Dispatches, thoughts, and miscellanea from writer Jon Konrath

Category: reviews

  • Review: Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography by John Gruen

    I’ve been on a modern art trip lately, trying to learn more about art and artists. I never learned anything in school about art, and other than maybe Jackson Pollock and a bit of Damien Hirst, I don’t know anything.  But I enjoy modern art in the sense that I want to figure out how…

  • Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel

    I saw The Grand Budapest Hotel, the latest Wes Andserson flick, last night.  I don’t like watching movies like that on opening weekend, because they draw the baby boomer intelligentsia Berkeley crowd, the ones that never see movies and then laugh at the wrong places at the stupid pre-trailer ads that I’ve seen a thousand…

  • Review: On the Road (film)

    So I got infected with the Kerouac bug late, toward the end of college, when I fell out of the computer thing and suddenly needed to read everything I saw to learn how to write.  I locked into On the Road and loved it.  It wasn’t cool to love it – I don’t know what it…

  • Movie reviews: Flight, End of Watch

    I go to the movies every damn weekend, and I see some occasional good movies, a lot of okay ones, and a fair number of bad ones.  I never write this shit down, and maybe I should.  I just don’t want to turn into a movie reviewer and have to remember how many stars I…

  • Jesus’ Son

    I’m running out of things to read in the house, or at least I have the perception of running out of things to read.  I probably have at least a hundred or two books that I haven’t read, so maybe I should say “things I want to read” or “things I should read”.  I feel…

  • Review: Editorial by Arthur Graham

    I’m sick of plot. I mean, I’m sick of the unshakeable, so-called undeniable truth that books have to have three acts, a hero’s journey, twelve points, three trials, or whatever the hell archaic structure every hack writer regurgitating genre fiction on the kindle tells you that you must have in order to sell books. Maybe…

  • And So It Goes

    I just finished reading And So It Goes, Charles J. Shields’ biography of Kurt Vonnegut, and have mixed feelings and unchecked nostalgia. The mixed feelings part: the book was somewhat lopsided, but I liked it more than most of the reviewers.  Like someone reviewed it “and so it goes – into the trash,” and I…

  • Your Holiday Shopping List, Should You Choose To Accept It

    It’s almost Christmas!  Or it’s almost Hanukkah, and maybe it’s almost Kwanzaa (not sure), and it’s definitely almost the Firestorm, if you worship Satan.  But it’s definitely that time of year where you spend your hard earned money on carefully thought-out presents for all of your family, and maybe get a fruit basket in return.…

  • Review: Lost in America by Colby Buzzell

    It appears that someone over at HarperCollins saw my previous review of Colby Buzzell’s first book, My War, that I wrote last March, because they sent me an advance copy of his latest, Lost in America: A Dead-End Journey, which is coming out in September.  I remember looking for more info on him after reading…

  • World War Z

    I just finished reading World War Z, which means I’m like three years late to the zombie party, right? Well, fuck you. I was like fifteen years early. I was memorizing the locations of balconies and gun-selling sporting goods stores in shopping malls in case of a Romero-like outbreak that would require me to hole…