The Financial Lives of the Poets

I recall standing in Seattle's Queen Anne Bookstore on a rainy late autumn afternoon in 2009, reading the jacket of this book and ultimately, passing. I wasn't familiar with Jess Walter, although this book seemed to be making quite the splash. I was, however, all too familiar with the effects of the......more

How could a story about a family in crisis be so comical? Most of the time I didn’t know whether I wanted to laugh or cry . This is actually a pretty funny story mixed with the sad state of affairs that Matt Prior finds himself in. During the financial crisis of 2008, out of a job, financially in de......more

Warning: The first part of this review consists of my idle musings on a topic that occurred to me while reading this book. If you don’t give a damn about that and just want to get on with the review, skip down. Ever notice how it seems like the same idea start showing up in a variety of tv shows, fil......more

With all of those Breaking Bad/Weeds comparisons in Kemper’s most excellent review, I had rather high hopes for this one. And that opening act did little to dissuade my enthusiasm. “Here they are again—the bent boys, baked and buzzed boys, wasted, red-eyed, dry-mouth high boys, coursing narrow br......more

I just fell in love with Jess Walter's "Beautiful Ruins", and I was really happy to see that he's been able to do his magic with this book too. The striking element in Walter's writing (in these 2 books at least) is his sense of humor, and that's where I see some readers not liking it because they j......more