If you are looking for some interesting new books to read, allow me to put my two cents in and review a few of the titles that I have recently finished!
Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates 
I think that Joyce Carol Oates is one of the few living female authors that I can rank alongside Stephen King as being gifted with the rare ability to glean insight into the darkest aspects of the human psyche. Very disturbing, yet somehow absorbing, Zombie is a major accomplishment.
I think that Joyce Carol Oates is one of the few living female authors that I can rank alongside Stephen King as being gifted with the rare ability to glean insight into the darkest aspects of the human psyche. Very disturbing, yet somehow absorbing, Zombie is a major accomplishment.
Oates has managed to write a demented, chilling novel told from the first-person perspective of a serial killer who desires to create the perfectly obedient human slave (a zombie) by kidnapping, torturing, and lobotomizing his victims. This book gave me nightmares, yet was like a train wreck—I could not look away until I reached the end.
Oates is a very gifted writer, and I have been a longtime fan, but out of all her novels and short stories, Zombie rattled me the most. It is impressive, but be forewarned, it is not for the faint of heart.
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
Lamb is most famous for his novel She’s Come Undone, which impressed audiences and critics both because of the poignancy of the narrative—in the voice of an obese young woman who has been traumatized and abused.
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
Lamb is most famous for his novel She’s Come Undone, which impressed audiences and critics both because of the poignancy of the narrative—in the voice of an obese young woman who has been traumatized and abused.
I Know This Much Is True is Lamb’s second novel, and the narrative is similarly jarring and absorbing, due mainly to the fact that the narrator is difficult to like, yet you find yourself greatly sympathizing with him.
Unlike Oates’ Zombie, where you feel no compassion whatsoever for the narrator and hope in fact that he meets a terrible end, Lamb’s narrative voice, while annoying and at times obnoxious and selfish, does seem familiar and human at least.
The main focus of the story is on identical twin brothers, one severely schizophrenic, and one ‘‘sane.’’ We hear the narrative voice of the ‘‘sane’’ brother throughout this novel, telling the story of what happened to his brother, taking us from the present back to their childhood, and even further back to stories of their mother and grandfather, somehow tying everything together as he tries to come to terms with what has happened to both his brother, and himself.
This is a very lengthy but worthwhile book, and you may find yourself nodding at some of the observations of a troubled family dynamic.
More next time!!!!
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