The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2008)
This has been a long time coming…
Forward:
My story with The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins began last spring. I had put hours into developing a book club for friends of mine. I raked through numerous accredited “Top” lists of the most important novels of the past century. From there I culled the cumulative list down to no more than one novel by each author, novels that were no more than 300 pages (so as not to scare casual readers away), at the same time making sure that there was novel representation from each decade and most genres. I ended up with 51 titles.
Books were chosen by the members, given a vote of three novels pulled from the list at random. This [sort of] worked for the club’s first two novels. When I saw membership/interest starting to dwindle, I opened the floor for member recommendations Continue reading →
Tags: Battle Royale, Big Brother, book club, Catching Fire, David Cronenberg, Death Race 2000, dystopia, Ender's Game, Entertainment Weekly John Green, Extreme Makeover, Gale, George Orwell, H.G. Welles, Katniss, Katniss Everdeen, Kinji Fukasaku, Man vs. Food, muttations, Orson Scott Card, Peeta, Project Runway, Richard Connell, Stephanie Meyer, Stephen King, Superbowl, Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Most Dangerous Games, The New York Times Book Review, The Running Man, Twilight, Videodrome
Exley by Brock Clarke (2010)
the self-hating hipster 
Palahniuk – Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey
1 FebRant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk (2007)
I fee like an jerkoff just writing this review. Yes, it’s come time to review a Palahniuk novel…
**Aside: Remember Fight Club?? Remember 1oth grade when the movie came out on DVD and found its way into the hands of manboys across the nation excited by violence, an occasional boob (sorry, girls) and a sweet soundtrack (that may or may not have discovered Pixies and Massive Attack for you)? Remember finding out a year and a half later that it was a book, reading it in a day and then talking to other people who had read the book and were fascinated that you read books too? “Did you like the book better than the movie?” “I dunno…both were pretty sweet. You wanna go drink a beer at my parents’ house on lunch?” I did like Fight Club (both the film and the novel) and still do, but Continue reading →
Tags: boosting, Buster "Rant" Casey, Chuck Palahniuk, contributors, dark comedy, Day-Timers, Fight Club, grotesque, hipster, Kurt Vonnegut, Massive Attack, mish-mash, Night-Timers, oral biography, Pixies, Rant, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey, sci-fi, Self-Hating Hipster, social commentary, transcendence