21st century lit is a cesspit full of garbage. It's impossible to get a pulse read on anything because so many people seem to just love slop and accolades mean nothing.
For some godforsaken reason I have decided to dig around in the garbage pit, and anything I put on here I would say is a waste of time personally or I found disappointing. There's a lot of mediocrity and I am not even putting these on the list.
Only plain bad (in my opinion) books that don't deserve my time to write a review and therefore will be shoved in here for the convenience of others. #FraudWatch
4 comments
yarb
3 months ago
I only read stuff from the last ~20 years if I already know and like the author, or if someone who knows me well recommends it, or for book club. The hype is so overpowering and like you say, people love slop more than ever. I read "Land of Milk and Honey" by C. Pam Zhang for book club and was almost speechless at how bad it was.
kindi
3 months ago
Yeah, I joined a book club this year and we only read stuff from the last 3 years or so. Kairos was one of them and honestly I didn't enjoy the book much but It doesn't deserve to be on this list. We're doing Jennifer Egan's new novel so I'm hopeful I won't need to be adding to this next month... Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen and Pure Colour by Sheila Heti have been the two I enjoyed so far. I was also alone in my enjoyment of Heti's book lol.
yarb
3 months ago
You seem like a nice person, so I’ll look out for those two books… in about 20 years from now.
kindi
3 months ago
Neither are extraordinary tbh. I want to read more of Cohen though. He seems pretty interesting, though I've heard Book of Numbers suffers from trying to be too meta and full of itself I still want to check it out at some point.