The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz 
 Rating: (Reviewed in May 2017) 
 Chosen randomly from my Book Jar (5/12) 
 I'm sorry to say I don't get this book. Why should I care about Oscar de Leon? Was was brief about his life? What was wondrous? 
 First, I should address the Spanish that is everywhere in this book. I understand that the narrator is Dominican and switching between English and Spanish in the same breath is something Dominicans do... but that's not my case and I didn't feel like searching for words in a dictionary every few minutes would make me like this book more. I made a few educated guesses about the more common words, but gave up on the dialogue pretty fast. 
 The part of the novel I liked the most were actually the footnotes giving some background information about the Dominican Republic, though I don't know if they are historically accurate. I also enjoyed the characters of Lola (though not her Wildwood's episode) and La Inca, but they only have small roles in the story. 
 The part I liked the least was probably Oscar's story, who, even if he wanted to be the Dominican Tolkien, didn't seem to be doing anything with his writing and clung to his impossible expectations about love (even commenting about one girl being "too homely to date openly"). What he was doing during his final 27 days (beside provoking his death) is still unclear to me and I don't understand why Lola's daughter would want to ponder over his stuff (that Yunior keeps so preciously). 
 I also didn't like his mother Belicia, naive to the extreme during her youth and harshly bitter at the end of her life. And while the bigger portion of the novel is dedicated to her life, what happened between her and Oscar and Lola's father is merely alluded to. Abelard's story also felt terribly rushed. 
 I got most of the references to geek culture, but I wonder at their significance, since it was Oscar who love them, and not the narrator Yunior. 
 I still don't understand the Mongoose or the man with no face.