Customer Reviews

boring boring boring boring boring boring boring

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Unique is sometimes not strong enough a word to describe a book. "Boring" is a novel from the perspective of the musical genre of Punk. With a strange yet accessible format throughout to tell its creative story of an art school couple dealing with their surrounding world of drugs, art terrorism, and sex. A brilliant work of satire, "Boring" is for any fan of fiction seeking something different.

I picked this up in the local independent bookstore a few days before it was supposed to be released, and thought the book was pretty, but that the story would probably be pretentious crap. I keep wanting to like pomo, but books that are also graphic design projects (House of Leaves, etc) annoy me.

I tore through this in two days, and enjoyed every page of it. Zach Plague (a made-up name) manages to pull off a weird combination of Alice-In-Wonderland-meets-Bret-Easton-Ellis-College-Novel in a very interesting way, and seems to poke fun at his own genre while executing it well. I'm looking forward to more from this author, and small press.

There's a book out there for every taste. Although this one has tremendous eye appeal (there's even a poster version), you have to take it with a dash of salt. The main narrative concerns a three way tug-of-war over one artist's sketchbook or journal, called the gray papers. A dealer, referred to as the Platypus, suspects that an artist (Ollister) or the artist's ex-girlfriend (Adelaide) has the papers. The plot unfolds as the antagonist, his wife and a bunch of suits try to shake down various characters to land the papers. The story concludes at your standard, over-the-top art party hosted by the rich white guy and his wife. Every character is an art world stereotype, some quite funny, but each one deluded in his or her own way. Aside from Pete, I found the characters easy to anticipate and considered most of their activities, including their art making, downright uninventive. I gather the author is hip to all this, hence the title of the book.