author: John Lanchester
name: Steev
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/01/23
shelves: novels, own-it, fun, food
review:

author: John Lanchester

name: Steev

average rating: 3.80

book published: 1996

rating: 4

read at: 2013/01/23

date added: 2013/01/23

shelves: fun, food, own-it

review:
This novel really has an odd arc to it. It starts out as an almost plotless meditation on fancy food and cooking. Then it gradually, very gradually, becomes the story of a scary, diabolical sociopath. As someone recently more and more interested in fine cuisine and the culinary arts, it was challenging but not overly so to make it through the first 170 pages or so of the gourmet musings of the narrator. And then it starts getting really juicy, though still full of ever so erudite foodstuff trivia.

[spoilers removed]

author: David Foster Wallace

name: Steev

average rating: 3.60

book published: 1987

rating: 5

read at: 2013/01/04

date added: 2013/01/04

shelves: fun, novels, own-it

review:
This is an excellent novel, especially considering that it's DFW's first novel, written when he was what, like 24 or something? It's interesting to see some of the same general features and issues that he put in Infinite Jest. A sort of comedic and surreal science fictionalism; a large wasteland off on the fringes of the narrative; a dysfunctional powerful family; a structure that allows for lots of asides and loosely connected but also sort of independent stories and ideas. It's just pretty goshdarned great.