Cliffnotes Summary: Holden Caulfield doesn’t know what he wants. Then again, who does?

Extended Summary: Holden Caulfield, at sixteen, is kicked out of boarding school, again. This doesn’t really come as a surprise: he’s failing almost all of his classes, he isn’t an athlete, he lacks motivation, and he’s supremely indecisive. Unwilling to go home and hear his mother’s disappointment, he decides instead to roam the city until Christmas break begins, visiting assorted New York landmarks and meeting with friends (mostly female) and teachers of his past.

What Worked: Alright, it’s true, I expected to like this book and I was disappointed. Holden is quite the character, though I don’t think I know anyone like him in real life. His first person narration is, at the very least, consistent even if it is annoying, as well as unique. My favorite part was the vivid descriptions of New York, including but not limited to the Met and the Museum of Natural History. Not only were the descriptions vivid, but they were exact–I loved knowing that even though the story took place years before my birth, the same scenes were still out there (in my neighborhood!). Definitely the best part.

What Didn’t Work: Holden was obnoxious. His patter was only interesting for so long, and not much really happened in the whole book. Some passages were nice, but otherwise the book wasn’t much of a page turner. There wasn’t any suspense, there wasn’t any humor, there wasn’t much plot or goal or even a message (at least not until at least 150 pages into the book)–basically, no reason to keep reading. I was pretty disappointed.

Overall: 2/5, because it just wasn’t that great, regrettably.

Cliffnotes Summary: The Casper Family Says: “Why won’t anything work right?!”

Extended Summary: Jonathan Casper has a seizure every time he sees a cloud (don’t ask), and he’s obsessed with finding the giant squid. His wife, Madeline, is obsessed with her pigeon experiment which she believes is failing. Daughter Amelia is obsessed with anti-capitalism, and daughter Thisbe is obsessed with God. Father (Jonathan’s father, I mean) Henry is obsessed with escape from his nursing home in hopes of flying away and finally being able to disappear. See a pattern? Joe Meno’s novel is an examination of passion: what causes it and what it in turn causes, how it both helps us grow and prevents us from progress. There are the self-motivated, and then there are the self-obsessed, and then there’s just trying to survive. All is covered.

What Worked: The characters in this book were amazing. Each member of the family had a clearly distinguished view point; no two characters were similar on the surface, though underneath it all you could still tell that they all came from the same family. The narration was brilliant, it was consistently nonchalant, even when describing the most obscene of events (including but not limited to acts of love, terrorism, and confusion). It kept the novel grounded even when the characters were going on crazy rampages. The dialog was great, too. It was pretty much a typically amazing Joe Meno novel (if you haven’t read Hairstyles of the Damned, I recommend that, too). Another thing that stood out: the subject matter. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t ever read a book about searching for a giant squid. Or pigeons. Or communist demonstrations–at least, not ones occurring in 2004 (the year the book takes place). Usually, when books are given such a specific time frame I get annoyed; novels are best when they’re timeless and relate-able. However, Meno uses this time setting to make the book feel more real than most of the “timeless” books I’ve read–he doesn’t use the specific dates to talk about technology and whatnot, but rather to cleverly integrate the political setting and energy (and passion) into the novel. It was very well done, on all counts.

What Didn’t Work: With books like this, it’s hard to say what didn’t work. Yes, it required thought (not your typical subway read), but most good books do. At first the specific time and place setting had me very taken aback but it really worked well to make a point. It was well written, good characters, great narration, cool setting, interesting topic. I can’t complain. This book has everything, for God’s sake. EVERYTHING.

Overall: 5/5, because everything was pretty much amazing, and there wasn’t anything bad that took away from it.

Cliffnotes Summary: Rob was a music-enthusiast with a girlfriend. Now he is without.

Extended Summary: Rob is doing alright with his failing record shop, until his girlfriend Laura moves out, at which point he becomes a total wreck. The book follows Rob through his lows, and further lows, in first person narration and top-five-of-all-time lists. He ventures to win back his girlfriend and fix other issues in his life with the power of pop music by his side.

What Worked: In honor of the book, I’m going to do these sections in a Top-3 list (because top-5 is too wordy and long):

1. The characters were great. Each of the main characters were really deep, realistic, and consistent people. I didn’t feel like I only related to Rob, I felt compassionate with every character. Reading it, each character felt like they had lived beyond the story, both afterwards and before, which is really the best sort of feeling.
2. The top-5 lists. They made the narration more original and really spiced up the book.
3. The dialog. Hornby knows when to paraphrase and when to go in-depth. He didn’t make you sit through ten pages of awkward dinner conversation, which really helped the book move along, but he didn’t skip the interesting stuff. There wasn’t any dialect, which made it easy to read, but each character still maintained a really distinct voice.

What Didn’t Work:

1. The ending was frustrating. That’s all I’ll say.
2. I didn’t get a lot of the obscure pop culture references. This didn’t make the book impossible to understand, but it did create a few bumps in translation.
3. This isn’t a what-went-wrong so much as a warning-for-Americans. There is a language gap. It’s not huge and usually is completely not-notice-able, but it’s there with references to Boots and Marks and Spencers and assorted phrases that occasionally make no sense. It don’t make for unhappy reading, but it is something to keep in mind.

Overall: 4/5, for the original characters, the unique voices, and the generally fun story.

Cliffnotes Summary: A novel about different kinds of love. Sort of.

Extended Summary: Okay, I’ll be honest with you, I finished this book yesterday and I’m still not so sure what it was about. There are a lot of different characters, Allison and Joe and Andrea and Helena and David, and they all fall in love with some people, like Peter and Lila and Keith and Hank, and then they fall in love with some other people, like Mike and Adrian and Eddie. And no matter how many times someone falls in love, it’s a little bit different.

What Worked: These characters were really interesting, especially their complicated relationships to each other. The narration was pretty funky, but in an awesome way. The whole time I was reading, I just wanted to have a conversation with Daniel Handler about the book. Handler has a knack for including himself as the author within a book’s narration, and this novel is no exception. It’s one hell of a ride, and provides an interesting (and much deeper than you’d expect) examination of what love is and the ways in which it works. Warning: Don’t try to read this book without paying very close attention. You’ll either get very confused, or you’ll miss some of the best twists and turns.

What Didn’t Work: For how great this book was, I won’t lie to you, about half way through I was wondering how long it would be before the book finished. At some point the efforts of the author felt pointless, never ending, and like a really, super extended (but entirely unnecessary) metaphor. But it got better. And everything comes back around in the end, which totally made up for the roughly twenty pages I spent being slightly, dare I say it, un-totally-engaged.

Overall: 5/5, one of my favorites, because of its message and its resonance and all the twisted-ness that is Daniel Handler.

Cliffnotes Summary:  The memoir of a conceited but self-aware 20-something.

Extended Summary: Dave Eggers documents his life as a 20-year-old in the 1990′s, living with his significantly younger brother. Neither are organized, but together they are able to forge a somewhat cohesive unit. Follows their lives through the meaningless and not-so-meaningless, everything from food, family, and school, to The Real World, symbolism, and death. Warning: contains a particularly long forward.

What Worked: If you decide at all to pick up this book, do it for the narrative craft. The self-awareness in its pages astounded me enough to make me keep turning the pages, page after page, until I finished, just to see in what sort of way he would tell the story next. The book had its fair share of easter eggs, too, which were a lot of fun to read–if you don’t know what I mean, take a closer look at the copyright page.

What Didn’t Work: For all of the cool things the book did, Eggers kept them going about fifty pages too long. Chapters would start with a really cool narrative twist and just continue with them for seventy long, monotonous pages. This resulted in a lot of page-skimming on my part, even though I was really enjoying the book.

Overall: 4/5, but really only because I love crazy narrations.

This is a blog. About books. I like reading, and I like talking about what I read. For each book I read, I’ll do a few things.

a. Short Summary: the book in about ten words or less.
b. Extended Summary: the book, actually.
c. What Worked: good stuff about the book.
d. What Didn’t Work: bad stuff about the book.
e. My Rating: a 1-5 scale.

1, I hated it;
2, I disliked it;
3, I liked it;
4, I really liked it;
5, it was the greatest thing, ever.

Comments and opinions are more than welcome. Discussion is encouraged. I want to keep this going for a year or 100 books, whichever comes first. Or second, if I decide I like doing this.