#26 Stone Arabia Dana Spiotta

Jacket Copy: Stone Arabia, Dana Spiotta’s moving and intrepid third novel, is about family, obsession, memory, and the urge to create—in isolation, at the margins of our winner-take-all culture. In the sibling relationship, “there are no first impressions, no seductions, no getting to know each other,” says Denise Kranis. For her and her brother, Nik, now in their forties, no relationship is more significant. They grew up in Los Angeles in the late seventies and early eighties. Nik was always the artist, always wrote music, always had a band. Now he makes his art in private, obsessively documenting the work, but never testing it in the world. Denise remains Nik’s most passionate and acute audience, sometimes his only audience. She is also her family’s first defense against the world’s fragility. Friends die, their mother’s memory and mind unravel, and the news of global catastrophe and individual tragedy haunts Denise. When her daughter, Ada, decides to make a film about Nik, everyone’s vulnerabilities seem to escalate.

Similar to: Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays; Don Delillo’s Falling Man

My Take: This is kind of like the book version of Spinal Tap--if such a thing could even be said to exist. But it also has more depth than that movie could ever be credited with; in addition to the humor that pervades the novel, there is also an element of tragedy throughout the novel to create a nice balance. The juxtaposition of light-hearted comedy with scenes of pathos serves to emphasize the absurdity of the modern world. The most interesting part of the novel to me-- the part that really stood out--was the unusually strong connection the protagonist felt with news events she saw on TV. The author seems to suggest that this is a symptom of modern life--to feel sadness about things one can do nothing about, while being numb and unable to feel anything about things that are actually happening in one's own life, and are within one's potential sphere of control. In this sense, this book can be quite easily compared to the work of Joan Didion and Bret Easton Ellis; all these authors embrace a philosophy of decadent nihilism in their work, attempting to make a statement about just how far in the direction of insanity modern life tends to drive people. 

#25 Downtown Owl Chuck Klosterman

Book Jacket Copy: Somewhere in North Dakota, there is a town called Owl that isn't there. Disco is over but punk never happened. They don't have cable. They don't really have pop culture, unless you count grain prices and alcoholism. People work hard and then they die. They hate the government and impregnate teenage girls. But that's not nearly as awful as it sounds; in fact, sometimes it's perfect.

Chuck Klosterman's Downtown Owl is the unpretentious, darkly comedic story of how it feels to exist in a community where rural mythology and violent reality are pretty much the same thing. It's technically about certain people in a certain place at a certain time...but it's really about a problem. And the problem is this: What does it mean to be a normal person? And there is no answer. But in Downtown Owl, what matters more is how you ask the question.

Similar to: John Green's An Abundance of Katherines; Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio

My Take: I am a huge fan of Klosterman's books of essays (I own every single one of them) but in my opinion, he really should stick with nonfiction. It remains to be seen whether his first book will be unique in its mediocrity, or if it will prove to be a continuing trend: his second novel will be released this Fall. Whereas I generally read Klosterman's essay books in a matter of a few hours or a few days, it took me an entire month to get through his 270 page debut novel, Downtown Owl; I just could not get into it, it didn't grab my attention so I could really only read a few pages at a time without losing interest and going somewhere else (or a million different other places, ADD-style) for entertainment... the Tube, Walmart, the back of a cereal box, whatever works. Basically, just save your money (and a month of your life) and skip this book, opting for one of Klosterman's far superior journalistic endeavours--I particularly recommend Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Eating the Dinosaur. 

#24 13 Reasons Why Jay Asher

Synopsis: Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a mysterious box with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker--his classmate and crush--who committed suicide two weeks earlier. On tape, Hannah explains that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out how he made the list. Through Hannah and Clay's dual narratives, debut author Jay Asher weaves an intricate and heartrending story of confusion and desperation that will deeply affect teen readers.

Similar to: Looking for Alaska, I Love You Beth Cooper, David Leviathan

My take: This book was the perfect combination of being a suspenseful and entertaining read, a pageturner, and at the same time presenting an important message in a powerful way. For the most part it avoids the cliches of the high school novel genre, which is refreshing. It also is not preachy or heavy-handed; it doesn't hit you over the head with its message, but instead conveys it in a more subtle way, leaving the reader more likely to embrace it than if they felt they were being condescended to or preached to. The ending of the novel actually gives a suggestion about what the reader can actually actively do once they've taken in the book's message. Often times books will give you a message about something in society that is a problem, but it won't give examples of solutions that readers could actually then go out and change the world with. This book does not have that problem.

#23 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson

Jacket Copy: http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/252-jacket-copy-for-fear-and-loathing-in-las-vegas-a-savage-journey-to-the-heart-of-the-american-dream

Similar to: Tom Wolfe, Bret Easton Ellis, Jack Kerouac

My Take: This book seems to be over-rated. The feeling I came away from it with was that I wanted the author to tell me more. There just wasn't enough meat to this book. The writing style is also not particularly remarkable or innovative. It's not pretty or interesting prose to read; it's just plain prose. (Disclaimer: Pretty-to-read prose is just one of my personal preferences in literature, so obviously this is not a universal criticism, just my personal reason for disliking the book).

 The author also tends to assume that if you're reading this book, you share his political views (i.e. Nixon and business interests are the devil). To that end, he doesn't give us any reasoned arguments for why he feels this way, he just assumes that we know why. I would have liked to see him expound more upon the themes of what exactly has gone wrong with our country in the 70s, rather than just repeating "drugs, violence. drugs, violence" over and over again but not even delving into how exactly they've been the downfall of the American Dream.

The fake journalism part of it just gets on my nerves; i don't feel that this narrative technique really adds much at all to the story--it may even take away from the books' main messages by distracting us with unnecessary details.