Badgerdog Literary Publishing

• Rated 5 stars

“The Badgerdog staff was pretty elated about the release of Jess’s first book last week. Luckily for all of us, it turned out that we loved the book because it is brilliant and not just because we like Jess. Otherwise, things could have been awkward.

I Have Blinded Myself Writing This is an amazing tour de force about memory, motherhood, and self. The rangy, poetic, and deeply emotional voice grabs a reader from the first page and won’t let go. (In fact, we’ve already had two reports from staff and instructors who sat down to read a few pages and then stayed up all night to finish it.)”

Badgerdog Literary Publishing wrote this review Monday, March 12, 2012. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“How can I give it less than 5 stars? Personal prejudice against Tolstoy's essays on historiography.”

Badgerdog Literary Publishing wrote this review Tuesday, September 6, 2011. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“Would give it 4.5 stars if possible....”

Badgerdog Literary Publishing wrote this review Tuesday, October 6, 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“This is a book about a boy in high school in a town outside NYC where sexual preference and gender identification just aren't much of an issue. For instance, the homecoming queen, Infinite Darlene, is also the star quarterback.

So basically, as a gay man I described it to said, it's a fantasy. And although it feels a little surreal, it also feels good to live in the author's world where he says, "What if being gay or straight or trans just didn't matter?"

My final thought at the end of the book was "That is just SO nice."”

Badgerdog Literary Publishing wrote this review Monday, April 27, 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“The setup of this book, about a girl's suicide, is really interesting. She sends audio tapes to the other main character about what led up to her decision to commit suicide, and the book is her words to him and his reactions to them as he wanders the town, listening to the tapes and going to the places she talks about it in. I found it pretty compelling and moving and sad.”

Badgerdog Literary Publishing wrote this review Monday, April 27, 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“incredibly dark”

Badgerdog Literary Publishing wrote this review Monday, April 27, 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“Great men are complex men. Benjamin Franklin was a larger than life figure who played key role in the shaping of our country. Long a royalist who was toasted in England and never had a free evening the whole time he was there, he met his British Waterloo with his protest of the harshness of the Stamp Act. After that, his wit and charm played well to the French audience during our revolution, and (in this version of history at least) he played the key role in persuading the French to throw in with us. (John Adams devotees may not like the shrift their man gets here, though he is lauded in other chapters of the book.)

At the end of his life, Franklin was still making an huge impact--supposedly George Washington thought he was crazy to keep on with his public service in his advanced years.”

Badgerdog Literary Publishing wrote this review Tuesday, November 25, 2008. ( reply | permalink )

0 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 5 stars

“I have read and read this book over the years.

Classic tales like "The Swimmer" and "The Five-Forty-Eight" never fail to make me marvel at the linguistic mastery Cheever displays--how he moves the emotion of his upper middle and middle class subjects through the grit and weight of their social surroundings.

Can I quote Cheever himself here? He says it so much better in his preface than I could even imagine doing on my own. "These stories seem at times to be stor...more I have read and read this book over the years.

Classic tales like "The Swimmer" and "The Five-Forty-Eight" never fail to make me marvel at the linguistic mastery Cheever displays--how he moves the emotion of his upper middle and middle class subjects through the grit and weight of their social surroundings.

Can I quote Cheever himself here? He says it so much better in his preface than I could even imagine doing on my own. "These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filed with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat."

These days, I need an escape to this simpler time.”

Badgerdog Literary Publishing wrote this review Tuesday, November 25, 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“very quiet and sort of interesting”

Badgerdog Literary Publishing wrote this review Monday, November 3, 2008. ( reply | permalink )