A Novel Hat Trick: Three Big Guns Come Out Firing

Don DeLillo's new book Falling Man: A Novel disappoints New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani. Read the review here. Kakutani said that it disappoints like his prior novel Cosmopolis. However, that book, the first, I think, I ever talked about on BillyBlog way back here in September 2005, was still enjoyable to me.

I mean, it's DeLillo, it has to have some redeeming qualities. Like Olivier reading the phone book on stage. It's going to disappoint, surely, but there will be moments when you say to yourself, "Wow, that was good," before realizing it would have been better if he had just done a monologue or something.

And today is the release date for After Dark, a new Haruki Murakami novel.

Still no review on that, although Kakutani (more favorably than the DeLillo book) the new Michael Chabon effort, The Yiddish Policeman's Union.