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STAN SMITH'S BOOK REVIEWS MY PROMISE TO YOU: I will review EVERY SINGLE BOOK I READ THIS YEAR....um, starting in April. These are either books people have sent or just happen to be in my rotation. If you have an advanced copy of your book, send it to (912 Cole St. #286, SF CA 94117) and I'll probably review it. THE RULES: The dates are based on when I finished a book, and they are all in real-time order. No skipping or adding stuff in later, or reviewing books I read a long time ago. I pledge to review every single book I read, no matter how pointless or embarrassing over the next year. All books are given a numerical grade/rating from One to Ten Stans, based on widely accepted international guidelines. INTERNATIONAL "STAN-CLAD" BOOK REVIEW GUIDELINES (Also available in Esperanto) 10 Stans-Astonishingly good. Powerful. Beuatiful. Will read it to my grandchildren, an absolute masterpiece.
9 Stans- Pretty damn great. Innovative, daring, honest. Totally in command of it's craft and intent. Just slightly below a true classic.
8 Stans- Has style, chops, verve, poise. There were a few glitches in tone or consistency, but this is still exceptional writing.
7 Stans- A variety of solid stuff that made me want to like it more than maybe I
really did. Needs some direction. Endearingly flawed. Still totally worth reading, and probably a better book than most.
6 Stans- I liked some of it okay. At least four or five good ideas. Still, a
lot of it was tiresome and I was sorta glad when it was over.
5 Stans- Harlen Coben, but without the subtlety or depth.Made me sleepy and suddenly nostalgic for James Frey.
4 Stans- Pointedly off. Bad idea, bad prose, bad binding. Bad.
3 Stans- Gave up in less than a chapter.
2 Stans- The sort of moldering tripe that makes you wish you were on an airplane reading the in-flight magazine.
1 Stan- Only one Stan! The Absolute Worst Book Ever Written! I threw this into the ocean, and it washed immediately back. A sea turtle ate it and it gave him the burning shits for two months.
1-1-09
How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman 6.8 Stans
 | The metamophisis if it were written by Irvine Welsh. This is a Darkness At Noon tale spoken in first person heavy Scots dialect. A real commitment to get through and Stalinest-feeling all the way around. As in bleak, hopeless, and confusing.
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12-30-08
An Arsonist's Guide To Writer's Homes In New England by Brock Clark 6.7 Stans
 | I really liked the first few chapters here, and then it became a slog. The voice is comic and clever, but the narrator's motivations are obtuse and frustrating. I didn't buy the reasons he did anything or his utter oblviouness to those around him. A really good premise that needed a whole other layer or purpose.
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12-1-08
Nothing To Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes 6.9 Stans
 | Julian is a worrier. He can't stop obsessing about death. Those of us who obsess about other equally uncontrollable things have a hard time enitrely sympathizing with his eschatological fetish, but see plenty of parallels in his ruminations on memory and aging. His wry observations and overall erudition make this worth reading and contemplating about. Particularly if you are, as he is, a Francophile in the extreme, to the point that he lapses into an impressive imition of Flaubert. And that's before he directly quotes him. Be prepared for numerous observations from the previously unheard of Jules Renard as well.
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11-20-08
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris 6.4 Stans
 | Unlike most of the rest of the world, or at least a huge proportion of those who buy books, I really don't get the Sedaris phenomena. Sure, the essays are perfectly readable and all of them have clever remarks in them, but I always find my mind racing to the end and hoping the next one had a little more heart. They seem like the literary equivilent of a cigarette butt. Short and tight and all smelly filter.
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11-13-08
Massive Swelling by Cintra WIlson 6.6 Stans
 | Sarcasm so acidic it makes you want to drink a vanilla milkshake. This book has one gear, and that gear is mean. A variety of funny observations, but they get lost in the flood of bile and lazy prose. The culture remarks are brutally dated, making me think it was never funny to reference New Kids On The Block in any context. Someone once said something like "Their sarcasm came more from their own internal dislike than from the sins of the world they describe", which seems an apt phrase.
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10-29-08
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein 8.2 Stans
 | A brilliant indictment of Milton Friedman, The Chicago School of economics, The CIA, the rise of for-profit war outsourcing, and all the ridiculous players of the Bush administration. Readable, well-researched, and utterly damning. For all the money made off Katrina alone, and all the people left to fend for themselves while pockets were lined, a special afterlife awaits the engineers of profit.
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10-23-08
Stuffed And Starved by Raj Patel 8.0 Stans
 | A sobering and thoughful book that more or less demolishes the long promulgated idea that markets will invariably adjust themselves, that the IMF, WTO, G8, or food corporations have any vested interest in anything but rapacious profit, that it is not possible to feed the world, or that pretty much any large scale decision made in terms of food production in the last hundred years on the part of corporations or government experts has a shred of logic, ethics, or decency. Muckraking old-style without being a polemic.
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10-3-08
Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman 7.8 Stans
 | A clever and hilarious look at superhero culture, fetishism and internal thought. The book is told from the alternating viewpoints of a bumbling evil genius and a insecure android heroine. A ton of very on-the-mark comics and movie references. This felt very fresh and original.
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9-15-08
The War Against Cliche by Martin Amis 7.0 Stans
 | A five hundred page compendium of old book reviews, magazine essays, barbed opinion, and scholarly takes on favorite authors. It's a whole lot of Amis. Probably a third of these pieces really didn't need to see the light of day again. Some really great stuff on Nabakov and Bellow. Amis writes amusingly and surpisingly well on sport: darts, football, poker. His wit and enviable vocabulary are always in evidence. It is, however, the towering worldly disdain that permeates each piece that ends up being tiresome. You get the feeling that no mattter what you might write, no matter how original or clever, if you showed it to him, his resulting arched eyebrow would be enough to make you take up another hobby. Which is strange from a man with such an uneven authorial record. Well, he's nothing if not prolifically certain about what doesn't measure up. It's actually a difficult job to take on, and I sort of admire him for it. On the other hand, I still haven't read "Yellow Dog". If it's as horrible as it was almost universally claimed to be, it's hard to imagine how you keep slagging other people's books afterward.
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8-27-08
Tree Of Smoke by Denis Johnson 7.9 Stans
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