Don't bother, he's a fucking hack.

No lie: I'm glad to hear you say that. I've really wondered what's wrong with me for a long time. People fucking LOVE him and I just don't get it.

Wait sorry I thought we were talking about Franzen. Lethem's not much better, but I wouldn't call him a hack; just sort of boring.

i think reid loves it

I've never read any Franzen.

i really enjoyed the corrections, and thought freedom was decent

I own Freedom. But I haven't read it yet. I was thinking about doing that one after I'm done with the one I'm reading now.

let me know what u think

Freedom is quite possibly the worst book I've ever read cover to cover.

you're the worst book i've read front to back

Freedom is extremely problematic. Franzen is extremely problematic. I still think his books are worth reading.

Freedom suffers from three enormous problems:

Spoiler: show

1. Everyone is despicable, and the entire family is horrible to each other for no reason other than, I can only assume, Franzen thought they would make for more compelling characters of they were all shitty people.

2. The patriarch's plan to stop mountain top removal via protection of a bird is such a dumb premise to build the entire story on.

3. The sex scenes are AWFUL. That line about the son eating his neighbor's turds is just the tip of the iceberg.

to the first point, i don't have a problem with works of art in which all or most of the characters are despicable/hard to root for...in this case i do agree the characters could be more compelling, but it wasn't enough to take me out of the book

to the second point, yeah he could have gone with a better premise but it was really just there to move the characters forward (or more backward)

to the third point, the way those were written were heavily influenced by the erotic tales of verb_to_trust

That .jpg is like a washing machine beacon.

It's a much better cover than these:

Both of those covers feel closer to the vibe of the novel to me. I read from the second one you posted.

Totally agree! I read the dark, bold cover that Lenny posted, and was really let down when

Spoiler: show

the superhero element of the story was so minimal.

The other two covers are more in line with the actual tone of the story, in that they evoke

Spoiler: show

a more emotional tale, with the NYC environs and the main character's childhood memories taking center stage over any serious action stuff.

Exactly.

I need to get my thoughts in order before I post because what I meant was that the first cover made it look like Ready Player One but the blurb I read on Goodreads made it sounds like a coming-of-age novel with some weird gamey back story. And yet I said the first cover was 'better'. Ugh.

Which books have you picked up so far? Motherless Brooklyn and Gun, with Occasional Music are both pretty quick reads and seem up your alley.

Anything beyond that can sometimes get crushed under its own weight, but I still like the things he writes about. His essay on The Searchers is pretty relatable to anyone who has ever tried multiple times to understand or "like" something on a deep intellectual level in the pop culture world. I'd recommend that one too.