Friday, January 23, 2009

Does Costco's lenient return policy include horrid books?


The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.

Seriously? Somebody gave this stinker a Pulitzer? I read more of it than I want to admit, before I cut my losses, and quit.  

Reminds of the time I tried to read A Confederacy of Dunces. 

It was better than Dunces. I'll give it that.
I learned lots of Spanish cuss words. His English profanity wasn't as interesting. Pretty much just the F-word, over and over. So tedious.

Sometimes, a book makes you wish you could poke out your mind's eye.

The end.

8 comments:

  1. Poke out your mind's eye. Brilliant.

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  2. Brillant, indeed! Thanks for the warning, I will be sure to steer clear of this one. Excessive use of profanity is offensive. And lazy. So, double offensive.
    :)

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  3. Beeswax, this cracked me up! But I LOVED the Confederacy of the Dunces . . . so does that mean I should buy this Diaz book immediately?

    (Your rejection is a recommendation? But seriously, I'm sure we have the same taste most of the time. Would this be a good time to admit that I saw Bride Wars and actually enjoyed it? It definitely had more of a heart than the pratfall advertisements for it suggested.)

    Did you enjoy The Road? I'm getting a lot of recommendations for that one.

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  4. Heidi, not brilliant! I'm sure I stole that from somewhere.

    Fear Fam, I agree that profanity is lazy.

    Bee, if you liked Dunces, you might like this. The main characters have much in common. In Dunces the guy hates pop culture, in this one he loves it. Pretty lives in his Dungeons and Dragons/anime world inside his 300 pound body, lusting after women he won't ever get. Wasn't the Dunces guy gay? Can't recall. Tried to block it.

    This one does include a lot of Dominican history included as rather interesting footnotes, if you like your Dominican history with a hearty helping of the f-word.

    LOVED the Road. Some of the most beautiful writing I have ever read.

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  5. I hate it when I end up with a rotten book ---as I kinda have a rule that I have to see it to the end---but seriously, sometimes, yuk. I am ready a GREAT book now, almost done and can't wait to tell you about it.

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  6. I just finished reading SOMEONE KNOWS MY NAME by Lawrence Hill. It is about a young African girl captured from her homeland, taken across the ocean on a slave ship, and her struggles and survival until she ends back in England to tell her story about slavery. I loved it!! But I love hearing about our history and how others have lived and what they have endured. Makes me so grateful that I was born when I was and reminds me to be more thankful. I would recommend it. Very clean and interesting.

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  7. Ah yes, I love those "poke-your-eyes-out" books.

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  8. I found you through Sue's blog. And I have to say I just read this book last week and I loved it. I thought it was genius. I would never recommend it to anyone except my husband (and I warned him about the profanity and violence but his specialty is Latin American literature). Then again, I absolutely loved Confederacy of Dunces and recommended that to him, too. I gotta go see what else you've reviewed!

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