Tag: Books

Actual Laugh Out Loud

Well now if you’re a writer who aspires to be clever I can tell you firsthand that “The Gunseller” will most likely make you want to quit.  It did in my case.

This guy’s control over his effusive cleverness is uncommon to say the least.  I laugh out loud around twice a page. And I don’t mean the nauseating little abbreviation that people put next to the equally nauseating sideways smiley face when they’ve texted you something that they feel is inappropriate, completely not-funny or both.  I actually mean that I actually laugh out loud.

Incidentally, the plot just happens to rock as hard as a Ludlum novel (which of course he wryly alludes to early on) and not once do you feel like you’re reading a “first novel”. If you’ve read “Don’t Point That Thing at Me” and dug it, this is quite similar and I feel that it’s just as good.

Soon I Will Be Invincible” has a great first couple pages but quickly becomes quite the opposite.  This book makes me want to write the book that the cover makes me wish that he wrote.  The story is basically a comic book story very similar to X-Men but told from the point of view of one of the supervillains and includes his entire life story.  This isn’t a novel idea in the world of graphic novels but it apparently is novel in the world of novel novels.

The guy is a good writer but I can’t help thinking that his editor could or should have made this book a more consistently enjoyable experience for me but just working a little bit harder.  I struggled through some Mojave Desert dryness and gave up for a while.  I’ll letcha know if it gets any better when I try it again.

COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR

Regarding “Jude the Obscure”

Regarding “Jude the Obscure”:

Fuck this guy.

Fuck this book.

Gross. Cheap tales of misery. And death and poverty despair, etc. Like when they get kicked out of their last little hovel and they find the two babies and the little boy hanging in the closet from cords around their necks with a note that says “becuz we are too menny”. Oh good one, buddy that deserves a sideways smiley face 🙂

This entire work seems bent on making one point, which is that marriage is a bad idea. That’s it. What an horrible man to drag readers through all that crap just to make such a point. And ya know what’s worse? I still don’t believe him. Wtf?!

Anyhoo, the guy is an amazing writer so I’m gonna do a little research and see if The Madding Crowd is his only non-tragedy. Jezuz I feel like I’ve been through the wars.

Oh and btw, I read “Tess” only up until she gets raped by the wealthy shitbag dude.

Right, good ol’ Tom Hardy. Jerk.

COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR

Dirty Cold Wet and Starving and Sad and Lonely

Alright, I’m having a fucked up relationship with ol’ Tom Hardy now. He’s a sado-masochist. I think I hate him……or rather am disappointed and a little grossed out by how he chose to spend his genius. He seems to have totally derailed to total bitterness at some point.

I have tried to start three more of his bigboys and all of them are simply tragedies wherein good and wonderful people are slowly tricked and trapped into small and mean peoples awful little worlds. It is a slow and painful demise based mostly on our vain desires for other people and how its always the wrong people that we desire most. We die dirty cold wet and starving and sad and lonely.

Gross.

Damn, I can’t put myself through that right now in my life but I just love reading this guy’s sentences. They’re just amazing. And I love going into this guys world and being there for hours.

Dammit.

COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR

Far From The Madding Crowd

Far From the Madding Crowd has got me. I have about 100 pages left and it’s really just amazing.
I don’t even like this story but Hardy is such a phenominal writer of sentences. Jesus can the guy make ’em. Sentences. His are my favorites.

The atmosphere is intoxicating, too. Complete and intoxicating. When I think about this book during the day it makes me want to stop whatever I’m doing and read more. I don’t know what I’m gonna do when I’m done. Read “Tess” I spose.

If you bother to read this just be forewarned that it starts slow. Really slow.

COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR

Spartan Gold

It took me exactly my entire flight home from Adelaide to Sydney to San Francisco to Portland to finish this kinda-silly pop adventure tale. Perfect for airplanes. The airplane movies of books.

COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR

Ol’ Windy

I found it strange how many people asked me “how’s yer day been” yesterday in Sydney. Ironic because that day had been spent exclusively in vans, airports and airplanes. “Bad” would be the most accurate answer when one includes the fact that I was, and still am, recovering from losing my voice almost entirely.

Well it’s a new day, we’re in Adelaide (“Rad-elaide”) and I’m going to hopefully nap until my voice returns. I will be aided by Thomas Hardy’s “Far From the Maddening Crowd”. Let’s just say that ol’ Tommy was a writer of a “windy” nature so I should be out cold in just a few minutes.

COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR

The Tesseract

Ok, I’m on my way to Australia and this is my book. So far its frustratingly over-descriptive and way too self-consciously cool…. but I must add that at least it actually IS cool, enough.  Cool in an exotic foreign poverty kind of way. Oooh. Deep.

By the time I get to Australia I’ll be long since done and will letcha know if its worth the fourteen bucks and/or the time it took to read it instead of something else.

COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR

Penmarric

Thought this photo was a funny little book review in and of itself.

The book sucks primarily because every character in it is a real piece of shit.  Like an Altman film but somehow Altman could make that work for me. Or at least he did in “Nashville”.  Not “Shortcuts” though.  But that’s a whole different section on the website.

COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR

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The Dandy Warhols

Date City Venue Country
Tour: 2024-12 30th Anniversary
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