Rabbit Redux by John Updike

Rabbit Redux by John Updike
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This a strange book. It takes place in the 1960s, and Rabbit is racist and misogynistic, like a lot of people were/are in real life. Rabbit experiences some growth on the racist front, though Rabbit is so flawed that it's very incomplete. I noticed no growth on his misogynism. More importantly, on the racial front, Updike’s writing is grotesque, even apart from and independently of the inner workings of his the character of Rabbit. I'm not a fan of striking books because they're out-of-date (as this one surely is) because we need to look at what seemed normal in a particular time period to understand where we are now. We are still deeply flawed now, and we need to examine why we've come such a small distance in the last 60 years.

The plot mostly creeped me out and seemed overly outlandish. The description of the book above calls it "sexy" and it's the opposite of sexy. All the sex scenes are sad and horrible to me.

Updike is a really good writer and there's a lot of good writing in this big flawed book. I liked the first book better, though I've heard some people say this is their favorite of the set. I can't say I actually enjoyed this one.

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Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was really challenging. There were a lot of amazing thoughts threaded throughout, and there was a certain satisfaction in figuring out the storyline as things are revealed out of order, but it was also excruciating.

Have you seen the movie Memento? That's the idea, the entire storyline is out of order, constructed from gossip and different point of views, and sometimes pure speculation. And it's conveyed in sentences that are a paragraph long (though my husband assures me they are not "run-on" because the grammar is correct).

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The World According to Garp by John Irving

The World According to Garp by John Irving
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first read this as a teenager and didn't fully appreciate it. At the time, it just seemed really weird and sexualized. Which it is. But wow, there's so much happening in this novel, both on the surface and in a literary way. And dear lord, the under toad. I hear you, Irving. And I see the toad everywhere.

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The Game by Neil Strauss

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by Neil Strauss
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is super weird. It's both interesting and gross. Like rubbernecking.

The book starts heavy on the gross side by following a group of sad pickups artists that basically gamify the ability to pick up women with great success. It's a little rapey though the author repeatedly gives women a chance to back out of any sexual contact and gives the "target" women a chance to say no or leave. But the rapey tactics include (from least to most): deception, psychological tricks, and hypnosis (?!).

But then the book starts to interest us in the individuals' problems and neuroses. Plus all the psychology is interesting even if I spitefully don't want it to be. The author also dishes on a number of celebrities he met while working his regular journalism job during this time period.

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