The movie adaptation of this book will be playing at SIFF this year so I’m getting ready by reading the novel. So far it’s awesome.

while some may write this book off as “just trying to be shocking” or “horridly shallow,” in glamorama ellis weaves a story that is much more complex than one may first notice. while, yes, there is a superfluous amount of brand-naming, that part’s of this book’s charm.

unlike american psycho (ellis’ most well-known book, i would guest), however, which shows what happens when one becomes consumed by brand and image, glamorama goes a step further to explore the construction of reality—do these brands and images reflect the world we live in or do we reflect them? he even takes the brand/image theme a step further by using models-slash-actors to question the distinction between “acting” and living, “real life” and a movie.

ellis masterfully constructs a story that is part-character study, part-spy novel, part-softcore porn, part-shock fiction, part-new york style guide, part-screenplay, part-terrorism how-to… glamorama is by-far ellis’ best work.

this book was absolute hell to read but extremely rewarding when i finished it. i started reading it two years before i started college and it really took me a year to read it, as i finished it like the week before i got to college. although it’s difficult to start, once you get into the thick of this book and stop trying to force yourself to comprehend everything, it gets a lot easier to go through—but, of course, you will miss a lot. i plan to re-read it sometime soon, though last time i started i gave up a few pages into it.

trained as a writer and extremely intelligent, hornbacher’s wasted is the best depiction of what it is like to have eating disorders that i’ve ever come across.

the book doesn’t come across as preachy or pathetic because hornbacher understands her disorder thoroughly (she has obviously spent lots of time ruminating over it and that comes across in this book). she doesn’t claim to be “over” her eating disorder, and honestly conveys what it is like to always be haunted by it.

i still like beloved better, but for a first novel, the bluest eye is amazing. although i’ve heard some complain (including morrison herself in the epilogue) about the fragmented style of the story, i think it works. it’s not as sophisticated as morrison’s style in beloved, but still powerful and relevant. and, of course, like any morrison novel, the language and story-telling is superb.

i have very mixed feelings about this book. while i applaud signorile’s critical look into the contemporary “gay lifestyle” or whatever (and, as a journalist, he does it well and covers a multitude of viewpoints), it still comes across as very preachy, which turned me off a little. he definitely advocates giving up the “ghettoization of homosexuality” (urban living, drugs, gyms, etc.) in order to become more suburban (ie: “normal,” ie: like straight people). although this, as i said, turns me off, at the same time, he provides lots of evidence that maybe such a change is needed, as more people become self-destructive through drugs and unprotected sex. i dunno, in the end, i think there are other solutions and i don’t think living in the suburbs in monogamous relationships are necessarily the answer. a good read, nonetheless.

this book is amazing. it takes a very thorough (almost too thorough, maybe?) look at the origin of hiv/aids and lays it all out there. i wouldn’t go so far as to call this “a quick read,” but it is written in very common terms and easy to get through without a background knowledge of microbiology or virology. it reads more like a history or anthropology text more than anything else—though one that presents more than one view. that’s what i like best about the river—although it does support one theory over the others, it gives serious consideration to lots of origin theories (including “out there” ideas such as biowarfare, extraterrestrial origin, etc.).

this book almost made me think like a businessperson, which is a very scary idea. the authors’ argument that capitalism can, and should, be environmentally sound is extremely convincing, even to a quasi-socialist, wannabe-environmentalist like me.

my favorite page of this book is the one where it just has lauren’s name on the top and no other text. the best part of the book is when paul and sean each tell about a “date” they had, though the details what happens are totally different. i know that messing around with multiple narrators and demonstrating the subjectivity of reality is nothing terribly new (though very postmodern), i think rules of attraction addresses the issue very well in a causual, real-life way.

personally, i was disappointed that the sci-fi novel-within-a-novel ended so soon, but overall this was a really good read. i predicted the twist at the end pretty early, but watching everything unravel was still rewarding.