David D > Recent Status Updates

The first story is like a litmus test. You’ll either like it or you won’t. It’s also like a Fabergé egg and also like falling into a fibonacci spiral. Kelly Link shows all y’all the things she made, some secrets more than others, so just watch.

Like another reviewer here noted, and mimicked, some of it’s just off the wall. But unlike other writers who do this, Link writes with heart woven into the fabric

Hard going, can't relate, but... the writer McEwan certainly knows how to play with words, turn mundanity into dance.

This is Swiftian satire. I wonder how many people pick up on the subtexts, the ironies, the sardonic turns of phrase, and realize they & their world are being dissed?

Worse than Updike but similar, self-indulgent mirror of the characters portrayed.

Love points made but tone of voice is cloying.

Pretty obvious the writer's got an ironic voice thing going, satiric/sarcasm, whatever the craze that started in the '90s is called, that arch, distance-creating narrative voice. Sophomoric humor. I'm entertained by the characters, can't say I like them or they're real, but I care.

Surreal. Like Godot or Sartre or Kafka, without gravitas (or gravity, many physical laws are suspended) but complete with adjectival "zany" humor. Makes me yearn and wish for the wonderful wordsmithing works of Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues).

Nobody else builds worlds as effortlessly (for the reader) as Wells does. She's found elegant ways of explaining geography, culture, history and backstory
The little touches of humor, irony, sarcasm are priceless

I'm weary of reading books interminably slogging thru them, with that face-wrinkling sense of them being bad-tasting medicine, to get to the wrap-up ending. I'm weary of reading reviews here by people that seem to think the point of reading is the plot of the book, not the story, not how it's told. Many of these books should shorter length, as if author had a good idea of an ending but no idea at all how to get there

Much, much better than I'd expected, especially reading some reactionary reviews here and on Amazon. Really well thought out, plot and character wise, and heartening. In a good way.

Somewhat indulgent but mind-stretching (as time travel always must be) and poignant, as perhaps it must as well. Some conflate plots with too much filigree, fancy footwork. So far though, Lavanya Lakshminararyan's "Bergamot and Vetiver" is by far the most elegant and haunting. This one (as all time-travel stories do) especially provides us some of the best, authentic and long-lasting time traveling we'll ever do.

Really some exemplary stories, and cultural variety... stimulating! At last, this editor is hitting his stride in picking for us his "best." I hope he's able to be at least this good as an editor to the writers, guiding them to be their best, to see what they're too close to the work to see...165

Reading even one paragraph of GGK's often is as profound and fulfilling as a whole good novel is of most other writers. Especially this novel, built upon (and within) two others -- Children of Earth and Sky and A Brightness Long Ago. He writes novels that are mythic; spanning history and layers of meaning. Having way too much fun, too much of a rich, strong experience to read him any faster. He writes like I think.

Hard to realize his voice is gone from my life, our lives. Such a good, humane and perceptive man who also wrote for us. For me, this is one of his very, very best works. Deep-diving essays. But invites going back and staying longer with her earlier work in hand. The title says it all.