I found Special Topics in Calamity Physics unreadable. The cover is great. The set up is promising. But it was all downhill from there. There were a few great sentences hidden amidst the self important laborious wordage, and that does not a great novel make. I charged a friend with the task of finishing it to tell me if I should have pressed on. She's a compulsive reader and book finisher and her answer was 'no'. Another friend thought the same.

I

I agree with the previous post in regards to Calamity Physics. I expected to love it and couldn’t wait to read it, but the clever-clever writing and absolute glut of metaphors got in the way of what may have been a good story and just left me cold. Having recently realized I’m getting too old to waste my time reading books I don’t love when there are so many others waiting to be read, I returned it to the library unfinished.

The Bechdel, though, was funny, sad, and engaging.

I bought this book back in June. Have read it at least a dozen times and find it richer with each reading. I've shared it with any number of friends and we are unanimous in our enthusiasm for it. Funny, melancholy, filled with anger and love. It's final pages are an overwhelming description of that kind of reconciliation every adult has to make with the memories of family/parents/father. Thanks for making more potential readers aware of it.

Ugh - I've started that book about three times and it's just way too full of itself. If someone liked it, they need to explain it to me.

Funhome is a fantastic book and I'm glad Salon is highlighting it once again. But Alison Bechdel has been publishing since 1986, so why are you calling this her first book?

but I don't recognize any justification for these criticisms in the excerpt printed here. I find it a very funny mixture of high school romance (Blue is a little breathless in spite of herself) and hard-boiled styles. "My inclusion into their Magic Circle was as painless as the invasion of Normandy" is both, in that order. The second half is Raymond Chandler on a good day. Self-important style? Did you ever meet a polymath high schooler who wasn't overanxious to display her or his erudition? I'm sure we're meant to find it a little annoying. I think we're meant to laugh at ourselves for being annoyed at the same time that we laugh at Blue for being pretentious in a way that she will undoubtedly grow out of (it's not self-important pretentiousness). She has interesting things to say and she says them amusingly, partly on purpose and partly by accident. It takes an exceptional writer to pull that off.

I must stick up for my Special Topics... I loved it. It was funny, smart, original, fun to read, great characters, great descriptions, unique, great use of language, and a good amount of intrigue.

Just goes to show you, everyone's taste is different!