Wren

David Mitchell's Ghostwritten is described as a novel in nine parts. Mitchell molds the formats of the novel and the short story into one with varying levels of success. Many consider this book to be the work of a master, and it's not hard to see why, but whenever somebody does wild experiments such as this, there are bound to be effects other than those intended.

None of the stories were written as short stories, so none of them are able to hold up on their own. Because the stories don't hold much weight on their own, the reader is asked to memorize names and events in order to uncover connections in the story which do not reveal themselves until later. This book is a giant puzzle which seems nonsensical until the last pieces are put into place. While I find that sort of thing to be extremely interesting, I did find myself over halfway through the book without a clue as to what this novel was about.

Despite the distracting format, this book is extremely well written and has some big ideas behind it. This review was written immediately after finishing, so hopefully I will have more polished thoughts about it soon.

A great collection of essays from an author I've been curious about. I'm a little disgruntled because my version was abridged, and I was really looking forward to his views on Kafka, but that specific essay was missing. The most notable essays included one about a lobster festival in Maine, with lurid details showcasing the author's jaded cynicism and deep love for footnotes, and another which covers the Adult Video Awards in Las Vegas. The latter goes in depth into the strange and awkward celebrity culture that exists within the pornography industry. The man has a way with words, and I'm looking forward to more of his stuff, but I can see how his work could promote the overly cynical world view that runs rampant among guys my age.

I suffer from the curse of being incredibly young, so I recently discovered that I've yet to read any Wells. In all of my years of being a science fiction fan, I've never read any text by the father of the genre. My first step in fixing this problem was War of the Worlds. This Victorian novel which is one of the first incidents of an alien invasion story was more fascinating than engaging. It suffers from pre-cinema pacing but I found the scientific knowledge used to explain the aliens absolutely charming. The most noteworthy thing we learn from the aliens in this book is the power of flight! I found the anti-imperialism themes very interesting, especially how they were tied in with environmentalist ideas. It's interesting that the first alien invasion story is designed to bring attention to how we have mistreated plants, animals and other human beings in the past with our powerful drive to acquire more and more land. My only complaint is that the ending goes against these themes. The aliens are brought down by the fact that they never discovered the wheel or germ theory, thus proving that human beings are advancing at just the right speed, and are rightfully the good guys.

Ishiguro has shot up the list of my favorite authors. He is three for three so far with me.

As with his other works, this one is best read cold. I read this because it is his “sci-fi”, but as with The Buried Giant's fantasy setting, it's hardly even a backdrop. I could tell you about the premise but it unfolds so masterfully that there's no way I'd want to ruin it for you. The problem with a lot of science fiction is that it tends to be judged on its premise. I've definitely seen other stories with similar premises to this one, but Ishiguro's characters are so excruciatingly human that you've never read a book like this. At this rate I'd recommend any of his works to anybody. He's incredible.

I began losing interest about halfway through, because this book has an interesting but simple premise. Six overlapping narratives, each being cut off by the next, tell the story of a single soul throughout its many lives. I was about to give up on it because of the extra effort the book required of me to translate the entirely original language of Sloosha's Crossing, but towards the end something wonderful happens. As each story ends, the characters join us on the readers' side of the fourth wall and engage the previous narrative, resulting in an avalanche of ideas thrusting us back into the past in the most natural way possible. The thought behind this book is amazing, and many of the ideas hinted at in Mitchell's previous works are made (perhaps too) obvious here. Each narrative's big idea seems to fit perfectly inside the next one, so the seemingly schlocky structure works ridiculously well. This novel is a catapult cranked back to the past, ready to shoot you to the future, and the best part is the trip back. I highly recommend it.

This story introduces a NEW SUPER POWERFUL bad guy that even Galactus is afraid of! That's how you know he's strong! Don't worry though! Thor goes Super Saiyan God 6 and kicks his ass! And then it foreshadows that Thanos is going to put the Infinity Stones into Mjolnir!!!!!

...why?

Is it because manchildren thought Jane being strong made Thor look weak? I really hope that's not the case. IDK the art is good. If this is the thesis statement for the upcoming run then idk if I'm in the target audience.

Also his redesign is 90's levels bad

I strongly believe that Burn's Black Hole is a masterpiece, but I have a hard time trying to champion his other works as anything more than highly enjoyable. This book isn't for everyone. It's about a luchador/private eye who battles robot cults, the fast food industry, and elderly men with their heads grafted onto the bodies of small children. This is what you get when a smart man with an incredible eye for the grotesque wants to write a dumb book, and it's a laugh a minute.

Great movie. Great book. Terrible order to experience them in. The film is a great, mostly silent project that strays so far from the source material you could say they are related in premise only. We learn much more about the main character, named Isserley, her reasons for coming to Earth, and how she sees our species. The premise of an alien seducing hitchhikers in order to feed her people is a genius interweaving of themes on the meat industry, capitalism, gender relations and the media. As with the film, I'm sort of struggling to translate the themes into something more coherent, but I enjoyed this book very much.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami was originally published as Nejimakidori Kuronikuru in 3 volumes in 1994-1995. I've heard a lot about this author and I've been meaning to get around to his work for a while now. The thing that finally convinced me was when Murakami and this book in particular were both heavily referenced in the last novel I read, Number9dream by David Mitchell. Mitchell wrote his novel as a response to this one, and it was fascinating to see all of parallels in the stories, but It would have been nice if I had read these books in reverse order.

This book is really fascinating as it is about a man trying to hold his life and his marriage together, but he does so by stumbling through other people lives in a surreal dream-like way. The multiple stories all tie together quite nicely but they don't resolve each other as you might think. In a way, they seem to push each further along, providing more interpretations of the book. The author addresses a lot of themes such as dreams in relation to reality, the inhumanity of war, and emasculation in Japanese society. The novel itself is a bit jarring because I am used to more resolution in my plots, but this is definitely one of the most interesting books I've ever read. This is a book that I'm sure will be completely different to me if I were to return to it later in life.

I recommend this book to anyone who has any interest in the surreal or the meta-physical. If you like identifying themes and putting puzzle pieces together, then you will have a blast with this book.

CRISIS EVENT IMMINENT! ALERT! WORLDS WILL LIVE! WORLDS WILL DIE! Ever since Wolfman and Perez's Crisis on Infinite Earths, the worlds populated by superheroes have been rent asunder, remade and put through the wringer whenever an executive decided that a new direction was needed. The “event comic” has often been used as tool to artificially alter these stories, and is largely seen as an executive decision overriding any artistic vision that may have been in place. Grant Morrison takes this multiverse-destroying weapon out of the hands of DC and uses it against them. (He tried this once before to a lesser effect with the beautifully flawed Final Crisis.) Morrison portrays executive DC as a monstrous gentry, taking advantage of these fictional characters at every opportunity. It's confounding as to how this imagery made it through the publication process intact.

Morrison refers to this book as his magnum opus, and I think he may be right. It's a beautiful work of meta-fiction that captures the full-hearted love for comic books that this man has spent his entire career trying to communicate. This is the capstone for a body of work that has been building for many years, but I would be very interested to get the opinion of someone who dives right in. I highly recommend this book. The Pax Americana chapter alone is required reading.