The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon by Willie Perdomo

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Not my cup of tea, but interesting to see what others think is good poetry.



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Monument: Poems New and Selected by Natasha Trethewey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Trethewey is deceptively easy to read. This collection contains selections from her first five books plus a few additional poems.



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The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I've heard of this book for years. (It's been almost 60 years since it was published.) And always intended to read it. I'm afraid it didn't excite me as much as I'd hoped. Also, there's not that much in it about the movies or "going to the movies." The title serves more as a metaphor for the character as an observer of life as he searches for meaning. Like the protagonists in Sartre and Camus, the struggle for meaning is primarily an internal one. While Sartre and Camus had the backdrops of WWII in France and civil war in Algiers, Percy has the lethargy of Louisiana and hustle of Chicago. The 1950s was the time of grey suits and grey work clothes. Of course, there was Kerouac and his band of merry makers, who drove around the countryside drinking booze, smoking dope, and experimenting with stream of consciousness linguistics.



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Where All Light Tends to Go by David    Joy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is David Joy's first novel, and sometimes it shows. Some have compared the book to Cormac McCarthy, but this first person narrative comes closer to other southern writers, like Ron Nash, perhaps.



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