Highly recommended to poets or anyone who loves experimental fiction. Dark and gritty with a high dose of empathy and sincerity, breathlessly beautiful prose. It's weird. It's amazing. It is strangely easy to read. Took me about a week to finish and I'm so glad I did.

One of the most perfect books of all time. Feels like breathing fresh air. Ending will make you cry.

Strong Motion is tough to get through even if you're a massive fan of Franzen. The characters are constantly abrasive, cruel, and unfeeling toward one another. The thriller plot isn't strong enough to hold up the action. The moving parts don't hang together terribly well. Still, it's unique in the Franzen canon, has a some really interesting voices going on, and I really liked the way Renee's written.

This book wastes its potential by dwelling on everything except what's interesting about it. I felt annoyed by the dreamy Cormac McCarthy-lite haze of its prose. It was a decent way to kill an afternoon, but nothing I'd revisit.

Revelation Space is possibly the most criminally underrated hard sci-fi book published in the last few decades. The series spans thousands of years, and yet you get to develop deep relationships with several of the characters. It's brilliant and feels less speculative than a lot of sci-fi.

David Foster Wallace is my favorite writer.
I like his essays better than his fiction.
This volume contains his greatest essay hits.
Just read it!

Purity is an incredible hall of mirrors where all characters form a web of commonalities and similarities, and just when the reader thinks she has a handle on all those things, one character comes right out and scoffs at the idea that these coincidences mean anything. Do they or don't they? Franzen does not tip his hand. He's a magician and this book might hold his best illusion yet.

This book is horrifying and dark and disturbing and beautiful and perfect. I spent an afternoon wishing I could put it down, and then it was over, and I wanted to recommend it to everybody, knowing they'd all resent me for making them read it.

“How could I have thought that I needed to cure myself in order to fit into the 'real' world? I didn't need curing, and the world didn't, either; the only thing that did need curing was my understanding of my place in it. Without that understanding - without a sense of belonging to the real world - it was impossible to thrive in an imagined one.”

Have you ever had a relationship with a person who has a victim complex and uses it to manipulate the people around them? Do you believe that depopulation is the best direct environmental action one can take? You're gonna love this book.

This is my favorite book of all time. Mandatory reading if you grew up in the American Midwest, as far as I'm concerned. Read it more than once -- the similarities between children and parents are the emotional backbone of the book and they get more and more pronounced on each reading.

David Lynch is weirdo goals. If you don't have a solid familiarity with his work, this book will probably lose you, but it's indispensable for fans.

This is one of the most pointless, ego-driven books I've ever read. I hated almost every page. I've been told that the audiobook is excellent. Maybe choose that instead, if this appeals to you.

1. Buy a paper copy and keep a pen handy.
2. Two bookmarks (maybe three, after about 250 pages) are helpful.
3. Just read it like any other book. There are dense parts. You'll get through them. Don't force it.
4. The endnotes are important.
5. Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est.

Mating in Captivity offers more questions than answers, but the questions are worth asking. On the surface, this book appears to primarily address difficulty with physical intimacy, but underneath that premise, the reader is invited to see eroticism as another language with which to communicate. Perel's a polyglot and her mastery of language adds poetry, making Mating in Captivity a breathless read.

I know I almost exclusively read books in styles that are tough to follow, but keeping track of the essay's thread while following the threads of the footnotes is presenting a challenge I didn't expect.

Still pissed I couldn't find a fake octopus in time to complete my Slothrop costume for Halloween.

I've never read a book like this and that makes the experience intoxicating and a little sad.