Have any of you read The Sympathizer?

by Kevin @, Thursday, October 27, 2016, 11:41 (2709 days ago)

It's by Viet Thanh Nguyen. The Sympathizer is magnificent. I enjoyed reading something that wasn't a failed attempt at replicating The Corrections.

Other recent books:

Here I Am, by Jonathan Safran Foer: hated it. Quit 55% of the way through.

Breaks of the Game, Halberstam: awesome, but not all that well organized.

Shotgun Lovesongs, Nickolas Butler: I talk about my hatred for this book every month or so. It deserves to be burned. I might re-start the Nazis just to collect and burn all copies of this shitty book. Then the new Nazis would disband. We wouldn't be anti-Semitic or anything.

The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer: this was more like Visit from the Goon Squad. I am starting to think women do contemporary big-city high-quality fiction better than men. Wolitzer's approach has a hell of a lot more heart, and far better characters, than Franzen's books. Even the good Franzen books, like Freedom, have bad characters.

Everybody's Fool, Richard Russo: maybe I'm alone, and LT and Buck will say this guy's too mass-market, but I think he succeeds with every book. I love this guy.

The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow: not my cup of tea. Started to remind me of Portnoy's Complaint or an Updike book, neither of which are compliments from me.

My Name is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout: I've mentioned this before. Elizabeth Strout is the best modern novelist in America. She's perfect. She, Russo, Richard Ford, and Jane Smiley (read the Last Hundred Years Trilogy, now that the weather is getting bad).

Tags:
books


Complete thread:

 

powered by my little forum