To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Classic literature is really not my thing.  I tend to shun anything that everyone seems to think is fabulous.  I rarely think that most things 'classic' tend not to live up to their reputation, but I was definitely wrong with TKAM.  I thoroughly enjoyed every page of this story and found the commentary on both sexism and racism so interesting.  I do question the reasons why the author never had another published book and I did read TKAM based on the recent publicity surrounding Harper Lee.  I am still intrigued as such.


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When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Simply and brilliantly written.  Fail gently my friends.


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Tales of Ordinary Madness by Charles Bukowski
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What to say about Bukowski that has not already been said.  Given my propensity for the darkness and the grit and the truth about life and my love of humanity, I really can't believe that it took me 40 years to read anything he wrote.  Every word was perfect, in all of its sour glory, as it lay on the page.


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Who is Christopher Poindexter and how does he know my every thought?

Book Slut

Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are not many authors who can make you root for a scamming, sex addicted, thieving, selfish slime, but Palahniuk succeeds.  And this is his true gift.  Palahniuk makes us fall in love with life and people, even on the grittiest level.  He makes us see ourselves in dirty, sticky mirrors whether we want to or not.


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The Hours by Michael Cunningham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book gets three stars because it is honestly beautifully written.  This book fails to get any more stars because there is really only one character in the entire book, who is not one of the three main characters, who is written in such a way that you honestly care about what happens to them and who's story is truly meaningful (Richard).  The three women who we follow through the chapters struggle endlessly with feeling like they are watching themselves from outside of their own bodies and are simply too self indulgent and pained with their 'struggles' while they live charmed lives of creativity and excess.  This book rivals Eat, Pray, Love as a feminist's worst nightmare.


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Dry by Augusten Burroughs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What I love most about Augusten Burroughs is that he thinks what we are all thinking.  My very favorite thing about this book is the raging, beautiful, stinking and raw humanity of it, which is why I just love Burroughs as a writer.  Not only is the human experience captured perfectly in this memoir, but I just can not say enough positive things about its importance to anyone who has struggled with addiction.  Just read the book.


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The Hours by Michael Cunningham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book gets three stars because it is honestly beautifully written.  This book fails to get any more stars because there is really only one character in the entire book, who is not one of the three main characters, who is written in such a way that you honestly care about what happens to them and who's story is truly meaningful (Richard).  The three women who we follow through the chapters struggle endlessly with feeling like they are watching themselves from outside of their own bodies and are simply too self indulgent and pained with their 'struggles' while they live charmed lives of creativity and excess.  This book rivals Eat, Pray, Love as a feminist's worst nightmare.


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The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I thought this one started out strong, but I was really let down in the end.  I find this book to be overrated.  The writing is simple and in the style of a diary.  While there are a few good one-liners, the subject of a teen boy coming of age is not a new one and there is nothing original about this tale, in my opinion.


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The Fried Twinkie Manifesto: and other tales of disaster and damnation by Ryan Moehring
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I will give this one a solid 3.5.  Some of the stories made me laugh out loud and I found the writing style to be easy to read.  Theh author tries a little too hard to be 'meaningful' than I would have liked, especially in the final story.  It is a challenge to buy into his melancholoic walk down memory lane after his story about foreskins.


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Phoenix by Chuck Palahniuk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars




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Guts by Chuck Palahniuk
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am trying very hard not to give my review of some of the other reviews here, which are clearly indicative of people reading material that is far more than an outlier to their comfort zone.  That said, my opinion of this short story is that it is classic Palahniuk; written in the manner that one would verbally recount such a story to another and worded with expert precision.


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2BR02B by Kurt Vonnegut
My rating: 5 of 5 stars




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Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
My rating: 5 of 5 stars




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Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars




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Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars




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If I Stay by Gayle Forman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Awful.  I kept waiting for the amazing-ness to happen for me with this book and I have finished the book and I am still waiting.  There is nothing profound about this book.  Nothing life changing.  There are very few lines that you will fondly recall.  This book is entirely forgetable.


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The Pocket Pema Chodron by Pema Chödrön
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Simply fabulous.


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The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have a hard time giving books five stars, but with this one, I do so without reserve.  I read this book because I was simply engrossed in the HBO series and I wanted more.  Something about the darkness and the unknowing in the show felt like home to me and the book delivered the same.  As a person who is addicted to observing the human experience, this book could not have been more in my wheelhouse.  One of the things I love the most about this story is that all of the characters are reacting to an unexplainable trauma, and all of them are right in how they process their grief.  It couldn't possibly get more raw than the meandering thoughts of a woman whose entire family inexplicably disappeared who arrives at the conclusion, "Now that she knew the truth, she could see that she'd lost a little less than she thought she had, which was almost like getting something back."


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