The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

How this book won the Pulitzer Prize AND the National Book Critics Circle is beyond me. It's terrible. Here's the review I wrote when it came out. I stand by this completely. If someone says they read this and liked it, punch them in the throat. (I'm kidding, naturally.)Review of Junot Diaz’s first novel, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” published Oct. 7, 2007 Imagine, if you will, that seven years after publishing "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," Ernest Hemingway decided [...]

I want to know all about your family, your childhood, your grandparents, their childhood, etc, etc, I want to know where you lived, what food you ate, what games you played or didn't play. I want to know why this is important to you or that is not. Which is why I LOVED this book! Junot Diaz takes 300+ pages to tell a story about a boy that wants to be kissed and the kiss MATTERS because we know his family, we know his friends, we know their superstitions and their pains, and their loses and thei [...]

Exhilarating. Brutal yet beautiful. Wao. I really enjoyed both the style and the story of this whirlwind of a novel by Junot Díaz. I can see why he got a Pulitzer and wonder if he other books are as fun to read. I think that Seven Killings was even more masterful, but Oscar delivers nearly as much gore and Caribbean corruption and historical facts as well. I especially enjoyed the footnotes. Writing any more about this book would certainly break my no spoilers rules so suffice it to say that th [...]

Ok, I’m writing a review of this book right now or I’ma die trying goddamn it! 1 HOUR LATERI got nothing! I’ve deleted like 20 paragraphs! 1 HOUR LATER!!! 2 bruises in my forehead, kind of dizzy, I’ve cursed the gods of knowledge for being born without literary talent!! And 0 review!Oh god!!! I give up!!! This is all I got!!! This book is awesome!!! Is a nerdy dude being nerdy as hell and not getting pussy!! Even tho he desperately wants it!! he watches Akira which I think is kind of coo [...]

I bought Oscar Wao as a birthday gift for my mother in October based on scores of sterling reviews. She read it, gave it a mild thumbs-up (probably just being nice) and handed it off to me. Now having read it, I'm pretty mortified I thought this book would be something she might like. The critical consensus seemed to be that Junot Diaz is a good writer, and he picked a good story to tell here in his first novel. But I found this book lacking on both counts. I found the writing lazy and unexpress [...]

Soon after I started reading this book, I also started reading Housekeeping vs. The Dirt by Nick Hornby. In it's preface, Hornby discusses why reading has fallen by the wayside as of late. A lot of people associate reading with boredom because to most, it feels like a chore to get through novels. If people would just read what they enjoyed, then they would begin again to see the pleasures of reading and thus, do more of it (he even makes a point that someone who reads only The Economist and thei [...]

Honestly, if someone had warned me that this book would barrage me, page after page, line after line, clause after clause, with obscure dorky references, Dominican Republican history lessons, and Spanish colloquialisms, I may not have picked it up.* But I am glad I did.It is comforting to realize that on the scale of nerd-dom, I fall on the light end. I could follow the shout-outs to science fiction authors, as well as the Lord of the Rings allusions (of which there were many). But I was lost fo [...]

Meet Oscar de Leon, dubbed "Oscar Wao" by bullies who liken him to the foppish Oscar Wilde. Our Oscar is a fat, virginal Dominican-American teenager who carries a Planet of the Apes lunchbox to school, spends hours painting his Dungeons & Dragons miniatures, and who knows "more about the Marvel Universe than Stan Lee." If Nerd was a country, Oscar would be its undisputed king. Oscar is the kind of kid—sweaty, mumbles to himself, inevitably invades personal space, probably has bad breath— [...]

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz is pure genius storytelling at its core. This was a Book Club choice that had me a little nervous but in the end had me tightly strapped in for the ride.As the title suggests, there is brevity to Oscar Wao's life. Going into the read knowing this fact makes it even harder to accept as you have little hope that he will survive all that is thrown at him in his early years. You root for him the entire length of the book but know deep in your heart [...]

A lot of people seem to either hate or love this book. Most people get irritated with misleading title, the hard-to-follow narration/storyline, but mostly with the eclectic use of spanglish that is scattered throughout the book and with no footnote, i might add!!! In an interview, Junot Diaz said that he offered up the Spanish without translation because he wanted to give English readers an idea of the immigrant experience. The spanish in this book reflects the immigrant experience. The alienati [...]

Junot Diaz’s 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Waois an achingly beautiful, irresistibly harrowing depiction of Dominican Republic.The twentieth century’s one of the most disreputable dictators, Rafael Trujillo exercised absolute power over Dominican Republic like a feudal lord from February, 1930 until his assassination in May, 1961. The longevity of his barbarous reign led to the pitiless slaughter of 50,000 Dominicans. The author, Junot Díaz persuasively [...]

GarbageThis book was recommended to me by my cousin so I thought I would like it. I was so wrong. All that's here is childish profanity, body-shaming, and portraying minorities is stereotypical ways. For an author who is so lauded, I am left confused at what he has to offer. It all seemed so forced and inorganic for something that was supposedly based on the author's past that it felt like a poorly drawn cartoon that fifth graders would make as if they were aiming to create the next South Park.

“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand, there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deepat have taken hold.” J.R.R. Tolkien.Oscar Wao is a wonder of nature. A nerd. Weirdo. Freak. This is the story of an outcast and his travails. A free spirit who speaks in sci-fi gibberish and aspires to become the Dominican J.R.R.Tolkien. His isolation is as massive as his 307 pounds and h [...]

Bullet Review:"WAHHHHHH! My life is so horrible!! I'm 100+ pounds overweight, have no friends, and have never gotten laid!! Especially to some fine b!tch with huge tits! The one time I "tried", the girl was in an abusive relationship with a d-bag. I was TOTALLY the Nice Guy; she should have gone with ME!!! Now I will whine and do nerdy things, and occasionally mention them so that the cover blurb saying I'm the Dominican Tolkien won't be 100% inaccurate."If this is what you want to read, go ahea [...]

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a great coming-of-age tale about a boy who wished to grow up but just couldn’t… He just managed to grow older. And somehow I place this unusual novel between To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, and of course it has some sinister touch of The Comedians by Graham Greene to boot.“In September he headed to Rutgers New Brunswick, his mother gave him a hundred dollars and his first kiss in five years, his tío a [...]

Because in my brain there is a sharp-edge precise hierarchy of the MODERN CLASSICS (read in the most recent years*), and because this book is newly minted therein:1STMIDDLESEX2NDTHE CORRECTIONS3RDWORLD'S END4TH (TIE)ON BEAUTY/THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFEI mean, surely this is a book to join the others. It's about pretty much the same thing as those others: it deals with the Family Odyssey. Theme of the decade? Half century? I subscribe to the belief that nowadays the family chronicle, the history tha [...]

These are the reasons I'm abandoning this book:1. It's crude. And it's not just the overuse of the f word I'm over. The sex and violence is crude too. There's love that's personal and emotional and touches something deep down inside. And then there's banal sex that devalues human connection and emotion, the kind of thing someone who was desensitized to real relationships in preference of porn would write. This is the later. Even inexperienced Oscar's interest in women is banal and of no depth.2. [...]

I loved listening to this because Lin-Manuel Miranda narrated it and, subsequently, I was attuned to every word. But although I loved listening to this, both because of Lin's voice and the content, I would love to revisit this in a few years and actually read it to see what else I can pull from it. It's very different than anything I would typically read, and it delves so far into backstories and family lineage that I would love to try flying through it in order to pick up more connections.This [...]

Not sure what was so wondrous about Oscar's life.

Junot Diaz has created a masterpiece here, an incredible tribute to Dominican culture and history, and let's face it. . . what in the hell did you know about Dominican anything before you read this book? Nada. Less than nada. Chances are, unless you're Dominican, a Caribbean history buff or a fan of Julia Alvarez's, you know mierda about Trujillo or his reign of terror or how badly Dominican women have been treated.And, if you haven't read this book. . . you don't know Oscar Wao, and that's a tr [...]

I have tended to neglect the Latin American masters of magical realism because of foolish biases in expectation. For my taste I stubbornly clung to a preference for outright science fiction or full-fledged fantasy over some half-way order of things or a sporadic supernatural or otherworldly force of causality in a narrative. But I am changing my ways under the onslaught of talented writers who make the magical realism approach work well. Like with this one, where Diaz gets me onboard already in [...]

Onvan : The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Nevisande : Junot D�_az - ISBN : 1594489580 - ISBN13 : 9781594489587 - Dar 335 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2007

TBWLOOW would have been a ‘good read’, I honestly believe that, but I don't know… something happened along the way. Maybe it was the fact that I started this during the holidays, and that's not fair to any book, I'm the biggest wench from November 15th to January 15th. I should limit my reading to People magazine or maybe some old Three's Company scripts I don't know, I haven't figured out the system just yet.Maybe it was my utter lack of knowledge about the political turmoil that is the D [...]

Hype can really change the way you perceive a book. Although the buzz for 'The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao' has been steadily building since it was released almost a year ago, the book I picked up at the bookstore had a big, gold starburst attached to it reading 'WINNER - 2008 Pulitzer Prize', and had been brandished 'THE BEST BOOK I EVER READ' by no less authority than my friend Kevin right here on this very website. It's almost not fair, the way we build up these books, or movies, or othe [...]

This is someone's masterpiece, is what I kept thinking. Someone's lifechanger, someone's book they hug to their chest when they finish and re-read every couple of years for the rest of their life. And I would nominate it for classic canon worthy for that reason, and I should be so lucky to ever get the gift to discuss it with a class.Diaz tells the story of the de Leon family and their trials and tribulations throughout at least three generations under the horrors of the Trujillo dictatorship in [...]

This book is a true wonder and treasure, the very definition of a 5 star read. I'm placing it in the exhalted position of one of my 3 favorite books of all time, sitting alongside The World According to Garp and Love in the Time of Cholera. It is a magnificent chronicle of a Dominican-American family and the fuku that haunts them throughout generations, with its main focus on poor Oscar, a heavyset nerd personified in eternal search for love, preferably the variety that is accompanied by sex. Th [...]

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao spoke my language of self consciousness. The parts of yourself that you wish weren't there and cannot forget about. They could perch on your shoulder like not so polar opposites of shame and pride. Maybe not spoken fluently but we could get by and have a nice conversation about all the good stuff like families, books, musics, hopes and disappointments. I liked being talked to. It means a lot to me to be able to use my own heart and mind and feel something abo [...]

I enjoyed this book a lot, and think it deserves the good reviews it's received. I just hadn't expected it to be quite as *sad* as it was. Somehow, it wasn't the more obviously depressing aspects (e.g. the persecution and torture that were routinely practiced under the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic) that got to me so much as the smaller stuff. The continued failure of the various members of Oscar's family to connect, the accumulated hostility between generations, as well as the [...]

Mini review in englishNOTE: READ THIS NOVEL IN ENGLISH AKA THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE DO IT OR YOU WILL LOOSE A LOT OF IDIOMATIC JOKES and ALL the good stuff.Said this, I can definitely say that I am to be declared as Junot Diaz fan. Because I heard about this novel before it was assigned as class reading at uni. It never ceased to amaze me by the different narrative voices, the words used of dominican spanish that the writing style includes and all the footnotes that the book have. They are in there [...]

This book was kind of disappointing. It had a lot of pages. I'd have to go check to see how many for sure, but only about 83 of them were actually necessary for the story. The rest of it was just filler swear words and phrases in Spanish that I didn't understand. Oh yeah, also references to nerdy things that I've never heard of, like fantasy movies and famous sci fi books. (Because I of course, am the epitome of not-nerdy.)The whole book swore and swore and swore like a swearing sailor, and then [...]