by Nathan Rabin
Started: January 11, 2010
Finished: January 12, 2010
This was yet another memoir of a f#$!%d-up life written by someone under the age of 35--in this case, Nathan Rabin, head writer for The Onion A.V. Club. The catch here was supposed to be that each of the chapters was named after a song, movie, book, or television show that represented what Rabin was going in through in his life during the time period discussed. I don't think he really pulled the concept off. The pop culture elements seem shoehorned into many of the chapters and not really necessary to the storytelling. Also, writing for The Onion and all, Rabin tries to interject a lot of comedy into his writing, usually in the form of pop culture references or sarcastic lies. Most of the jokes fell flat to me. They weren't bad, but they never really made me laugh out loud. The best parts of this book were his stories of the other inhabitants of a Jewish Children's Home that Rabin lived in for most of his teenage years. This wasn't bad, but it also really didn't stand out from most of the other similar memoirs that have been written in the last ten years. 339 pages. Grade: B-
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The Secret of the Unicorn
by Herge
Started/Finished: January 12, 2010
Yet another Tintin book. This one was a good pirate story. The ending with the pickpocket being some weirdo who just likes to collect wallets so he can store them on a bookshelf in alphabetical order was pretty dumb, but maybe it was worth it for the gag of Thompson and Tompson finding a whole shelf devoted to them. 64 pages. Grade: B+
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Total # of Books Read in 2010: 18
Total # of Pages Read in 2010: 3,099
Currently Reading: Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
Reading Soon: More Tintin; .45 Dangerous Minds by Steven Blush and George Petros; The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy; The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy; The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet
