Beautiful You seems to be Chuck Palahniuk’'s response to and commentary on the popularity of 50 Shades of Grey series and the proliferation of commercial erotica born from that series. But Beautiful You never rises to the deep social analysis that Palahniuk’s early stuff does. Beautiful You remains simply clever and superficial, becoming more a book belonging to the commercial erotica genre rather than a commentary on it. But still, it's a damn fun read.
A few nights ago, when reading the James M. Cain short story “Pastorale,” I was struck by a scene that seemed very Chuck Palahniuk-ian[1]. A dead man is pulled out of a frozen lake; the man fell through the thin ice atop the lake when trying to retrieve the severed head of a man he helped kill earlier in the…
Chuck Palahniuk is an important writer. Love him or hate him, he’s done more to bring reading to uninterested demographics than almost any other author. But how do his books rank? I decided to take some time to (as) objectively (as possible) rank all of Chuck Palahniuk’s novels from Most Important to Least Important as a way to help hew…
New review of I Didn't Mean to be Kevin in Isssue 4 of Surreal Grotesque Magazine (pg. 43). Many, many thanks to Surreal Grotesque, and to the reviewer, Courtney Alsop, for taking the time. "This novel is easily comparable in subject matter to Chuck Palahniuk and Kurt Vonnegut with satisfying results...Ross has crafted a splendid story of identity and…
Another Wordless Book Reviews episode. Here I review four books using only sound effects and facial expressions. The books: Invisible Monsters: Remix by Chuck Palahniuk, Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo, Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, and Flashover by Gordon Highland.
The fine fellows at Booked Podcast, Robb Olson and Livius Nedin invited me over to discuss the reissue of Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters. Here's a bit from the episode description: Booked reviews Invisible Monsters REMIX by Chuck Palahniuk, with special guest host Caleb J. Ross. It’s more of a book discussion than a review this episode, since this is not…
First off, please forgive the video quality here. I was trying a new recording method, which obviously didn't work that well. With this episode, I've opted for brevity. Here I review four books using only sound effects and facial expressions. The books: The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay, Damned by Chuck Palahniuk, Seeing by Jose Saramago, and The Moral Landscape…