Review: The Sweet Forever

The Sweet Forever by George Pelecanos
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Holy smokes! What a book! Do you like The Wire? If so, then you will love this novel. Cops are crooked (but not all bad), criminals are evil (but not one-dimensional) and the streets of DC are a Coke-fueled war zone. Len Bias is actually a uniting thread throughout the story, and if you know anything about Len Bias's tragic end, then you already know the overall arc of this story. I now NEED to read every book in this cycle, which is kind of like August Wilson's Pittsburgh cycle, but with far less stories and set in D.C. Just a masterful work of crime fiction. Great stuff! Pick it up if you can find it

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Review: Sons and Lovers

Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Now here is a book that could have easily been 200 less pages. I mainly wanted to read it because of another book I read called Dubin's Lives by Bernard Malamud. It was about a biographer who was struggling to write a bio on D.H. Lawrence. Have you ever wanted to read another book because it was mentioned in a book you liked? If so, then you have probably felt the sting of it not being nearly as good as you were hoping it would be, and that's the problem with Sons and Lovers. It's a mostly autobiographical look at the author's mommy issues and his love of a married woman. The only problem though is that D.H., or Paul as he's called here, is one of the most boring aspects of this book. The more interesting characters are his older brother and his father, who kind of fade into the background for part 2 of the story, which is a major slog. But that first part is pretty damn good, which is why I'm giving this book three stars instead of two. Or even one. Anyway, it may be a classic, but it doesn't deserve to be. Don't read it unless you have to.

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