Downtown Owl - Chuck Klosterman

Wanting to like this book, because I like his writing on music and pop culture (Sex, Death and Cocoa Puffs, IV) I tried to overlook the flaws in this book, but by the time the ending comes (slapped on) my patience had waned. Klosterman can write a good piece on a Guns'N'Roses cover band or Latinos who love Morrissey, but his journalistic/ironic detachment isn't suited to creating characters the reader needs to care about, or at least be mildly interested in, especially given the ending.  There are moments when the  divergences into pop culture and commentary achieve a level of near brilliance, but this novel would have worked better as a faux-memoir or having  Klosterman  embedded in a small North Dakota town an report from the ground.

Broadsides - Mordecai Richler

A collection of reviews, journal entries and what can only be called filler, released after what I consider to be his best book, Solomon Gursky Was Here. Even if it feels like a publishing obligation, it still works - the Richler style applied to sex manuals, vapid actresses and writing.  The last piece, a collection of journal entries, is the best piece, and for fans, you can see Richler's mind already focusing on his next (and final book) Barney's Version. At his most shallow he's still better than many others, as this collection proves, and he's been missed.

King, Queen, Knave - Nabokov

An early one from an old master, a too familiar plot (ambitious wife with a young lover plots to kill wealthy husband) is rendered with an expert's touch. Nabokov re-worked the translation of this novel in the 1960's, injecting the atmosphere with the spectre of Nazism and a curious sub-plot involving automatons. Moves between stream-of-consciousness, imagination, perception and drama and an ending that takes some time to get there but surprises in the end.

Famous Authors And Their Typewriters

 When I was teaching in Japan, I taught kids class that used a textbook from the early 90's that had picture cards showing a secretary (a woman) using a typewriter. When I asked the 8 and 9 year olds what this was (pointing to the typewriter) they gave me blank stares until one boy said "Computer?"
I explained what a typewriter was - you fed paper into the top and it printed the letters directly onto the paper and if you made a mistake you had to white it out - and they all looked at me as I were mad.

Flavorwire

The Pale King Early Review

Earlier this year I toyed with the idea of re-reading Infinite Jest. Instead, I've already pre-ordered a copy of DFW's new novel,The Pale King.  Lev Grossman at Time has an early review:

"Pietsch spent two years assembling and editing the contents of that duffel bag. The results will be published, appropriately enough, on April 15. If The Pale King isn't a finished work, it is, at the very least, a remarkable document, by no means a stunt or an attempt to cash in on Wallace's posthumous fame. Despite its shattered state and its unpromising subject matter, or possibly because of them, The Pale King represents Wallace's finest work as a novelist."

Time Magazine

The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things - Barry Glassner

A valiant attempt to use logic, reason and statistical reality to dispel our fears about airplane crashes, road rage and young black men. Pre-9/11, it has a wholesome feeling (should we be more afraid of terrorist attacks? Residents in NYC, London and Madrid might have a strong opinion) of fears that we used to worry about - Internet porn, for example.  The main message remains the same - our real problems are so large and complicated and difficult to fix it's far easier to get worked up by less substantial problems.

F.I.A.S.C.O. - Frank Partnoy

A pale cousin of Liar's Poker, the best part of F.I.A.S.C.O. was the unheeded  warning that the economic collapse in 2008, caused by Wall Street shenanigans, could have been avoided if the people who had the power to stop it had bothered to listen. Which no one, did, because they could hear over the whaps of their money being counted.  F.I.A.S.C.O. focuses on hedge-funds at Morgan Stanley, an area of finance so shady that it didn't even fall apart in 2008. Clunky in parts, it reads like a very long magazine article that 's a bit heavy on the technical jargon. In the end you will either shake your head and sigh or clutch your fist, and move your money out of stocks and into a rusty coffee can in the backyard.