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Finally, Some Good News
Two birdwatchers survive a nuclear holocaust.
162 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 30, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews
July 24, 2022
You have to pity anyone who reads this book and thinks it is about sex. The Iliad is about sex; Midsummer's Night Dream is about sex. Delicious Tacos' work is about masturbation. It is appropriate that his first full-length work was named after a part of the female anatomy, for there are properly no actual women in the author's work, only figments of them, their passing flesh. The one time DT actually tries to humanize a woman he fails, and it is this particular failure that keeps Finally Some Good News from being a superlative work. It is on the whole a nasty, ugly, brutal work, an appropriate reflection of our masturbatory age. But in the end DT cannot endure his own nastiness, ugliness, and brutality. He fails as an artist because there is still hope for him as a man--he still wants to console himself with humaneness, even past the apocalypse.
Unlike his first with that unpronounceable title, Finally Some Good News is a novel, and the novel form forces objectivity on the author and keeps him from lapsing into the over-emotionalism and self-pity of the first book, transforming what was merely pitiful into the pathetic. The novel’s protagonist is very clearly just a Delicious Tacos or perhaps a doppelganger and surrogate, but the conceit of the novel form restrains the author from indulging in the over-sharing from the first book.
The intertwining plots create claustrophobia. In the novels’ best scene, at least three plot threads come together, combing the narrator’s lust for Filipinas, the chaos of multicultural LA, and the offspring of a woman the narrator defiled. Whether the author intends to or not, the confluence of stories provides a kind of morality. The wasteland his licentiousness creates is a fitting correlative for the nihilism and despair that drives his conquests in the first place; but he is likewise forced to confront the developmental damage he has done to the son of one of his conquests, one that results in the boy's nihilism that is even worse than the narrators, and which ultimately damns humanity. The narrator feels a good deal of empathy for the poor boy victim; he suffers under the breakdown of order. But he cannot repent of his masturbatory obsession, nor can anyone around him, and so the children are defiled and the world is destroyed. The bare and tedious degeneracy of DT's first book is transformed from AA complaints into roving rape gangs. The effect is far more chilling and given the brutal subject matter. The moral awareness of seeing the son of the woman he defiled in front of the boy and united this with the apocalyptic main plot is the novel’s greatest feat. It is dark, demented, and completely earned.
But DT does not have the mettle to keep up the despair. Beset by roaming rape gangs in the post-apocalyptic world, the narrator encounters a woman in similar straits and grows attached to her. We have seen this before from DT; we know what happens: something goes wrong, the woman is either an anatomical assembly or something just less than the angels, and thus unreachably above the licentious narrator. Not here. DT does something unforgiveable: He makes her empathetic. He shoehorns in a gang rape scene to show why she ended up in her sad state. Isn't the hellworld experienced by the narrator enough? Why shove this hot-headed melodramatic vignette in an otherwise coolly-narrated story?
Why doesn't DT join the roaming rape gangs? We don’t ever really have a reason but for the fact that the narrator says he’s not into it. 300 pages of using women as toilets, and now we're supposed to feel sympathy for the female race? It doesn't follow. It in fact destroys the entire method DT has cultivated in all his work.
All of the sudden DT thinks he needs to start writing romance, about real love between human beings. But this is a betrayal of all his other work. DT is a pathetic masturbator. The roaming gangs of rapists are masturbators. Their cruelty is not that of the Romans carting off the Sabine women, but of a porn user. They hack up their body parts and leave them heaped on the floor. There is no reason for this. What better time than the apocalypse to start a harem? These men could have lineages larger than Ghengis Kahn’s. Yet when they are done raping these women, they hack them up and toss them away like a used kleenex. Nothing is wanted from these women besides pleasure, and after this is had, they can be returned to the constituent parts of what brought the pleasure.
The classics were better reflections of the sex drive. Not just pleasure but possession. It isn’t clear that sex needs explicit portrayal to represent it. Sex is already baked into the cake of a healthy romance. Observing it from the outside, as a batch of organs and sensations, severs it from the creature it is. This is why the romances and war stories of the past ages were better "sex stories" than those written by Roth, Lawrence, and now Delicious Tacos. To write explicitly about sex is to write an anatomy textbook or a book of onanism. This is what DT has endeavored to do; it is the life he has chosen. As this novel shows, he is one of the best purveyors of our onanistic modern wasteland. But it also shows that not even Delicious Tacos can bear not to try to peer out of it.
Unlike his first with that unpronounceable title, Finally Some Good News is a novel, and the novel form forces objectivity on the author and keeps him from lapsing into the over-emotionalism and self-pity of the first book, transforming what was merely pitiful into the pathetic. The novel’s protagonist is very clearly just a Delicious Tacos or perhaps a doppelganger and surrogate, but the conceit of the novel form restrains the author from indulging in the over-sharing from the first book.
The intertwining plots create claustrophobia. In the novels’ best scene, at least three plot threads come together, combing the narrator’s lust for Filipinas, the chaos of multicultural LA, and the offspring of a woman the narrator defiled. Whether the author intends to or not, the confluence of stories provides a kind of morality. The wasteland his licentiousness creates is a fitting correlative for the nihilism and despair that drives his conquests in the first place; but he is likewise forced to confront the developmental damage he has done to the son of one of his conquests, one that results in the boy's nihilism that is even worse than the narrators, and which ultimately damns humanity. The narrator feels a good deal of empathy for the poor boy victim; he suffers under the breakdown of order. But he cannot repent of his masturbatory obsession, nor can anyone around him, and so the children are defiled and the world is destroyed. The bare and tedious degeneracy of DT's first book is transformed from AA complaints into roving rape gangs. The effect is far more chilling and given the brutal subject matter. The moral awareness of seeing the son of the woman he defiled in front of the boy and united this with the apocalyptic main plot is the novel’s greatest feat. It is dark, demented, and completely earned.
But DT does not have the mettle to keep up the despair. Beset by roaming rape gangs in the post-apocalyptic world, the narrator encounters a woman in similar straits and grows attached to her. We have seen this before from DT; we know what happens: something goes wrong, the woman is either an anatomical assembly or something just less than the angels, and thus unreachably above the licentious narrator. Not here. DT does something unforgiveable: He makes her empathetic. He shoehorns in a gang rape scene to show why she ended up in her sad state. Isn't the hellworld experienced by the narrator enough? Why shove this hot-headed melodramatic vignette in an otherwise coolly-narrated story?
Why doesn't DT join the roaming rape gangs? We don’t ever really have a reason but for the fact that the narrator says he’s not into it. 300 pages of using women as toilets, and now we're supposed to feel sympathy for the female race? It doesn't follow. It in fact destroys the entire method DT has cultivated in all his work.
All of the sudden DT thinks he needs to start writing romance, about real love between human beings. But this is a betrayal of all his other work. DT is a pathetic masturbator. The roaming gangs of rapists are masturbators. Their cruelty is not that of the Romans carting off the Sabine women, but of a porn user. They hack up their body parts and leave them heaped on the floor. There is no reason for this. What better time than the apocalypse to start a harem? These men could have lineages larger than Ghengis Kahn’s. Yet when they are done raping these women, they hack them up and toss them away like a used kleenex. Nothing is wanted from these women besides pleasure, and after this is had, they can be returned to the constituent parts of what brought the pleasure.
The classics were better reflections of the sex drive. Not just pleasure but possession. It isn’t clear that sex needs explicit portrayal to represent it. Sex is already baked into the cake of a healthy romance. Observing it from the outside, as a batch of organs and sensations, severs it from the creature it is. This is why the romances and war stories of the past ages were better "sex stories" than those written by Roth, Lawrence, and now Delicious Tacos. To write explicitly about sex is to write an anatomy textbook or a book of onanism. This is what DT has endeavored to do; it is the life he has chosen. As this novel shows, he is one of the best purveyors of our onanistic modern wasteland. But it also shows that not even Delicious Tacos can bear not to try to peer out of it.
May 1, 2020
I have been reading Delicious Tacos since the beginning, checking his blog, worried every lapse in posting that he ODed, drunk drove into a ditch or just threw in the towel.
It had me burning an extra candle for our patron saint of horny slackers. But the guy changed before my blog reading eyes.
In the afterbirth of his new books I bare witness to his great becoming like a slug in the sun, and tremble before his gripping prose as it captures the modern person’s destitution in the face of our consumer society that won’t even throw us a measly pity fuck.
Tacos is a humble writer, never condescending and the level of imagination in his books always resinates with me as he makes vivid the romance and humor of our cognition’s self flagellation. And there is no way I can comment on his work without mentioning his often unexpected insights and fierce investigation into the depravity and ecstasy of horniness. A topic he broaches with the undue respect and scholarship it deserves.
It really is a marvelous and rare thing to read a book someone created out of passion and not because they saw a market, wanted to pander to an audience, or thought it was their turn to be a famous author. My copy of Finally Some Good News is one of my personal treasures and one of the first books I’d grab if my apartment was burning down and I was by my bookshelf. This guy really puts his foot in it and your life is poorer without his books.
It had me burning an extra candle for our patron saint of horny slackers. But the guy changed before my blog reading eyes.
In the afterbirth of his new books I bare witness to his great becoming like a slug in the sun, and tremble before his gripping prose as it captures the modern person’s destitution in the face of our consumer society that won’t even throw us a measly pity fuck.
Tacos is a humble writer, never condescending and the level of imagination in his books always resinates with me as he makes vivid the romance and humor of our cognition’s self flagellation. And there is no way I can comment on his work without mentioning his often unexpected insights and fierce investigation into the depravity and ecstasy of horniness. A topic he broaches with the undue respect and scholarship it deserves.
It really is a marvelous and rare thing to read a book someone created out of passion and not because they saw a market, wanted to pander to an audience, or thought it was their turn to be a famous author. My copy of Finally Some Good News is one of my personal treasures and one of the first books I’d grab if my apartment was burning down and I was by my bookshelf. This guy really puts his foot in it and your life is poorer without his books.
July 26, 2020
Delicious Tacos'un blog yazılarından sonra kitaplarına bir şans vermeye karar verdim ve açıkçası bu kitabın yüz sayfacık olması beni biraz üzdü. Tadı damağımda kaldı diyebilirim, ve en yakın zamanda diğer kitapları okumak istiyorum.
Güzel. Günümüzün romanlarını okumak da hoşmuş.
Ayrı bir kıtadaki hayal kırıklıkları ne kadar yakın bizlere...
Güzel. Günümüzün romanlarını okumak da hoşmuş.
Ayrı bir kıtadaki hayal kırıklıkları ne kadar yakın bizlere...
February 14, 2022
Живеем в някакъв странен, бързоразвиващ се свят и не знаем накъде отива той. От една страна животът на цялата планета е най-благоденственият, сигурен, мирен и здрав от който и да е период в историята на човечеството... а от друга човечеството сякаш не е готово за такъв бърз прогрес и толкова голямо благоденствие. Това води до ексцесии във всякакъв смисъл - материални, интелектуални, идеологически, емоционални и т.н.
В тия свързани къси фантастични/дистопични разкази за съвременния свят (повечето от които са сравнително смислени, някои - изобщо не), Delicious Tacos ни показва колко песимистично е настроен към бъдещето на обществото. Като базирам мнението си на това, което знам за човешката природа, може и да е прав. Като базирам мнението си на историческа екстраполация на различните тенденции, може и да не е.
В тия свързани къси фантастични/дистопични разкази за съвременния свят (повечето от които са сравнително смислени, някои - изобщо не), Delicious Tacos ни показва колко песимистично е настроен към бъдещето на обществото. Като базирам мнението си на това, което знам за човешката природа, може и да е прав. Като базирам мнението си на историческа екстраполация на различните тенденции, може и да не е.
April 7, 2023
So schizophrenic, so strange and yet very good.
August 19, 2019
I decided to give this pseudonymous author a second chance and do very much regret it. This book has so much potential but it is squandered at every opportunity. The set-up is that the main character from the last book, who is also the author, is suddenly put in a post-apocalyptic wasteland that he helped create. He meets an attractive woman from work who previously rejected him and she ends up abandoning him in the end for the sake of a commodious lifestyle offered to her by someone else. He leaves her behind and enjoys his newfound freedom.
The narrative is interrupted by the occasional short story that either has nothing to do with the narrative or connects to it in a round-about way. I didn't feel like this was the right way to tell the story he wanted to tell.
All in all, this story moves too fast and ends too soon. It was an interesting idea.
The narrative is interrupted by the occasional short story that either has nothing to do with the narrative or connects to it in a round-about way. I didn't feel like this was the right way to tell the story he wanted to tell.
All in all, this story moves too fast and ends too soon. It was an interesting idea.
November 28, 2020
A scathing mockery of modern times but with all the fiery energy of a good road trip novel. Yeah, it has a few weak spots but otherwise a cracking good read that you will have you laughing at times and despairing at others. And the last few sentences are killer.
March 3, 2019
Awkward mix of fiction and personal anecdotes. It didn't work.
January 19, 2023
Very cool book about a neurotic sex pest surviving a nuclear apocalypse. The author may or may not be a sex criminal.
August 24, 2024
He didn't know Ancient Greek. He had some form of ADHD. His mother had BPD. His gains weren't improving. He had a girlfriend he loved and he hardly ever saw her, not that he was worried because she also loved him. He was stuck reading Jane Austen. He was bored of reading Jane Austen. He read other books to distract from writing his thesis. He still didn't know if he would pass his Transfer of Status. Sometimes when he woke up in the morning he longed either for a violent war to prove himself in or such spontaneous success from his last and still unpublished novel that he could continue doing nothing in peace. And that is what he spent all day and night doing. Nothing, it felt like. He had no idea if anything that he produced for his supervisor was good, bad or anything in between. Most days he had at least one glass of wine. It helped him write. Maybe he even needed it to write. Sometimes he wondered if it would be the same over the course of the next year.
Soon it would be his birthday. He would be 24.
Soon it would be his birthday. He would be 24.
May 7, 2023
Finally, Some Good News by Delicious Tacos takes the reader into a nuclear apocalypse via thirty non-linear chapters. Loaded with witty cynicism, this novel digs deep into important moments in its protagonist’s life instead of chronicling his biography, which is why it never gets boring. The protagonist is a bitter tech-employee in his 40s who hates his life, his job, and the world as we know it. Hence, even an atomic cloud may only improve his circumstances.
A deadpan-humoured rant on modern jobs. A fun short novel which allows itself to be both cynical and romantic.
A deadpan-humoured rant on modern jobs. A fun short novel which allows itself to be both cynical and romantic.
March 19, 2024
Felt a little bad enjoying this as a woman but not enough to not give it five stars
November 14, 2020
Twisted, with flashes of brilliance. If Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club) and Michel Houellebecq (Whatever, Submission) had an illegitimate baby, it would probably be this author, who has his own style. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Hunter S. Thompson are the apparent grandparents, and their fans and friends should really do something about supporting this alienated grandchild abandoned in the desolate wastelands of LA.
April 20, 2019
Almost brilliant
A short book, worth the 3 bucks I paid. The author is a very talented wordsmith who captures the emptiness of modern life while giving us a cutting critique of 21st Century corporate business.
The plot points in the Philippines and the nuclear attack are ridiculous.
The story is very sexually explicit and features 2 rape scenes. However, the author is at his best when talking about the relationship stuff. His post bomb survival story is weak .
This guy is funny and has a unique voice. Look forward to his next book.
A short book, worth the 3 bucks I paid. The author is a very talented wordsmith who captures the emptiness of modern life while giving us a cutting critique of 21st Century corporate business.
The plot points in the Philippines and the nuclear attack are ridiculous.
The story is very sexually explicit and features 2 rape scenes. However, the author is at his best when talking about the relationship stuff. His post bomb survival story is weak .
This guy is funny and has a unique voice. Look forward to his next book.
October 31, 2020
Engaging and compelling. A guy and a random co-worker find themselves survivors of a nuclear holocaust, forced to flee, fight, and come to an understanding about the sexual nature of their relationship. A relationship which would have been highly unlikely without a catastrophic, population-clearing event. Rough around the edges, with some dislocating changes in tone. The kind of chaotic storytelling a nuclear disaster might cause. Sharp observations. Very smart and poignant (auto-correct tried to insert "pungent;" that too). Great read.
July 14, 2023
A masterpiece.
September 15, 2020
Finally, Some Good News by author Delicious Tacos is a prescient and impressive accomplishment in writing. It’s also vulgar, unapologetic, offensive, and politically incorrect in almost every way imaginable.
Which is why I can’t recommend it highly enough.
This book, which I read in one sitting because it was so compellingly written, is a treat to the reader because you realize very early on that the author is in full command of his voice, style, and narrative.
Speaking of style, the one with which Mr. Tacos writes is easy to grasp, most notably that he forgoes quotation marks around dialogue and just lets the conversations flow. As you read the novel, the switch between characters talking and narrative becomes seamless.
Now, if you didn’t get the hint from the first paragraph, this is where I’ll offer this warning. If you’re easily offended just keep walking. This book is unflinching in its description of a modern man, navigating his way through the world of Social Media, Dating Apps like Tinder, Sex and Relationships, Despair and Hope, and the state of the unstable world we find ourselves in.
But it’s also a genuinely Honest book. Which is what made it so difficult to put down. Which is why I began reading it late on a Friday night and didn’t stop until early Saturday morning when I was done with it. Short (though non-linear) chapters with tight, well-thought out narratives made for a quick read and several days afterward of thinking, “What the hell was that?”
Now, I’ll not spoil any of the specifics of the story, but suffice it to say that it’s about a protagonist who’s trying to find himself, trying to find some form of happiness, who has doubts that happiness is even possible, and then there’s the whole End of the World situation (which will give you insight into the Michael Bluth quote at the beginning of this review).
This last should come as no surprise, there being a Mushroom Cloud on the cover of the book and all.
But it’s the lead up to, surviving and and aftermath of that calamity that is the story of Finally, Some Good News. And along the way (especially with all that is happing in the year 2020) you’ll surely ask yourself about the author, “How is he so spot on? Is he from the future?”
Like I said, Prescient.
It’s because the author is a person who has his finger on the pulse of the nation, who sees America for exactly what it is at this moment in time. It’s not always pretty or particularly flattering, but it is honest. And there is beauty in that honesty.
I’ll likely add to this review with more specifics (along with some Spoiler Alerts in order to speak about certain parts of narrative).
March 27, 2019
With "Finally, Some Good News," DT reminds us that the shackles we're all wearing are largely of our own making and that we don't truly need a major cataclysm to shake them off. Sure, the inevitable comparisons with "Fight Club" are probably already circulating, and if you enjoyed that, you'll likely enjoy this. But that's not the point. This is a more intimate rendering of man's age-old desire to escape the absurdities and supposed trappings of our modern society. And, if I read it right, I think it's ultimately a much more optimistic take than the one Palahniuk offered us nearly 25 years ago. Dark? Sure. But so is the world we've made. This is a short, important read. It's a much-welcomed splash of cold water that will stick with you for a very long time.
January 2, 2022
Love the style of this book. Frank, blunt and overly concerned with the minutia of his day to day life and existentialism; this makes this all a page turner, be it the nucleus Holocaust storyline or the Philippines one. These things also make the book hard to read because it's clear he only knows how to write one topic and there's only so many ways you can listen to him make the same point about men and women and relationships. I love the prose itself and the world play and he manages to give you a glimpse inside his mind while also speaking for the entire American populace, which can make the style somewhat off-putting. But i guess i continue reading for that purpose
December 11, 2018
Delicious Tacos is the current-year Henry Miller, or at least is on his way to being so. Obscene, yes, but not off-puttingly so.
This was an interesting evolution from the author's previous disconnected collections of semi-autobiographical short stories/vignettes (evolved from blog posts) -- a short novel as main storyline told through these short stories, maybe 80% of which were connected to the plot, in a structured and engaging format.
Only the main character/narrator was fully fleshed out, but that was probably deliberate.
Overall, one of the better books I've read.
This was an interesting evolution from the author's previous disconnected collections of semi-autobiographical short stories/vignettes (evolved from blog posts) -- a short novel as main storyline told through these short stories, maybe 80% of which were connected to the plot, in a structured and engaging format.
Only the main character/narrator was fully fleshed out, but that was probably deliberate.
Overall, one of the better books I've read.
June 27, 2022
This novel is very apropos for the times. Russia moving nukes into Belarus, CNN calling for nuclear war, Poland provoking all of Europe into a complete disaster. This cheery selection details life after the curtain falls. A wonderful story of bird watchers, sexual innuendo, and grit. Delicious Tacos unedited version of events shake the world with ballistic style and literary power. Highly recommend all of his writing. Fans of Charles Bukowski, Larry Brown, Celine, and Henry Miller would enjoy this book very much.
January 14, 2025
A remarkably vulgar and raw book, this is the first of Tacos' books I've read, having followed him online for some time - his method of writing, though brutal, fits perfectly the subject and the view of our modern times that he gives us - I see another review refer to this book as masturbatory in nature, and I cannot help but agree. This is an unpleasant, hilarious book, with the same vibe as a Houllbecq novel, its style of writing very fluid, the dialogue natural, which captures the heart: I read this in one sitting. Big fan
September 13, 2020
A story about a data analyst for a marketing firm who unwittingly assists terrorists in bringing about a nuclear holocaust on major U.S. cities and follows the aftermath for a few weeks. This is a humorous and cynical book in which the narrative repeatedly goes back and forth between past and present in the life of the protagonist. It's a very quick read and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
December 23, 2021
It was pretty over the top. Very cynical. You can tell by the writing that this guy is probably in his 40s and hasn’t been married or had kids. His view of humanity is super rough and bleak. It’s like the author hasn’t felt any sort of loving gentleness.
Interesting story though. Read the whole thing in one sitting.
Interesting story though. Read the whole thing in one sitting.
January 7, 2022
Weird book. There is a nuclear attack by ISIS I think and the world as we know it ends. This is the story of a few characters just before and after the attack but I really didn't get it, there weren't many names so at times you didn't know who were we following or reading about, just really freaking weird.
December 10, 2019
I originally gave this a 3star, Then I read my highlights. Some parts are bombastic; others subtle and touching. A fancy New York literary agent would have smoothed the rough edges but a great read
April 8, 2020
A banger as always
Delicious Tacos — he makes you laugh, he makes you cry, he makes you wonder whether the Industrial Revolution and its consequences, yadda yadda. I enjoyed the narrative + character development, so I look forward to DT's future extended works of fiction.
Delicious Tacos — he makes you laugh, he makes you cry, he makes you wonder whether the Industrial Revolution and its consequences, yadda yadda. I enjoyed the narrative + character development, so I look forward to DT's future extended works of fiction.
July 30, 2019
Very enjoyable short read with lots of interesting observations.
November 9, 2019
Extremely well-written. It’s a shame that guys like DT need to hide their talent behind a pseudonym. Tales of alienation are like blues songs: the point isn’t to get the blues, but to escape them.
February 2, 2020
A lot of potential but DT is still a slave to Houellebecq.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews