The Red Notebook: True Stories

Rating:
Summary: I don't know, I kinda liked it
Review: I've missed out on the Paul Auster hype, and I'm not done with the book yet, but I like this one.

Rating:
Summary: Great book, very short and interesting
Review: I've never read Paul Auster before, but my wife made me read this slim little volume and thought it was enchanting. Perfect size for a stocking-stuffer for that literary-type person in your family.

Rating:
Summary: Auster's 'Believe It Or Not'
Review: In "The Red Notebook" Auster does something that is both whimsical and tremendously captivating. Most readers remember when they first read Charles Dickens and found his 'Deus Ex Machina' technique and his coincidences just too ridiculous to believe they actually happen in real life. However, they do. Everyone has some incredible coincidences that are basically one in a million chances, but just happen to take place.

Auster seems to have noted these incidents through his entire life, and then compiled them in this book. The coincidences are extraordinary, but not things that are impossible, just things that are extremely improbable. Auster enhances his style, by the use of "Kafkaesque" elements. His use of initial names is something that Kafka did all the time. And his ironic twists are also in the vein of Kafka, but instead of being novelistic, they are real and true stories.

The book is sure to captivate virtually any reader, and its conciseness both in writing and in length makes it an easily absorbed and quickly read piece of literature.

Rating:
Summary: Auster's 'Believe It Or Not'
Review: In "The Red Notebook" Auster does something that is both whimsical and tremendously captivating. Most readers remember when they first read Charles Dickens and found his 'Deus Ex Machina' technique and his coincidences just too ridiculous to believe they actually happen in real life. However, they do. Everyone has some incredible coincidences that are basically one in a million chances, but just happen to take place.

Auster seems to have noted these incidents through his entire life, and then compiled them in this book. The coincidences are extraordinary, but not things that are impossible, just things that are extremely improbable. Auster enhances his style, by the use of "Kafkaesque" elements. His use of initial names is something that Kafka did all the time. And his ironic twists are also in the vein of Kafka, but instead of being novelistic, they are real and true stories.

The book is sure to captivate virtually any reader, and its conciseness both in writing and in length makes it an easily absorbed and quickly read piece of literature.