Title: Bed
Author: Tao Lin
Category: Fiction
Page Count: 288
Rating: 4/5
Tao Lin seems to be one of those controversial authors who a lot of people hate, and I’m not really sure why. I can appreciate that perhaps his style might not be for everyone, but I don’t see anything that seems proportionate to the backlash I seem to get every time I read one of his books.
Anyway, it was just pretty good, a collection of short stories that’s pretty typical of Tao Lin and the stuff that he writes. Having read both his poetry and his fiction, I’ve got to say that I prefer him as a poet, but I do like a few of the ideas here and he had some great one-liners. Those one-liners alone would have been enough of a reason for me to pick this up.
As always and as can be expected by any short story collection, there were some that I enjoyed more than others. But as a general rule, what I did like was that they sort of excelled in their mundanity, taking everyday situations and looking at the philosophy around them. There are some great lines and short paragraphs, and I flagged out so many for my video review that I dread to think how long it’s going to take me to film it all.
So yeah, I’d recommend this one if you’re looking to find stuff that’s a little different and more experimental. You might hate it, but you might also really like it, and I fall into the latter group. So now I’m looking forward to reading some more Tao Lin and will get to it as soon as I can.
