Book Report

I've been busy reading. Now it's time to report.

Recommended:I realize that it's somewhat redundant for me to recommend the magnum opus of Nobel Prize Winner Toni Morrison. So this shouldn't come as a surprise: Beloved is a great book. Some people have claimed that this is the best novel written in the last twenty-five years or the best blah blah blah. I will say that Beloved is the best book about slavery that I've ever read.

The novel is about a woman, Sethe, who has escaped from a Kentucky plantation, only to find that she cannot escape what has happened to her and what she has done. Her house is haunted by a spirit - the spirit of her daughter, murdered as an infant: Beloved. One day, a girl who calls herself Beloved shows up at Sethe's house and the fallout begins. Slavery, murder, and ghosts, real and imagined.

The only real weakness of this novel is that there is a brief point in the middle (maybe 20 pages) where things sag a little bit. But otherwise, this novel is fantastic. Highly recommended.

Not Recommended:I picked this up because another Philip Roth book, American Pastoral, was recommended to me but this was the one I found in the used bookstore. Portnoy's Complaint is also the most famous and popular of Philip Roth's novels, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

I made it 117 pages in before I had to quit. This novel takes the form of an extended monologue. Alex Portnoy is Complaining to his psychologist about his parents and his upbringing, etc. This is the novel. And it is annoying. The main joke is this: Alex complains about his Jewish upbringing. His mother is overbearing and his father suffers from terrible constipation and Alex is totally preoccupied with sex. That's it. That's the joke. OVER AND OVER AND OVER!

Save yourself the trouble: don't read this book.

In Progress:
Weighing in at more than 800 pages, this one's going to take a while. But I enjoyed White Noise, by the same author, so I am willing to give it a shot.