Book Review: The Book of Blah

I reviewed Pamela Aye Simon's "The Book of Blah: Random Thoughts for Boring Days" several weeks ago for the Birmingham News.

“Simon's book is filled with free-verse poetry on the peculiarities of modern life. Her topics are diverse, ranging from technology to clothing, diet and the aging process…The theme throughout the text is of loss and compromise. The narrator is conflicted between her inner life and external circumstances. This underpinning accounts for the sadness that occasionally overwhelms these verses.”

Officially, it falls under the “humor” category, and that was my main quibble with it. Books like “The Book of Blah” are tough to categorize – not quite humor, not quite literary, not quite… You get the idea.

The free verse form fascinates me because of its economy - taking the most important words in the sentence and cutting out the rest. I think my eyes do that quite naturally. Using too many words dilutes the impact of a statement.

Anyway, read the review here.