Mondo Bungle

The Silent Corner by Dean Koontz, 2017

I don't necessarily seek out the works from blockbuster authors with their 790 generic thrillers, but I'll read them just the same. My prior experience with Dean Koontz was the book Tick Tock, a truly impressive work in that the very last sentence somehow managed to ruin all that came before, which was only half interesting in the first place. But at least the Silent Corner didn't provoke any sort of vigilante onslaught in the name of literary justice. The story's simple, highly unrealistic but simple. All about subcutaneous nanobots making people kill themselves after finding out too much of the whack agenda that we have here.

It had great paranoia.

3.75/5

__________________

Mondo Bungle

The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood, 2012

Wonderful novel here that takes a look at the highly privileged and wraps it up in a chill. The main character, who is an atheist, finds himself wandering into a church after hearing the music being played therein, almost drawn to it involuntarily like a magnet. Then he gets mixed up with a girl and her brother and their whole circle of snobby douchebags. That's not true I guess, the brother is really the only one bagging any douche. He's narcissistic to the point of disorder, narcissistic personality disorder in fact. He believes his music can heal any and all ailments and employs some very insane methods to demonstrate. I'm sure it goes without saying that he takes it too far.

4.5/5

__________________

Mondo Bungle

Unravel by Calia Read, 2014

Much along the lines of extreme young adult fiction with the struggling and the despair and the madness. What's being unraveled is a question of why the narrator is stuck in a mental hospital, claiming time and again that she's the only sane one there, just like those who are most insane.

Sexy and simplistic.

3/5

__________________

Mondo Bungle

The Methuselah Enzyme by Fred Mustard Stewart, 1970

Drama emanates from a youth clinic in Switzerland, where three pairs have come for a mystery treatment to reverse the aging process. The three wealthy and old clients had brought along their young companions, who are unaware of the true dealings at hand. It's not long before they find out and the tension begins. There's deceit, bribes, alliances and that.

But eventually it becomes clear that the body is in fact not able to age in reverse and the troubling developments that come during their stay are often ghastly.

4/5

__________________

Mondo Bungle

The Blue Afternoon by William Boyd, 1993

Charming and engaging touch of historical drama spooled together with medical miracles, murder, midair machines and Manila. Starts off with an architect in 1936 being encountered by an unfamiliar man claiming to be her father, and then we get his story, which is more or less the whole story in terms of content. Great historical air with gruesome bodily detail and irrational romance. I tend to naturally envision everything I read cinematically, and this turned out a great reel, could be a tight movie I think.

The payoff, though, didn't consist of many dollars, but the journey there was moving and lushly multifaceted.

4/5

__________________

Mondo Bungle

Little Deaths by Emma Flint, 2017

Pretty solid crime/mystery revolving around the death of two children and everyone trying to get their mother in prison because they disapprove of her character

3.5/5

__________________

Exo

Based off what you've been reading lately, you should really check out "I Am Pilgrim" by Terry Hayes. Trust me on this.

__________________
LastFM

SUPREME POO BAH MODERATOR EXTRAORDINAIRE

Mondo Bungle

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, 2001

Another tremendously grand, yet somehow just as modest, Pulitzer prize winner. I think it's actually pretty easy to compare to Middlesex, the other one I've read. There's much thematic overlap despite the conceptual distinctions: insanely satisfying linguistic acrobatics and frequent hilarity, themes of starting a new life of theoretical prosperity, the plight of the characters' paradoxical longing to escape and remain in equal measure, the realized contentedness of simply being.

But this story is about two Jewish comic book masterminds and their claim to fictional fame during the golden early years of the graphic novel, and the post-WWII state of being a washed up artist. The mainer of the main characters, a Josef Kavalier, is inconspicuously shuttled from Prague to New York as a burgeoning master of illusions and escapes, to find anyway to help his run down family. His cousin seems to invoke a dormant artistic ability, and together they pretty much just put on a clinic in the comic book world. But if it ended on that high note the book would be pretty lame and pointless. There are toils, suffocating the characters like shovelfuls of grave dirt upon a freshly lain casket.

That's the plot, but it's not about the plot. The delivery is poetic and moving and never dull. So much ground is indeed covered under the seemingly non-complex guise of the general story line, a lot that I looked forward to every time I opened it.

5/5

__________________

Mondo Bungle

Beyond All Reasonable Doubt by Malin Persson Giolito, 2012

A lawyer attempts to get a retrial for a would be pedophile murderer who she comes to feel was unjustly imprisoned and experiences backlash from the public.

That's about the size of it.

3/5

__________________

Mindy

next short story up is "the wife of his youth" by charles chesnutt. anyone read it?

__________________
https://www.instagram.com/shhons_meme_agency