Monday, November 29, 2004
Book Notes
So I'm reading The Bonfire of the Vanities right now, and I'm surprised by how much I'm enjoying it. I'd always thought I would hate Tom Wolfe, I think mainly because of the white suit, which I still don't endorse, but I picked it up as part of my continuing effort to read things that it seems like everyone else has read, or at least pretends to have read. (This same crusade led me to Brave New World and the Night trilogy earlier this year, although I think most people cover these along with The Great Gatsby and The Scarlet Letter in the tenth grade.) But anyway, it turns out to be pretty great! It's not as dirty as I generally like my serious literature to be, and some of the meticulousness I could do without (I have a strict "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to the details of the bond business), but I find the writing style fairly engaging and I really enjoy what he's doing thematically. The plot chugs along at a pretty good clip, too, which is nice, because I really do like things to happen in the books I read. (Sorry, Proust.) Frankly, I'm finding it pretty hard to put down, even if it does weigh about two thousand pounds.
So I'm reading The Bonfire of the Vanities right now, and I'm surprised by how much I'm enjoying it. I'd always thought I would hate Tom Wolfe, I think mainly because of the white suit, which I still don't endorse, but I picked it up as part of my continuing effort to read things that it seems like everyone else has read, or at least pretends to have read. (This same crusade led me to Brave New World and the Night trilogy earlier this year, although I think most people cover these along with The Great Gatsby and The Scarlet Letter in the tenth grade.) But anyway, it turns out to be pretty great! It's not as dirty as I generally like my serious literature to be, and some of the meticulousness I could do without (I have a strict "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to the details of the bond business), but I find the writing style fairly engaging and I really enjoy what he's doing thematically. The plot chugs along at a pretty good clip, too, which is nice, because I really do like things to happen in the books I read. (Sorry, Proust.) Frankly, I'm finding it pretty hard to put down, even if it does weigh about two thousand pounds.
