The Novel World

I suppose since my English BA background is in 19th and 20th Century literature, I’m not often tempted to read very many contemporary works of fiction. Other than Neil Gaiman, I think I stay pretty faithful to the greats of history.

I guess I can only hope that my little reviews won’t just be reiterating what people already think about these books. Obviously they’ve been classified under “Classics” for a reason.

I should make a fair portion of my to-read list forced contemporary, just so I can stay in touch with today’s world and stop delving into the past.

In that tone, the Liar’s Club by Mary Karr is a really hard book to get into. Its not hard in the writing style, or plot. Its a memoir and the writing style is short of jumpy, and as crazy as her family is, my attention wanders from the book frequently.

Its an honest book. I don’t think the author sat down to write this memoir with the intention of being poetic about or sugarcoating her childhood. I appreciate the fact that someone else had a dysfunctional childhood in a dysfuntional family. Those stories are the most fun to read anyways.