, for that moment, it is beautiful: the snow, and everything" "a simple sequence of pleasures that would not seriously change my life or interfere with my work, that would fill the emptiness of my long evenings and ease the pressures of my loneliness, and give me what i suppose i really thought of as the nicest amusement in all the amusement park: the pleasure of love." I could go on and on with these quotations. Absolutely gorgeous prose, clear eyed about the specific dysfunction love affords.
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