The A.V. Club - Wrapped Up In Books

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:Reminder: To The White Sea is November's book selection

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:55:00 -0600

Still reading along with The A.V. Club's Wrapped Up In Books club? Here's your official reminder of the next selection. Starting Monday, November 30th, we'll spend a week delving into Scott Tobias' suggestion for the section, James Dickey's To The White Sea. Here's what Scott has to say about why he selected it: "After hearing that the Coen brothers intended to adapt To The White Sea as a movie—a project they’ve since put on indefinite hold—I was curious to imagine how this deep cut in Dickey’s bibliography (he’s most ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:Ghost Story: Tasha Robinson's comments

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:32:00 -0500

Don’t feel so alone here in the middle ground, Ellen. If the bell curve is any indication, it should probably be pretty crowded here. Frankly, I’ve been a little surprised at the vitriolic backlash against Ghost Story, which I thought would be a pretty popular book-club choice, accessible and easy to discuss. I’d never read Peter Straub before (apart from the two Talisman books he co-authored with Stephen King), but I had somehow mentally conflated him with King and with John Saul, and I thought Ghost Story would be a relatively quick, pulpy, beachy kinda read. So ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:Ghost Story live chat kicks off here at 4:30 PM ET / 3:30 PM CT

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:19:00 -0500

Wrapped Up In Books: Ghost Story

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:Ghost Story: Ellen Wernecke's comments

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:17:00 -0500

Wow, it feels a little lonely here in the middle ground. After I finished Ghost Story, I primarily felt let down by the ending, which I’ll get to in a second. But mostly, I thought “Hey, that was fun.” Leonard, I understand exactly where you’re coming from, because whenever I slowed down to take in the scenery, I picked up on the clunky language. But I wasn’t tempted to slow down that much, because for me, the suspense of not knowing who or what was after the Chowder Society was enough. From Don’s ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:Ghost Story: Donna Bowman's comments

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:22:00 -0500

For many readers, horror is a Period. It’s a time in your life, and usually a relatively early one, where you discovered books whose purpose was exploring the taboo and forbidden. You go through your Horror Period—aren’t there thousands of us, if not millions, who read Stephen King as a teenager and will never forget that feeling?—just as people sometimes go through a Fantasy Era, a Science Fiction Epoch, a Harlequin Summer. And then you grow up and get on with your life, and horror fiction doesn’t much figure into it. Maybe you kept on ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:Ghost Story: Leonard Pierce's comments

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:54:00 -0500

Reminder: We'll be discussing Peter Straub's Ghost Story here via livechat on Thursday, October 29, at 3:30 CST. Look for a link here on Thursday, and come join us. “Ricky’s sagacious little jowls were taut with impatience.” What does it mean when we call someone a good writer? Although it’s a question beyond the scope of our discussion of Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, I keep returning to it again and again. There has been, at least since the turn of the 20th century—the novel’s century—a lively debate, echoed in criticisms of ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:Ghost Story: Zack Handlen's comments

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:52:00 -0500

Reminder: We'll be discussing Peter Straub's Ghost Story here via livechat on Thursday, October 29, at 3:30 CST. Look for a link here on Thursday, and come join us. This is, I think, the fifth time I’ve read Peter Straub’s Ghost Story. Or possibly the sixth? I’m not sure. I do know I first read it in high school, after finding out about the novel in Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, a survey of horror in film, television, and literature. King raved about the book, and I was at a point in my life ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:Reminder: Ghost Story discussion, live chat next week

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:11:00 -0500

Halloween is coming up and attention spans are shortening, as everyone focuses on candy, decorations, partying, and filling the Internet to bursting with their pro and con opinions on "sexy" costumes. (There's a lot of competition out there for the worst one, but my money's on "Sexy Freddy Krueger.") But amid all the hoopla, don't forget that next Monday, we're starting the discussion of Peter Straub's Ghost Story here in the Wrapped Up In Books section. Finished reading (or re-reading) yet? And on Thursday, October 29, at 3:30 CST, we'll be returning to ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:Wrapped Up In Books selections for the rest of the year

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:20:00 -0500

Slow reader? Long-term planner? Either way, we're glad to help by letting you in on our plans for Wrapped Up In Books for the next three months, so you can get a jump start on your reading assignments. Beginning Monday, October 26, we'll be discussing Zack Handlen's book-club pick, Peter Straub's Halloween-appropriate Ghost Story. Starting Monday, November 30th (put off a week so we don't run afoul of people's travel plans over Thanksgiving), we'll spend a week delving into Scott Tobias' suggestion for the section, James Dickey's To The White Sea. And ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh: Keith Phipps’ comments

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:06:00 -0500

I arrived at Michael Chabon’s debut novel, The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh, backward. I’d read and loved The Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, and a couple of other things, like The Final Solution. I’d even seen the movie version of Pittsburgh, which, apart from a fine Peter Sarsgaard performance as Cleveland, I can’t recommend. In fact, the movie set up all kinds of weird expectations upon which the book never delivered. Where was Art’s doomed affair with his bookstore manager? (The movie calls her Phlox, but she doesn’t bear much resemblance ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:The Mysteries Of PIttsburgh: Tasha Robinson's comments

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:08:00 -0500

As Leo Tolstoy’s famous opening to Anna Karenina goes, “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Like so many broad summaries of human behavior, this one is patently false, but still mighty tempting in its pat tidiness. It’s certainly true that there are an awful lot of ways to be unhappy, and an awful lot of ways to disagree. Which is why it’s sort of fascinated me, watching all the Clubbers and commentators weighing in on exactly why they didn’t like Michael Chabon’s The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh. Everyone ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh: Zack Handlen's comments

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:45:00 -0500

If I hadn’t been reading Mysteries Of Pittsburgh for Wrapped Up in Books, I don’t think I would’ve gotten past the third chapter. Hell, I don’t know if I would’ve picked it up at all; I thought The Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union were both terrific, but they appealed to me as much for their subjects as their writing, and Pittsburgh just doesn’t have a hook that would’ve grabbed my attention on its own. First novels are often more interesting for what they promise than what they ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh: Leonard Pierce's comments

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:52:00 -0500

Before we get down to cases, allow me to tell you a little personal anecdote of the sort that makes me so universally respected ’round these parts. Way back in 1989—yes, the Internet tells me there was such a year, and in America, too—I was a doomed high-school dropout who really only loved two things: elegantly written fiction and elegantly written humor. (I’ve since learned to love more things, but those two still have a special place in my black, meat-clogged heart.) There was, in the late ’80s, something of a mini-Renaissance of hot young fiction writers ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh: Donna Bowman's comments

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:30:00 -0500

I was in love with The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh. I loved Art Bechstein and his helpless passion for the friends who seem so much cooler, braver, and more accomplished than he. I loved the Canyon and the Cloud Factory and the horrible chain bookstore. I loved Art’s transference of affection from Jane to Phlox to Arthur in a miasma of summer romance that isn’t so much for any person as for the immortality of youth, free of danger or lasting consequence. And then Cleveland took him for a ride on his motorcyle, and it was suddenly gangsters and ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh, Ellen Wernecke's comments

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:48:00 -0500

“No doubt all of this is not true remembrance but the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past, and no doubt, as usual, I have exaggerated everything.” The ordinary man—often the ordinary boy—discovers his powers, or is handed them in an accident. He must learn to trust them, but he can only do so through use, and with use comes danger. As an author who devoted an entire novel to a pair of early superhero-comic creators, Michael Chabon can probably find a lot of flaws in my argument that every writer has, like a superhero, an origin ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:Little, Big live chat kicks off here at 4 PM ET / 3 PM CT

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:48:00 -0500

Wrapped Up In Books: Little, Big

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:Little, Big: Tasha Robinson's comments

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 11:18:00 -0500

Wrapped Up In Books is The A.V. Club's monthly book club. We're currently discussing this month's selection, John Crowley's Little, Big, in a series of posts to be followed by a livechat with staff and readers this afternoon at 3 p.m. CST. When I first started reading Little, Big, the title loomed large in my observations. I kept seeing “clues” in the narrative: the idea of littleness vs. bigness repeated as a motif in the narrative, as though the entire concept of the book was “as above, so below.” The contrast between Smoky’s ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:Little, Big: Keith Phipps' comments

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:55:00 -0500

Join us for a live chat about the book today at 4pm ET/3pm CT I'll be brief since we're getting late in the week and want so save some topics for the chat today. Also, I've been tardy finishing this book, which took longer to get through than I'd expected. Not because I didn't like it. I did. It's savory; I savored. But I also found myself backing up, like Smoky when he the word "elf," to make sure I read what I thought I'd just read. Crowley's prose is ornamented ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:Little, Big: Ellen Wernecke's comments

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:00:00 -0500

Wrapped Up In Books is The A.V. Club's monthly book club. We're currently discussing this month's selection, John Crowley's Little, Big, in a series of posts to be followed by a livechat some time on Friday. We'll announce the time, and our next two selections, shortly. “I want the world to be full of unseen magic,” Donna wrote in her Little, Big commentary yesterday. “I want there to be forces behind the scenes that are telling the stories.” Me, too! But I didn’t find them in “Little, Big,” beginning with the central myth ...

Books: Wrapped Up In Books:Little, Big: Leonard Pierce's comments

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:51:00 -0500

Wrapped Up In Books is The A.V. Club's monthly book club. We're currently discussing this month's selection, John Crowley's Little, Big, in a series of posts to be followed by a livechat some time on Friday. We'll announce the time, and our next two selections, shortly. I went into the Wrapped Up In Books reading of John Crowley’s Little, Big not knowing quite what to make of it—and I come out very much the same way. I had never heard of the book or its author prior to its nomination as the ...