I've read 56 of the 80 "Best Books of the 21st Century" that have been listed so far. Great to see the deeply underrated Helen DeWitt today, but LIGHTNING RODS is her best novel. And there's no goddamned way that the NYTBR would have the stones to get behind that wild, daring, and hilarious novel. I've said this before, but I think Helen DeWitt is the Nathanael West of our time.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/books/best-books-21st-century.html#book-40
Book 31: “The English Understand Wool” by #HelenDeWitt.
Never read DeWitt before but apparently she’s a big deal? This lives up to the hype. I’m a petty bitch and this was *licks fingers* DELICIOUS.
Part of the publisher’s slim hardcover fiction series that “aims to deliver the pleasure one felt as a child reading a marvelous book from cover to cover in an afternoon.” Truly marvelous. If they’re all this good, I feel a strong urge to buy every single one.
#DeWitt2023 "Could my father really be that bad?....I wanted to say: but at least he's seen the world." 238
"Kambei: A samurai doesn't get so drunk that he loses his senses." -Seven Samurai, Akira Kurasawa (1954)
Helen DeWitt starts with Cormac McCarthy's approach to punctuation and ends up telling a deeply unhappy story about the editing on her extraordinary first book, The Last Samurai
https://paperpools.blogspot.com/2007/08/cormac-mccarthy-semi-colon.html
#HelenDeWitt #CormacMcCarthy #writing #editing #punctuation #literature #books #publishing
THE ENGLISH UNDERSTAND WOOL by Helen DeWitt is marvellous, as good as everyone said it was, but then it would have been "mauvais ton" not to love it, wouldn't it?
Here's the link to my review:
https://readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2023/01/03/the-english-understand-wool-helen-dewitt/
#HelenDeWitt #NewDirections #StorybookND #readmorewomen #bookrecommendations #bookreview #books #bookstadon
Edward Champion
Hoochie Daddy moved to mas.to
Christina500
Stan Carey
Radz Pandit