Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
Problems
Problems: And Other Stories | John Updike
14 posts | 3 read | 2 to read
In this midcareer collection of twenty-three short stories, John Updike tackles such problems as separation, divorce, and remarriage, parents and children, guns and prostitution, leprosy, swooning, suffocation, and guilt. His self-seeking heroes tend to be forty; his heroines are asleep, seductive, longing, or reproachful. None of these characters is innocent, and all are looking vainly for the road back to an imagined Paradise. Pain and comedy closely coexist in this mainly domestic world of the 1970s, where life is indistinguishable from a television commercial (but what is it advertising?) and every mornings paper brings news of lost Atlantises.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
Pick icon
100%
blurb
Erinreadsthebooks
post image

This is me trying to find me next read…🙄😩

dabbe Put the titles in a hat and draw? 😃 1y
Bookish_Gal Scythe is soooooo good. I don‘t know where to begin. Utopia world where death is a commodity. People live forever, for as long as the Scythdom group allows. Now watch two recruits figure it out together. The deep thinking of the book is what still has me going on it. Incredible story telling 1y
24 likes2 comments
blurb
Erinreadsthebooks
post image

Andddd we‘ve entered the “Next Book Indecision” stage of the reading process 🙄😩

Bookzombie I hadn‘t heard of Wildoak so I pick that one. 🙂 2y
27 likes1 comment
blurb
TheBookgeekFrau
post image

Thanks to #BarnesAndNobel #BookHaulBlowout the problem of nothing to read has been solved 😁

Now, however, my current problem is which one first 🤔

Lovesbooks87 Can't wait to go this weekend! 5y
TheBookgeekFrau @Lovesbooks87 Have fun!!! And may your basket overfloweth 📚📚 5y
Karkar Oh I went today and spent too much!!! 5y
TheBookgeekFrau @Karkar I did, too 🤑😖💁‍♀️ 5y
40 likes4 comments
blurb
howjessicareads
post image

I had totally forgotten about this!! 😂😂 #bookwormproblems

knittedgnome Haha! Love!! 6y
LeahBergen 😂😂 6y
brittanyreads Hahahaha!! 6y
RadicalReader @jesshowbooks peanut butter and jelly on sun dried tomato bread never heard of such a combo in my life 6y
78 likes4 comments
blurb
MinDea
post image

Is anyone else like this?

I have to buy book 2 and 3 of The Great Library Series to read before book 4 comes out. Book 1 I bought in paperback. Book 3 I can only buy in hardcover and when book 4 is released I can only buy in hardcover too. Now, I am trying to decide to buy the remaining in hardcover and find book 1 in hardcover OR buy all in paperback and wait til they are all available in paperback!?! 🤷🤦🙄
#BookProblems

Riveted_Reader_Melissa Or when you‘ve bought them all in paperback, because that was the only way they cane out....and at book 6 the Publisher decides to put out hardcovers first then paperbacks at a later date. 🙊🙉🙈 6y
BookwormAHN I understand these issues. They all need to match 😸 6y
DiruVamp I had to do this with the Darker Shade of Magic series. I started it after the first two had already been published and bought them in paperback so I had to wait until book 3 was released in paperback before I could buy it 😂🤓 6y
See All 21 Comments
2BR02B Totally. Even when they just change the position of the title on the spine I'm like 😬😬 6y
Jabberwocky This is me 100000% 6y
TheLibrarian I do the same. Even started forcing my habits into the fiancé. 6y
CoverToCoverGirl 🙋🏼‍♀️LoL! 6y
JamieArc Ha! I never noticed this about myself, but yes! Definitely! 6y
CareBear Yes!!!! 6y
CareBear Sometimes I cheat...if I can‘t wait for the paperback to come out, I buy the ebook to read and will buy the paperback once it releases 🤑🤓 6y
TK421 Yes!! I can't mix paperbacks and hardcovers in the same series. 6y
JacqMac I borrow it from the library, while I wait for the paperback to come out. I like a matching set. 6y
tournevis They don't have to match, so long as they are the same height. 6y
Djspens I feel your pain... 6y
erzascarletbookgasm Yes! Book nerd problems! 6y
DrexEdit Totally! Arrggggh! I don't think anyone I know really understands how hard this can be! 6y
Crystalblu I feel ya! I tend to wait until the trade paperback comes out. If I have to read it as soon as I can I get our book processor to make me one of the first people to put a hold on it. 6y
mrp27 Yes! The struggle is real. 6y
Utopiyll Oh yes! And by the off-chance I buy different versions I cringe everytime I see them in my bookshelf! It is a real struggle. 6y
PaperbackPirate No I am not like this but I admire the shelves of people who are! 6y
93 likes21 comments
blurb
Beckys_Books
post image

I saw this on Instagram and lmao. As an engineer I explain my job as a problem solver. I also use the expression with my teenagers as in "be a problem solver and figure it out for yourself ". I just hope this is neither a problem nor a solution they have.

blurb
theshrinkette
post image

Guess who forgot to charge her kindle last night? Grr.

Megabooks 🤣🤣 8y
Megabooks At the picture! 8y
Reviewsbylola Noooooo 😱 8y
58 likes3 comments
quote
MLRio

His shop is on Newbury Street. Everything there is beautiful, expensive, blemishless; but nothing more so than my ceramics. If the merest pimple of a captured dust mote reveal itself to my caress, I smash the bowl. The vaguest wobble in the banding, and damnation and destruction ensue. He calls me a genius. I call myself a leper. I should have been smashed at birth.

review
MLRio
post image
Pickpick

This collection of stories is one of the best portraits of everyday life in America I've ever come across. "How to Love America and Leave It at the Same Time" is especially poignant in its simple familiarity, and in the titular "Problems" the mathematics of emotion reveal unexpected depth. He harps too long on certain themes (divorce, infidelity) so that the stories start to feel repetitive, but overall an excellent read. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

5 likes1 stack add
quote
MLRio

Midas‘s Law: Possession diminishes perception of value, immediately.

quote
MLRio

Such beauty wants to make us weep. If we were crystal, we would shatter.

quote
MLRio

Accept the precious keys with their lozenge-shaped tags of plastic. Consider the career of motelkeeper, selling what shouldn‘t be buyable–rest to the weary, bliss to the illicit, space to the living. Providing television and telephones as threads to keep us in touch with the unreal worlds behind, ahead. Shelter, the oldest commodity.

4 likes1 stack add
blurb
MLRio
post image
blurb
MLRio
post image

Who let me out of the house? #books #bookhaul #usedbooks

11 likes1 stack add