Rocco Maiolo's Ramblings and Musings

The inside-back of Ms Mandel's book jacket reads that she's a staff writer for The Millions . I'm sure the readers of this publication appreciate this, but I for one would love for her to write more novels. Thankfully, her new one is due this October of 2020. Station 11 is one of the best books I've read recently. It reminds me a bit of The Walking Dead . And like The Walking Dead , I find myself telling people, yeah, it's a zombie show, but it's not really a zombie show. Similarly, yes,  Station 11 is a post apocalyptic novel, but it's not really a post apocalyptic novel. It's so much more. It's about art, and love, friendship and survival. The travelling orchestra/acting company has a quote painted on its caravan: "Survival is insufficient." It's a quote from a Star Trek Voyager episode. At the risk of sounding ageist, two things strike me most about this book. One, how is someone so young, so wise and insightful into all sta...

I blogged about Tim Winton's Cloudstreet ; I thought I saved a draft, was going to finish it up, and ZAP: it's not there. So here's the super-short version. Great book. I don't think I've read an Australian novelist. The jacket of the original 1991 edition says that this book "confirms Winton as one of Australia's major writers..." Wow, I guess I should be reading other Australian writers because Winton is great. The book reads like poetry almost as often as it reads as prose. It's both character-driven and has really poignant plot vignettes. If I have any criticism, it's that it reads like short stories and not really like a novel with a central character, turning point, reversal and so on. Or maybe the house on Cloud Street is the main character. Hmm. Winton did say in an interview that for him, central to writing were two things: 1) place -- if the place isn't real, characters can't come alive and 2) childhood. Speaking of w...

I've just finished reading Marilynne Robinson's Home . If you know nothing about Marilynne Robinson, know that her first book, Housekeeping , considered a modern classic, won the Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award; her second book, Gilead , won the Pulizer along with a slew of other awards; and then there's Home , winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize and the Orange Prize. In a book review published in The Independent , Salley Vickers writes, "Home is not a novel in which plot matters. Like Jane Austen, but in a different key, Robinson's intent focus is the super-subtleties of human exchange. The heart of this utterly absorbing, precisely observed, marvellous novel is the fumbling inadequacy of love, its inability to avert our terrible capacity to wound and maim, not even but especially, those nearest and dearest to us." It took me a month and a half to read Home . That's in part due to the fact that our book club did a meet-and-greet in early April,...

Quite the book. I liked it, but a lot of people out there disagree with me. Here are some quotes from reviews and plain old reader responses: This allegorical dichotomy teaches us nothing new about the Holocaust, nor gives us useful tools for deciphering and understanding its complex socio-historic causes. (wow -- harsh!) I literally just finished Yann Martel's new book Beatrice and Virgil... about 10 minutes ago. I am shaken with rage as the book is one of the most hateful and ghastly jumble of horrors I have ever finished. At least it is mercifully short. (again: harsh. And "literally" just finished? As opposed to what? "Figuratively finished?) a sophomoric piece of Beckett-lite [work] (ouch! And does the write mean "lite" or "like"?) First of all, I wonder what people would be saying if this wasn't a Yann Marlel book. You've gotta think that it's being judged against the success of The Life of Pi . Also, okay, it's aut...

I know that this post is about 10 years behind the times -- which in web terms is about a century -- but I don't care. I'm going to blog about Harry Potter. Over 10 years ago, after Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came out, I remember hearing all the scuttlebutt among religious folk about how the book and the author were evil (into witchcraft and stuff). I remember walking into a "conversation" between a young second year teacher and a student. The student was telling the teacher that Harry Potter was evil because it had witches and spells in it and, as a Christian, he thought that that was bad -- especially since it was a book for kids. The teacher was explaining that you can't be so black and white about things and that you shouldn't judge. Truth be told, I was keeping my head low, hoping to make like Harry with his invisible cloak and not be seen. No such luck. I was stopped and asked, "Hey Rocco, you're religious. What do you think o...

You don't realize how good pulp fiction writers are until you try your hand at writing. It's not until then that you realize how difficult it is just to plot an engaging story -- let alone create characters that your readers are going to react to, throw in theme, setting, mood... Holy crap, it ain't easy. When I was at university studying English, I didn't even know who was on the best seller's list. Who cared? They had nothing important to say to the human soul; they were totally forgettable ; they were pulp fiction writers. We were reading Auden and Steinbeck and Pound and Shakespeare and Austen -- writers that mattered. Well, 20 years later, I'm not so sure that Grisham and Crichton and King and Archer don't matter and/or won't have contributed something to culture when literary history judges them. Back to my original reflection. It's not until you try writing a novel or even a short story that you realize how impressive someone like Steve Ma...