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The Bookchemist
Literary Booktuber releasing book reviews, literary tops & charts and a variety of literary extravaganza. Especially fond of contemporary American fiction (read Infinite Jest, people!)
Cline's debut novel is an interesting and deep take on nerd culture and ethos, one that literally intertextualizes every page, but isn't free from some young-novelist flaws - unlikely twists being the most annoying.VideoReview:
https://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=zv4y890VDSI
Calvino's take on postmodern literature not only reads like a curious, clever and always intelligent literary experiment, but is also a compendium on the current it represents.Videoreview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwfgyxr5Rug&feature=youtu.be
Unlikely (in many ways) as it may be, Karen Russell's debut novel is a good book which mixes a powerfully crafted, original perspective with an extremely fascinating and curious setting.VideoReview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Guf22_cMZGw&feature=youtu.be
Foer's most famous novel shows a masterful first person narration and some interesting ideas on life and death and such, but it's eventually sort-of hampered by the author's tendency to exaggerate with *everything*.Videoreview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmpO1NVhtTA&feature=youtu.be
Louise Erdrich's NBA-winning novel is a wonderful book on the end of innocence and youth, on Native American culture and relationships with the rest of America, on where justice really does lie and on a couple other similarly important things.Video-review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBfcSCBHUs4
Palahniuk's debut novel is a shocking reflection on our society and its horrors, and though it owes a lot to previous authors (Easton Ellis above all), for its scope and abundance of themes is totally worth reading.Video-review:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JLb3PrqGIs&feature=youtu.be
How did this guy almost win a National Book Award?Ok, it was the Young People and not the big one, but still. The Drowned Cities (his second novel after the [I hope much better] Ship Breaker) isn't really an awful book and reads sort of well, and I guess it can raise some moral questions on the importance of our decisions and such. But a very few ones, and quite simple too. Its whole nihilistic vibe just seems too grim to be taken seriously, and the abundance of violence and slaughter should probably make the book a disturbing one, whereas it just makes it look like a paper version of a bad horror movie.
The characters have no real depth and their evolution throughout the book really is a cheap one. The narrative structure is incredibly predictable, at the point where you can tell what will happen in a specific chapter after having read its first page. I won't even start listing all the narrative flaws of the thing, but just saying, if you say that a character "died" at the end of one chapter, that guy shouldn't be alive ten pages later. IMHO.
What did I say about The Drowned Cities not being an awful book?
Thurber's Paperboy is an highly disturbing novel on an incredibly difficult topic, a book which doesn't lack meaning but sadly isn't able to expand it as much as its problematic nature requires.Video Review:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVXMJctNKhI&feature=youtu.be
Not-too-scary horror story for kids which turns out being a reflection upon the passing of time and the importance we give to death, and thus to life. A really good reflection, in fact. Had it been developed in a more complex, braver novel, this could have been Bradbury's masterpiece.As it is, it's sort of a deluxe Goosebump - more clever but less funny. Read it if you're eleven.
