Lee Hunts

I wasn't planning on writing anything for Piranesi, if only because this is one of those books that I thought you should go into completely blind. I'm in agreement with pretty much everyone else on that because you can't really talk about this book without spoilers. I also balked at doing a spoiler review because I tend to do them when I have a lot to talk about, which is usually when I have issues with the book. It is safe to say I did not have many issues. But as I looked at some of the reviews and saw some of the interpretations of the book, I thought I would at least write something providing my take of the ending of the book, and also my interpretation of the story as a whole. Spoilers Ahead Greatest Strength The greatest strength of the book is the perspective shift. I don't mean that there is a shift during the plot of the book (part way through), but that the book's foundations are built on the "shift." We get the story from one perspective, and th...

I finally finished reading We Need To Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver. It took me about two months of scattered reading to get through the first quarter of the book, and then I finally got the audiobook and burned through the rest in the course of three days. I've definitely found that syntax can really mess with my ability to read prose, given my predilection to analyze and pick things apart. The sentence structure in this novel was so difficult that it was a chore to read, even if the story were engaging. This story is about a mother coming to terms with the fact that her son committed a mass shooting. She never loved her son, Kevin, and so she decides to send a series of messages to her estranged husband in order to sort out her place in the events, even considering the possibility that she might have played a role. Overall (No Spoilers) I did not plan on writing a review to this book because I was not entirely sure what I wanted to write about. Paradoxically, this is the ki...

American Pastoral: Book Review "At once expansive and painstakingly detailed.... The pages of American Pastoral crackle with the electricity and zest of a first-rate mind at work." —San Francisco Chronicle I just finished reading American Pastoral, a novel written by Phillip Roth. This book is a literary fiction novel about a man (the Swede) who represents the American Ideal: he was the star athlete in high school, he went on to marry the Miss New Jersey he met in college, and he inherited his father's glove making industry. And this book depicts this man's destruction when his daughter is ensnared by a radical communist ideology. This book is well-praised and held up as a great work of literature. It even won the Pulitzer Prize. I've only heard of that honor in passing, but apparently it matters. Of course, I absolutely despised this book in almost every respect. In terms of execution, I thought the ideas were horrifically handled and written. From the line level...