guts_'s reviews
182 reviews

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

3.0

Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson

dark emotional funny hopeful fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

4.0

Books of Blood: Volume Two by Clive Barker

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Map and Territory by Eliezer Yudkowsky

2.5

My Struggle, Book Four by Karl Ove Knausgård

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Book 4 of the My Struggle series is where Karl Ove Knausgard arguably struggles the most, apart from the death of his father in the first book. On his own for the first time, eighteen year old Karl Ove begins teaching in a small fishing village in northern Norway while trying to establish himself as a writer and of course, lose his virginity. We accompany him through his drunken triumphs where the world is beautiful and anything is possible, to his lowest, most shameful, and humiliating failures with women and letting down and being let down by friends and family. Keeping in line with the previous entries in the series, this is a portrait of the life of a deeply complicated yet ordinary and sincere man laid bare. Much like the small town of Hafjord where the sun disappears for months at a time and there is seemingly nothing to do but drink yourself into oblivion; there is not much happening in the My Struggle books, only life, sometimes raw and ugly, sometimes indescribably beautiful, tender, and human. If you stop and look for the beauty in everyday life, it will find you. Knausgard, like any great artist, reveals what is already there, offering you the chance to see with new eyes and it can change you if you let it. 

"While I washed my hands I stared at my reflection in the mirror. The singular feeling that arose when you looked at your own eyes, which so purely and unambiguously expressed your inner state, of being both inside and outside, filled me to the hilt for a few intense seconds, but was forgotten the moment I left the room, in the same way that a towel on a hook or a bar of soap in the small hollow in the sink also were, all these trivialities that have no existence beyond the moment, but hang or lie undisturbed in dark, empty rooms until the door is opened the next time and another person grasps the soap, dries his hands on the towel, and examines his soul in the mirror."

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

dark reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

In the Day of the Locust, Hollywood is a city that consumes people in a bonfire of ambition and desperation. For every successful actor, there are a thousand con artists, prostitutes, cock-fighters, disgruntled midgets, violent cowboys, and Midwest rubes all fighting over their piece of the American dream.

Less than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

5.0

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Great Gatsby is the great American novel that everyone read in school and hated except for me. Reading this novel as an adult may have helped me appreciate the underlying melancholy of being unable to let go of the past and thus being unable to fully live in the present. High school Guts would have not yet fully lived through these emotions and would more than likely have focused on the class analysis which is certainly a valid lens through which to critique the novel but as an adult reading it for the first time I was struck by the humanity of the characters complicated relationships and friendships; of love lost and regained and lost again. Also I read the novel in Toby Maguire's voice in my head which helped. Bad movie, great book. Many such cases.