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My latest novel MINE is free in the Kindle store until end of day tomorrow. Get your free copy and boost your 2026 reading challenge with a page-turner thriller!

I devoured Shirley Jackson's collection of short stories in a week and eagerly jumped into her novel Hangsaman expecting something similar to The Lottery. This one took well over a month to get through and it. Was. Weird. Had little idea what was really going on but could tell there was so much darkness lurking below the surface of a seemingly simple story. It reminded me of when I first watched Mulholland Drive - in

After the first couple chapters, I was worried this would just be overtly critical without offering any real critique. Instead, I find myself identifying with the author's experience. I have been pleasantly surprised to find it much more on the "show" side than "tell," taking the reader through her journey from evangelical obsession to gradual disillusion and spiritual exhaustion. Excited to see how her story ends.

What a trip! It's becoming more and more readable, but I could use a nadsat dictionary. :)

"Nadsat" is definitely an adjustment, but I'm already enthralled by Burgess' prose. He certainly has used language to create a terrifying yet fascinating picture of the future.

First impressions: By far the strangest prose I've ever read. Few paragraph breaks, no quotation marks to differentiate when a new character is speaking (even in back-to-back sentences) and very little adherence to punctuation or grammar - not to mention sentences that occasionally run on for half a page. However, Selby has me completely hooked. His style is simultaneously humorous, dark, violent and terrifying.