Rating: 
Summary: Wow! First At Bat and Chris Hits One Out of the Park.
Review: A great start for Chris Bachelder! A very humorous but at the same time sad look into our modern society. Chris delves into what we Americans place our emphasis on and where exactly our culture is heading. He achieves this in an amusing and very interesting way, using very imaginative imagery, ideas and dialogue of a somewhat present but an all too near, scary future. The story can be looked at from a number of different views. The way I looked at it was going to see the Super-Duper bowl on your PC between an Elvis Presley impersonator and a holographic John Lennon rumbling at Woodstock. Or this book should be called Gators V. Seminoles, where the Gators win, as usual. But really, just take a good hard look at Monday Night Football. Do you know what I mean?
Rating:
Summary: A first look at a promising young author
Review: Bear v. Shark is one of the most clever books I have read in the last decade, combining wit with a complex satire of American consumer culture. The novel is mostly excellent, taking us on a road trip with an average American family, the Normans, on their way to see Bear v. Shark II, the biggest cultural event ever. Intertwined in the main story are small commercial-like segments that mostly elaborate on the Bear v. Shark question. The book is fast paced, and a quick read for a book that is 256 pages. However, it is by no means perfect. Bear v. Shark slows to a grind in Part 2, written entirely as an interview between the author and a futuristic talk show personality (it works better than it should, but good writing can't help the gimmicky style used). Things pick up in part III though, bringing the book right to its violent, apocolyptic end. I finished the book in two sittings, making it an ideal light read for those looking for something more challenging than the latest Clancy/Grisham novel. Chris Bachelder is a talented young author, and maybe next time around he can improve upon the winning formula.
Rating:
Summary: PITCH PERFECT SATIRE
Review: First time novelist Chris Bachelder scores big with his debut novel, and has produced the kind of post-modern satire that the over-praised and under-edited Jonathan Franzen strains for in his "Corrections" leviathan. In the future, the televisions have no off switch, nor do they have remote controls, because technology has gotten to the point that television no longer influences the culture, but IS the culture. Reality and simulation melt together seamlessly, without a trace of resistence from the archtypal family whose path we follow as they prepare themselves for a Las Vegas vacation to witness the much hyped Media Event of Bear v. Shark. Bachelder keeps a straight face through out most of this short but punchy novel, and displays an ear for the way television cant infiltrates our daily speech, and invades our dream life. Scattered through out the book are a heap of fast and savage rips on Mass Mediated news, sports call-in shows, flouncy entertainment underwhich nothing substantial resides. In this world, experts in the guise of pundits, jocks, philosophers, and academics all feed a
an uncountably intrusive technology that renders every distraction and disturbance into an entertainment value, to be used until a new contrived sequence of illusion can be set in place. Bachelder, demonstrating a brevity and incisive wit that trashes the claims made for the word-gorged "genius" of D.F. Wallace, writes surely, sharply, with his eye never off his target. Though he does, at times, resort to the sort of post-modernism stylistics and cliches, such as having the author step out from the story to deliver some self-aware discourse on the limits of narrative's capacity to represent the external world fully, completely -- he has a novel or two to go before the lit.critese is pounded out of him -- our author finally reveals a humane side underneath the smart language, and issues forth a funny yet serious warning about our habit of relinquishing our thinking and our capacity to live imagitively over to the hands of data-drunk programmers. A terrific first effort.
Rating: 
Summary: Bachelder V. America
Review: Here's the thing the trick the one-two punch of it all. Chris Bachelder writes about Modern America and he has the arogance to talk about our obsession with the next-big-thing, our passivity, and the fact to the untrained observer it might be difficult to tell that we actually really feel anything. Sure lately wrtiters and directors and producers have been kicking around these suburban lust for life pieces like theres nothing else out there. The tragic love story might have seen its best days with Romeo and Juliete, and Radiohead aren't as good as the Beetles. None of this means that new love stories and rock and roll shouldn't be made. Yes the targets aren't original, but Chis Bachelder is an expert marksman. This is a book worth reading, the language is fantasticly clever (sometimes too Dave Eggers look at me clever), the book has the same breakneck jarring pacing as media that it sets its sights on. There are some truly brilliant moments in this book. A lot of them. And its funny, very funny, and its a little sad, and more than a little hopeful. Mostly it worth the time it takes to read it.
Rating:
Summary: An amazingly witty book with a heavy message.
Review: I just finished the book, and I think I'm suffering withdrawal from my Bachelder fix. Some have said his book is flawed, pointing at the book's ending, the fact that the theme is really not new, even the book's cover design... The comments are perhaps founded, but the writer's dark humor, eloquence, perspectives and innovative approach to novel writing make this book one of my favorite reads of 2001. Bachelder is certainly a promising author with an impressive mastery of our language and an intriguing vision of our society. I posted a review of this earlier, but for some funky reason, it didn't come up. So here's the ol' college try for a repeat...
Rating:
Summary: Extremely good, very creative, not-so innovative...
Review: I like this book more than I like my Aunt Denise, which is saying a lot because I think, like, I'm in her Will, so I got that going for me...which is nice. The premise is great. A *nuclear* family of four drives cross Our Land to see a Bear fight a Shark in a tank filled with enough water for the shark to swim while still allowing the bear to "walk." Great. But the style is DeLillo. Straight DeLillo. It's not even a homage to "White Noise". It is "White Noise". 30-40 years ago, Fiction was ripped apart. Ripped apart first by Pynchon, Barth, Hawkes, and DeLillo. The problem is that our new talented writers (a crew, I admit, that must include Bachelder) tend to pay too too much homage to their forebearers without trying to craft their own creative "click." A "click" in the language that is intrinsicly their own. Proprietary. Stands that test of time. To be later emulated by the next generation writers, who have learned, through reading the New Guys, to find their own path, too.
Rating: 
Summary: At Least It's Over Quickly
Review: I'd call this book a waste of time, but since it only takes a couple of hours to read, that description is inaccurate. Nontheless, I can say it contains nothing of value. Any critics likening Chris Bachelder to Vonnegut need to re-read Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse Five, then publish a retraction.
Rating: 
Summary: Hypocrite Lecteur!
Review: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, submitted for your consideration: "The Predators," by Mark Washburn and Robert Webb (Stein and Day, 1984). From the jacket blurb: "The fiercest creature in the sea is the Great White Shark. The fiercest creature on land is the Kodiak Brown Bear. What happens when they are doomed by human predators to fight each other in the fiercest specatator sport ever imagined? Can human perversity encompass a combat between a twenty-foot Great White and a two-thousand-pound Kodiak for the sake of entertainment? Big-time promoter Augie Zisk is certain it can, and when the scheme is first brought to him he says only one word: cable. Ten million people will pay to watch an exhibition on television, and General Hidalgo de Carazonzo will be happy to host the show in his banana republic." A neglected, and now hideously cannibalized, masterpiece. For shame, Mr. Bachelder. J'accuse!
Rating:
Summary: What the hell!?
Review: This book took me quite some time to even begin to grasp. But suddenly, once I figured out how to read the author's writing, it took on a life of its own. Don't put this book down, even if you hate it. It builds to a conclusion that makes you want to throw the book, because you are left simultaneously so fulfilled and completely unsatisfied. Brilliant satire, hilarious writing and a disturbing look at our future means that Bachelder has constructed a true gem.
Rating:
Summary: The bravery of beating up a first grader
Review: This book was just bad, there's no way around that. After reading this book, a warning needs to be sent out. Look out Twain, Pope, and Erasmus: there is a new great satirist, and his name is Bachelder.
First of all, Bachelder's exercise in satire is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel: SUV's, reality TV, fast food, etc., recieve his harsh criticisms. It's really a laundry list of superficial social "problems." Drunk kids in dorm rooms could make up this stuff. My heart goes out to the poor VH1 executives who are no doubt licking their wounds inflicted by the sharp quill of Chris Bachelder.
Stylistically, it is gimmicky and tedious. For example, rather than saying "car," Bachelder says the make and model of the car, ad nauseum. Oh, I get it, were slaves to consumer culture. We identify things as brands and products, not basic objects. Surprisingly, this gets a bit tiresome.
Overall, Bachelder is satirizing something that has really already satirized itself. Why attack something that never took itself seriously in the first place? About as useless and dumb as "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire." Now that's ironic.
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