Showing posts with label satire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label satire. Show all posts
Jan 31, 2019
Nov 1, 2016
Mar 1, 2016
Sep 1, 2014
Lost for Words - Edward St. Aubyn
Lost for Words - St. Aubyn, EdwardSummary: A frenzied competition for a major British literary award pits several colorful characters against one another and is complicated by an accidental entry, a scandal involving a judge, and a vengeful reject.
Library Journal Review
As literary awards go, there couldn't be a more unlikely collection of judges, authors, publishers, and publicists than the one assembled for the Elysian Prize, a fiction award standing in for the real-life Man Booker Prize. The committee, chaired by former MP Malcolm Craig and made up of a self-important group of writers, academics, and actors, set themselves the task of finding works of fiction with social relevance, geographic representation, and political correctness. With no intention of actually reading most of the cringe-worthy submissions, each member champions the one book he or she has glanced at, the most improbable of which is The Palace Cookbook, an assemblage of recipes and anecdotes from India submitted accidentally by a careless publisher instead of the serious novel that should have been sent. The fun begins when the delusional nephew of the cookbook author sets out for murderous revenge after his own self-published tome has been overlooked. VERDICT For anyone who wonders about the process of judging literary awards, this fast and funny lark from the author of the notable Patrick Melrose novels may shed some comedic light.
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Jun 1, 2014
Super sad true love story - Gary Shteyngart
Summary: A dark tale of America's dysfunctional coming years, and of the timeless and tender feelings that just might bring us back from the brink.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Credit Poles display your financial worth as you hurry by, clutching your äppärät, a diabolical gadget that monitors your biochemistry while streaming torrents of acronym-infested babble and rating the sex appeal of everyone in sight. New Yorker Lenny Abramov, the stubbornly romantic son of flinty Russian Jewish immigrants, works for Post-Human Services, a life-extension venture. He is madly in love with young, hip, and unhappy Eunice Park, who is far more concerned about online shopping and her dysfunctional Korean immigrant family. As Lenny records his feelings in an actual diary, and Eunice confides in her best friend via e-mails, their personal worries are amplified by aggressively raunchy, reductive, and judgmental social media and dwarfed by the Rupture, America's collapse into ineptness, chaos, and tyranny as China backs American currency, the war with Venezuela escalates, and poor people live in Central Park. All Lenny wants is to make Eunice happy, but everything undermines him, from his age––at 39 he's considered decrepit—to his taboo passion for books. Full-tilt and fulminating satirist Shteyngart (Absurdistan, 2006) is mordant, gleeful, and embracive as he funnels today's follies and atrocities into a devilishly hilarious, soul-shriveling, and all-too plausible vision of a ruthless and crass digital dystopia in which techno-addled humans are still humbled by love and death. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.
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Mar 1, 2013
Lovestar - Andri Snæ Magnason
Lovestar - Magnason, Andri Snæ
Summary: In a device-free world dominated by wave-transmitted consumerism where people are controlled by technological trends, blissfully happy young lovers Indridi and Sigrid are declared to have a scientifically invalid relationship and are forced to go to extreme lengths to prove their love. - (Baker & Taylor)
Publishers Weekly Reviews
In this outlandish yet poignant dystopian allegory, Magnason (Dreamland: A Self-Help Manual for a Frightened Nation) imagines a post-technological world in which the relationship between people and information is turned on its head. "Cordless" citizens are freed from gadgets and wires while REGRET, something like a retroactive Magic 8 Ball if envisioned by Vonnegut, renders every choice the right one. Louts hoping to pay down debt become "ad howlers," "AdTraps," and "Secret Hosts"—human bullhorns spouting targeted advertisements or post-purchase praise ("YOU WERE UNBELIEVABLY COOL TO BUY SUCH GROOVY SHOES!") to pedestrians. At funerals run by LoveDeath, bodies are launched into space and mourners watch their loved ones "burn up under the heavenly plough" upon re-entry. At the helm of this carefully monitored and controlled society is LoveStar, a God-like old man with three hours left to live and a mission to "free people from the oppression of freedom." Then there's Indridi and Sigrid, who want to stick together despite inLOVE's calculation of Sigrid as better matched with a Danish man. Orwell, Vonnegut, and Douglas Adams are felt on every page, though Magnason is never derivative. His satire and insightful social commentary sweeten the pot and the sheer wackiness of Magnason's oversized imagination is invigorating. (Nov.)
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Feb 1, 2013
Billy Lynn's long half time walk - Ben Fountain
Summary: A satire set in Texas during America's war in Iraq that explores the gaping national disconnect between the war at home and the war abroad. Follows the surviving members of the heroic Bravo Squad through one exhausting stop in their media-intensive "Victory Tour" at Texas Stadium, football mecca of the Dallas Cowboys, their fans, promoters, and cheerleaders.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Written in a voice that is at once hopeful, cautious, naive, profoundly wise, and completely lost yet utterly knowing, Fountain's most recent work of fiction delivers a brilliant, powerful examination of how modern warfare affects soldiers back at home. Billy Lynn is 19 and already a war hero after footage of a fierce battle between his squad and Iraqi insurgents went viral. Briefly back from Iraq on a "victory tour" through the states, the young Silver Star winner lives an entire lifetime over the course of one day, Thanksgiving, while he and his more worldly Bravo Squad members are feted by a deliriously grateful and mostly misunderstanding public. Attending a Dallas Cowboys game, Billy Lynn and Bravo Squad must juggle the possibility of endless love with cheerleaders, Hollywood producers seeking to make a movie about them, football players morbidly curious about what it's like to kill another human being, and all the conflicting emotions, thoughts, and actions each of them experiences while back in the land of sports mania, mass consumerism, and coveted yet fleeting fame before they return to the war itself. Billy's journey carries the reader along with its richly detailed, pitch-perfect language and characterizations, leaving an indelible impression. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
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Oct 1, 2012
The Master & Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
Summary: When the devil arrives in 1930s Moscow, consorting with a retinue of odd associates—including a talking black cat, an assassin, and a beautiful naked witch—his antics wreak havoc among the literary elite of the world capital of atheism. Meanwhile, the Master, author of an unpublished novel about Jesus and Pontius Pilate, languishes in despair in a psychiatric hospital, while his devoted lover, Margarita, decides to sell her soul to save him. As Bulgakov’s dazzlingly exuberant narrative weaves back and forth between Moscow and ancient Jerusalem, studded with scenes ranging from a giddy Satanic ball to the murder of Judas in Gethsemane, Margarita’s enduring love for the Master joins the strands of plot across space and time. - (Random House, Inc.)
Reviews
“Fine, funny, imaginative . . . . The Master and Margarita stands squarely in the great Gogolesque tradition of satiric narrative.” —Saul Maloff, Newsweek
“The book is by turns hilarious, mysterious, contemplative and poignant. . . . A great work.” —Chicago Tribune
“Magnificent . . . a gloriously ironic gothic masterpiece . . . had me rapt with bliss.” —Patrick McGrath, Guardian (UK)
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May 1, 2012
Beauty queens - Libba Bray
Summary: When a plane crash strands thirteen teen beauty contestants on a mysterious island, they struggle to survive, to get along with one another, to combat the island's other diabolical occupants, and to learn their dance numbers in case they are rescued in time for the competition.
BookPage Reviews
Girls gone radical
Libba Bray’s last novel, the award-winning Going Bovine, was heralded as a departure for the author, who had previously been best known for a trilogy of Victorian-era supernatural romances. Now, in Beauty Queens, Bray further pushes the boundaries in a work of social satire that skewers race, gender, standards of beauty and our hyper-saturated media culture. Oh, and did I mention that it’s also wicked funny?
When a plane carrying 50 contestants in the Miss Teen Dream pageant crash-lands on a (seemingly) deserted island, will it turn into Lord of the Flies? Or something else entirely? At first, the girls do split up into tribes—the Lost Girls and the Sparkle Ponies—but before long, they come to see their isolation as something of an opportunity. “There was something about the island that made the girls forget who they had been. . . . They were no longer performing. Waiting. Hoping. They were becoming. They were.” But what happens when these self-actualizing (and very, very fetching) young women encounter the hunky stars of reality TV’s “Captains Bodacious IV: Badder and More Bodaciouser”?
The surviving Miss Teen Dream contestants comprise a veritable United Nations of diversity—there’s the black girl, the Indian girl, the transgender contestant, the uptight virgin, the deaf one, the lesbian . . . but each girl’s remarkably distinctive voice and deeply personal backstory results in a narrative that’s equal parts compelling and crazy. Beauty Queens is pointed, riotous and unapologetically feminist, with each swerve toward preachiness cleverly counterbalanced with a hilarious barb or perfectly placed one-liner. “Do you think my new feminism make me look fat?” one character asks. Turns out, Bray shows us, feminism can look pretty darn hot after all.
Copyright 2011 BookPage Reviews.
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Dec 1, 2010
The edible woman - Margaret Atwood
Summary: A humorous, ironic, disturbing, and parabolic novel features a woman who, after her engagement to be wed, first loses her appetite and then becomes obsessed with the idea that she herself is being eaten. Reissue. - (Baker & Taylor)
Review:
As delightful a novel as has come along in ages; the kind of book you hate to put down and usually don't. - Herald Magazine
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Oct 1, 2010
God bless you, Mr. Rosewater, or, Pearls before swine - Kurt Vonnegut
Summary: Eliot Rosewater, the head of a giant philanthropic foundation, rushes around doing absurdly good deeds for useless people. The question is, is he mad--or is everyone else?
Staff Review:
Kurt Vonnegut wrote with such skill for such a long time, touching such a wide range of topics and ideas that choosing any of his books to read will likely provide a rewarding experience (much moreso than reading and attempting to comprehend the previous sentence). The tenor and tone of his writing makes even the most difficult of subjects relatable and important to understand in context. Knowing this, I chose God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater or Pearls Before Swine simply because I feel the material deals with very relevant and pertinent ideas as they relate to the world we live in today.
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I am America (and so can you) - Stephen Colbert
Summary: "From the host of television's comedy-punditry show The Colbert Report, comes the book to fill the other 23 hours of your day. This book contains all of the opinions that Stephen doesn't have time to shoehorn into his nightly broadcast, his most deeply held knee-jerk beliefs on The American Family, Race, Religion, Sex, Sports, and many more topics, conveniently arranged in chapter form. Stephen addresses why Hollywood is destroying America by inches, why evolution is a fraud, and why the elderly should be harnessed to millstones. You may not agree with everything Stephen says, but at the very least, you'll understand that your differing opinion is wrong"--From publisher description.
Kirkus Reviews
The fabulously fatuous father of "truthiness" and other neocon mantras expands his media icon with the obligatory book—and, read in the proper spirit, it's a lot of fun.So do we take Colbert, of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, seriously? Is he a persona or the real thing? Is he only in it for the money? No, that would be Ann Coulter, or maybe Friedrich Nietzsche, whose autobiography contained chapter titles such as "Why I Am Such a Genius" and "Why I Am Immortal." Colbert has a few more self-doubts than Nietzsche, if only for the sake of modesty. Would fellow blowhard Bill O'Reilly, for instance, ever confess to being frightened by baby carrots? Probably not, though, to judge by his books, O'Reilly would surely endorse Colbert's contention that such seemingly innocent but too-cute things are a gateway drug to gayness. Stranger theories have been proposed (where is Anita Bryant when you need her?), but no satisfactory argument has been mounted against it, and in all events the critics of Colbert are only those who do not "accept Jesus as my personal editor," namely "cable channels, the internet blogs, and the Hollywood celebritocracy, out there spewing ‘facts' like so many locusts descending on America's crop of ripe, tender values." Like John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise, Colbert's litmus test of a book seems meant to be taken seriously only by those who get the joke, in which case the thing is very funny indeed. If, however, it is taken seriously to the point that the reader really starts believing that baby carrots are homoerotogenic, or that Koreans are evil, or that George Bush knows what he's doing, then it's time to take the book gently from that reader and commit said person to a nice quiet spell in the home for the bewildered.The answer, therefore, is yes, take Colbert seriously. Like a heart attack. Or like Lenny Bruce. Copyright Kirkus 2007 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
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Aug 3, 2010
World War Z; an oral history of the zombie war - Max Brooks
World War Z; an oral history of the zombie war - Brooks, Max
Summary: World War Z is a fictional account of a worldwide outbreak of the living dead in the near future. WWZ is done in an interview-style format with each chapter consisting of first-person interviews of individuals who lived through the Zombie War from its initial outbreak to it's final battles and mop-up operations.
Booklist Reviews
"The Crisis" nearly wiped out humanity. Brooks (son of Mel Brooks and author of The Zombie Survival Guide, 2003) has taken it upon himself to document the "first hand" experiences and testimonies of those lucky to survive 10 years after the fictitious zombie war. Like a horror fan's version of Studs Terkel's The Good War (1984), the "historical account" format gives Brooks room to explore the zombie plague from numerous different views and characters. In a deadpan voice, Brooks exhaustively details zombie incidents from isolated attacks to full-scale military combat: "what if the enemy can't be shocked and awed? Not just won't, but biologically can't!" With the exception of a weak BAT-21 story in the second act, the "interviews" and personal accounts capture the universal fear of the collapse of society--a living nightmare in which anyone can become a mindless, insatiable predator at a moment's notice. Alas, Brad Pitt's production company has purchased the film rights to the book--while it does have a chronological element, it's more similar to a collection of short stories: it would make for an excellent 24-style TV series or an animated serial. Regardless, horror fans won't be disappointed: like George Romero's Dead trilogy, World War Z is another milestone in the zombie mythos. ((Reviewed August 2006)) Copyright 2006 Booklist Reviews.
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