Can’t beat a bit of old school Chuck! I thought I had read most of his stuff but realised I haven’t read two novels, this being one of them. I loved being back inside his twisted world and ideas.

I’ve never read a Palahniuk books before but I actually really enjoyed this one. I can understand why some people find his writing annoying, but personally I like it’s wit, brutality and shockingness.Palahniuk is always trying to make a point in his writing… I know this from reading other people’s reviews… but if it’s not right there in front of me, and instead hidden behind cryptic messages, I usually miss the whole point. Which is what I feel happened with this book. I mean I got it thanks to

Chuck has never been a very good writer. He comes up with interesting ideas, uses them as a vehicle for a shitty novel, then I read it, and am disappointed every time. I have since stopped reading his books but my girlfriend says they still suck.

Eudora Welty once said something to the effect that Southern gothic works because people in the South can still recognize grotesque. Chuck Palahniuk may be the vanguard of the post-modern gothic literary group as he can definitely recognize what is grotesque in our culture. “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me” is an old saying that Palahniuk dissects and violates with an impish joy usually only seen in 8th grade biology. Centered around the unfortunate discovery of...

After reading Lullaby, I'm officially a member of the Cult.Chuck, you are to me what Oprah Winfrey is to Josh Nichols.

4.5 STARSNot since the guy who writes error messages for Microsoft have I seen anyone who can piss off his critics more. It seems like you either ‘get’ his writing or you don’t.Personally, I’ve only read five of his novels so far, but (with the exception of Rant, perhaps) I thought they were all great.Here’s the thing:His books aren’t very long, which means he uses his words sparingly and to maximum effect. His sense of humor is dark and shocking, something I can appreciate. He always comes up w...

“After long enough, everyone in the world will be your enemy.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, LullabyChuck Palahniuk can sometimes be casually dismissed as an oversold shock author who appeals to a certain type of hipster reader who buys his books (and now comics) with a slavish devotion usually reserved for members of an asteroid cult. Sometimes that view rings true. Occasionally, Palahniuk will deliver a book or an idea that is more of a gimp monster or lame demon of mediocrity than an explosive novel of

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can hurt like hell."Another great satirical/horror by Mr Chuck... 'Warning, if you have read this book and suffer bleeding hemorrhoids caused by sudden outbursts of laughter you may be eligible to participate in a class action law suit'.A childrens poem that has been quietly causing the death of infants, children, and their parents, turns out to be an ancient African culling song. A magical remedy that was originally intended to put the weak and i...

Oh Chuck Palahniuk, why do the kids love you? Years and years and years have passed while I have worked in a bookstore and every single year is the same, some kind of cool hipster guy or girl will come in and ask for anything by Chuck Palahniuk, bestowing praises upon his writing. Okay, I get it. The hipsters love him. Brad Pitt was in a movie based on a Palahnuik book, which was about crazy wacky anarchy, which the young hipsters love.So, I finally sat myself down and cracked open this lovely b...

This was the first time I'd read a Palahniuk novel. It will probably be the only time too. The experience was something like grinding my body up against a human sized cheese-grater. Painful as hell. Just terrible. Hated all the characters - and I've never known a plot to go off the rails as much as this one - I mean - sweet Jesus! - it all got pretty darn stupid, and wasn't; as some others suggest, funny at all. I understand it's suppose to be a satire directed towards a media-saturated society,...

Chuck took me on an interesting ride with Lullaby. It’s about a culling poem that will kill people when they hear it. But that’s a very simple way of explaining this book, there’s a lot more to it. It has several themes but it seems to be mostly about how people are never in total control of themselves. We are all possessed by something. I liked the way he talked about people that have problems with excess (ie. Drinking, eating, gambling, etc…) are actually being possessed by ghosts of people wh...

Palahniuk, the Portlander (Oregon, not Maine) who wrote the cult classic Fight Club, has four other novels. One of them is Lullaby, which might or might not be just as off-the-wall as its more popular brother.The book opens with a scene from a real estate office. Helen Hoover Boyle and her assistant Mona listen to a police scanner for deaths (and potential sales) and field calls from frightened new homeowners who have bought what Helen calls "distressed" (haunted) houses. Helen sells the same ho...

Brilliant. That's the word, the only word, that came to mind as I started reading Palahniuk's Lullaby. I struggled to keep reading, as I was too impressed with the prose. As a writer, reading Palahniuk made me feel like a dancing monkey in comparison. By the time I hit the halfway mark, I struggled to keep reading for an altogether different reason. It had become too fragmented, repetitive, and just plain boring. At the beginning, this passage stopped me. Full stop. Absolute. No going further ou...

The only Palahniuk book I've read to date, and I really liked it.

The only real knowledge I had about Chuck Palahnuik was though the film Fight Club. (Which a terrific flick and excellently directed and photographed. It’s gotta be in my top 25-50 of all time.) I had never read one of his books before. Until now. I checked Lullaby out of the library as I was browsing around looking for something new and interesting. The librarian who checked me out remarked that he is one of her favorite authors and she owns all of his books. So I was intrigued. And this book?I...

To most people a lullaby is a soothing song meant to help coax a child to sleep, but in Chuck Palahniuk’s hands it becomes a death spell that can kill anyone. Of course, that’s not twisted enough for Chuckie P. so he had to throw in some witchcraft, necrophilia and dead babies to really make it a party. Carl Streator is a newspaper reporter working on a feature about infant crib deaths, and he has his own tragic experience in that area. When Streator sees a book containing an African chant at se...

When you pick up a Chuck Palahniuk book you know that you are going to plunge ever-so-briefly into a raging torrent of absurdity, horror so whimsical that you laugh even as you cringe, and insightful looks at contemporary living. It seems a cheap shot to call his work formulaic, but once you've read through 6 or 7 of his books, the pattern emerges and you have a vague idea of what to expect.It was Lullaby that finally brought this realization home to me. You have the protagonist, a man who seems...

The war of who can crank their radio louder than their neighbor. Avoiding the big picture by looking at things too closely. Big Brother filling your head with marketing noise 24-7 so you he doesn't have to worry about what your thoughts cause he created them. Control. Unlikely families. Journalism. These are the tried-and-true themes that Palahniuk has worked before in other forms in other books and they all come together nicely with Chuck's dead pan, sarcastic sense of humor. The premise of the...

Palahniuk makes another social statement(criticism) with Lullaby, but this time with more humor than he's mustered in any of his other books. It definitely helps to be somewhat cynical about the modern world, if you want to enjoy this book (good rule of thumb w/ any C.P books). But even if you love life, there's much to appreciate in the this book, mainly the fact that it's hysterically funny and the events that occur that are really bizarre. The story revolves around the main character who stu

Palahniuk's a total trip, man. The premise of this book caught my attention: People are being killed using an ancient 'culling song', a tribal spell sang to the old or infirmed to put them to sleep... permanently. Neat idea! I was hooked. Other than that, I didn't know what to expect. What I got was a rollercoaster of a book that was one of the most inventive and original novels I'd read in a while. The culling song is just one aspect in this twister of a tale. Throw in a cast of questionable/od...