Post number 496

I bought Reality Hunger by David Shields (Penguin) at a News Agency at Melbourne Airport in March this year. The topic caught my attention and I was sold on the reviews! He may be well-known but I had never heard of him before. Here are some of the reviews that got me in…

‘Mind-bending’ THE NEW YORK TIMES

‘Bold, entertaining, contentious. Essential reading for readers and writers’ GUARDIAN

‘Give(s) bourgeois traditionalists a right good kicking’ OBSERVER

‘An invigorating shakedown of the literary status quo: recommended for readers, essential for writers’ TIME OUT, New York

Well, I have to admit I just couldn’t get into it. It is not written like a ‘normal’ book – you know, chapters, paragraphs etc. Maybe I am behind the times. There was one good outcome for me though. After I admitted defeat and was putting it with my other books I happened to notice on the second last page some information about another of his books titled “The Thing About Life is that One Day you will be Dead”. 

I found it on Amazon and downloaded it to my Kindle. To my surprise I really enjoyed it! He confronts our mortality in a unique way that is not threatening or negative. I would recommend it 🙂

cheers

Lorraine

Related articles

• Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (erausrearchive.wordpress.com)
• Note: David Shields is fantastic. (theliterarymantra.wordpress.com)
• Ceative Response to “L” by David Shields (artofstealing.wordpress.com)