My Ideal Bookshelf

The Hours-- Michael Cunningham
Cold Spring Harbor-- Richard Yates
The Informers--Bret Easton Ellis
I am Charlotte Simmons--Tom Wolfe
Play It As It Lays--Joan Didion
White Noise--Don Delillo
To the Lighthouse--Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway--Virginia Woolf
Vineland-- Thomas Pynchon
The Year of Magical Thinking--Joan Didion
The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger
The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
Bright Lights, Big City Jay McInerney
Crying of Lot 49 Thomas Pynchon
Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
Looking for Alaska John Green
Slaughterhouse Five Kurt Vonnegut
Portrait of the Artist James Joyce
Dubliners James Joyce
J Alfred Prufrock T.S. Eliot
The Sportswriter Richard Ford
The Awakening Kate Chopin

#53: Election-- Tom Perotta

Shows a few glimpses of the author he later becomes, but hardly as satisfying as The Leftovers. Too conventional; perhaps my negative reaction is just to the fact that it's so dated. I would have liked to see less of a tight focus on the election itself. Rarely do I say this, but the book was too short.

A Definition of What this Blog is All About

instant wealth 
emotionally disengaged sex
information overload 
belief in the ability of ingested substances to alter the aura of one’s flesh or personality architecture 
neglect of the maintenance of democracy

willful ignorance of history 
body manipulation 
willful rejection of reflection 
body envy 
belief that spectacle is reality 
vicarious living through celebrities
rejection of sentiment 
unwillingness to assign hierarchy to values

--From Douglas Coupland's "Brentwood Notebook" (Polaroids from the Dead)