AJ Dunn Reads

  Dubliners by James Joyce Dubliners was a far more successful book that A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for me. The stories were easier to comprehend. The stories are mainly concerned with everyday Dublin life, full of longing, the difficulties of the mundane, life and death, and Dublin life compared to life in the wider world. The standout stories for me were "Eveline," "Counterparts," "The Boarding House," and "The Dead." One thing that bothered me was that all of the stories ended rather abruptly, without any sort of satisfying resolution, except for "The Dead," which felt like the most successful and complete story of the bunch. It is still a style of work that doesn't work for me overall. The language is stiff and overly complicated--definitely a product of its time. Many of the stories were also very much concerned with alcohol and prostitution, topics that don't really interest me, yet also concerns of their ti

  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce I'm not going to pretend that I fully understood this book. It is a prose style that is beyond my faculties. The story is about Stephen Dedalus as he comes of age, his relationship with Catholocism, sin or the perception of sin, and his path away from the church and toward art (namely, poetry). The prose style matures as Stephen matures, with one whole chapter deovoted to scripture as it relates to sin and Stephen's struggling with the potential for being hell-bound due to his relations with a girl out of wedlock. Beyond that, I was mostly lost. The dialogue was difficult, being of a time and using a lot of old Irish slang, as well as a bunch of Latin and lofty discussions about art and religion. Not much more to be said about it. This book is canonical and highly praised, but far beyond what my brain is capable of grasping. I give it 3 stars.

  Home by Marilynne Robinson Occurring as a parallel story line to Robinson's book Gilead , Home tells the story of Jack Boughton's return to the town of Gilead where he finds his sister Glory caring for their elderly father Robert. The book is narrated from Glory's point of view, but it is ultimately Jack's story that is the focal point. Jack returns to Gilead after getting to a low point in his tumultuous life. He has been sworn off by his wife and her father, and he returns to his childhood home in search of a place to find himself, some redemption, and a feeling of home, even though he never felt like he belonged. Glory, herself running away from a life that didn't turn out as planned, is caring for their father, a retired Reverend who is nearing the end of his days. When Jack returns, Glory and Robert are shocked at the state of him, and shocked that he cam home at all. They fuss over him, tiptoe around his feelings in order to make sure he stays around instea

  Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides   What a great book! Middlesex tells the story of Calliope/Cal Stephanides as she/he navigates the realization and acceptance of intersexuality, tracing the origins of the recessive gene that caused the mutation to her/his body. We follow the incestuous relationship of Cal's grandparents and Greek family through the early to mid-1900s, and the often-funny antics of the cast of characters, which includes the death-obsessed Desdemona, the American Dreamer Lefty, and Cal's Americanized, yet Republican father Milton and her mother Tessie. Cal's sciency-turned-hippie brother Cal and Cal's girlfriend nicknamed The Object round out story's central characters. A cast of side characters populates the book, set mainly in Detroit (a character in itself), and gives the story a vital and diverse richness that delves deep into the ideas of otherness in America. Cal as a young girl navigates her bodily differences with the rest of the girls she kn

  Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson Ruth and Lucille's mother drives her car into a lake. The same lake their grandfather perished in. They are left with their grandmother who takes care of them for a few years before she passes. The grandmother's nervous, cautious, and gossipy sisters come to care for them until they decide to write to the girls' aunt Sylvie to see if she will come and relive them of their burden. Sylvie is transient and the girls fear she is unstable, that she will leave them or try to kill herself as their mother did. As they mature, Lucille becomes embarrassed by Sylvie's nature. Both girls continue to believe one day Sylvie will board one of the trains that passes through their town (Fingerbone) and disappear forever. Lucille begins to pretend their mother didn't abandon them and kill herself. She makes up stories about her instead. The girls are growing apart; Lucille accuses Ruth of becoming like Sylvie and their mother. Lucille wants to esc

  Firestarter by Stephen King Andy McGee is on the run with his 8-year-old daughter, Charlie. When he was in college, Andy and his wife, Vicky, volunteered for an experiment, which left them both with superhuman gifts: Andy can control minds, though at a personal cost, and his wife could move objects with hers. Charlie was born with a power far more destructive--the ability to create and control fire. An clandestine organization called The Shop has kept tabs on Andy and Vicky and one day they come calling, when they learn about the gifts Charlie possesses. The kill Vicky and Andy takes Charlie on a trip across New York and Vermont in an effort to escape The Shop, who eventually close in and abduct them. The Shop wants to use these abilities for "national security," but Charlie doesn't want to use hers, and Andy's ability has the potential to kill him. The Shop employs a man named John Rainbird, who has his evil eye on Charlie. He is tasked with getting her to cooperat

  Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes Joe Goldberg has a new girlfriend and she's just as shady as he is. They make fun of people together, have questionable pasts, and lie, cheat and steal. But when Joe is on the receiving end of Amy's lies and theft pattern, she becomes his next target. He follows her to Los Angeles in order to make her pay. With her life. Hidden Bodies is not as good as YOU . Though Joe was the same narcissistic jerk, he wasn't nearly as manipulative as he was in YOU . And that bothered me. That was the intriguing thing about him that made me want to keep reading. Joe searches for Amy in LA, and finds her. But she gets away. During his search he falls for a wealthy "non-actress" grocery chain heiress and gets a firsthand look at the good life of celebrity. Before he falls for Love and moves in with her family he racks up a body count as he searches for Amy. Some are directly related to her, but others are just side casualties. None of them had th