Jonathan, our events coordinator, loves the extremes. Lowbrow, highbrow--he's there with you. Anything in between leaves him cold. Here's his shelf-talker for Ron Currie's Everything Matters:
An off-beat, oddly uplifting story with enough disregard to the subtle effects and delicate story lines of much new fiction that you can forgive the poor choice of title. Currie throws around and has his fun with standard narrative conventions, but not at the expense of his story--or the reader. For a story of impending doom, I think you'd find it difficult to come across one as fun and inventive as this.
Purchase Everything Matters
Tod, one of our neighbors, offers his take on Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice:
Essentially, this book is just plain, good old fashioned, paranoid fun with equal amounts noir and California sunlight. Imagine Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski with a PI license instead of a bowling ball, in the early '70s instead of the early '90s, trying to navigate COINTELPRO, crooked cops, and the LA underworld. If you can do that, you will begin to have an inkling of how many conspiratorial agendas Pynchon's Jeffrey "Doc" Sportello must smoke his way through in order to elevate his consciousness above every individual, governmental agency, and criminal organization that wants to do him ill.
Purchase Inherent Vice
