I was first introduced to Beatty when noticing "The Sellout" on the library staff picks shelf. Blown away by his wit, character development and poignant tongue-in-cheek, over the top humor, I was sold. Beatty is one of a kind in many respects and he demonstrates more of his uniqueness with Slumberland. To wit, "Race, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the mother ship Free Enterprise. It's five-hundred-year mission: to explore strange, new, previously segregated worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no niggers had gone before" A black author who rarely pulls punches, this story demonstrates his remarkable knowledge of music, the main character being a 'jukebox sommelier' in search of Charles Stone, aka The Schwa. As with The Sellout, there are many passages that are laugh out loud. A PhD level vocabulary and sappier wit, Beatty is a true gem. ( )

i hate this writer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ( )

This book is best suited to people that are fanatical about music and are interested in Berlin when the wall fell.

The book left me with mixed feelings. It was entertaining, albeit more witty than funny. The author's name-dropping approach to musical and other references eventually becomes annoying. ( )

Like his jazz-cat heroes whose names pop up throughout "Slumberland," Paul Beatty doesn't write as much as riff. "Slumberland" is a story about a Los Angeles hip-hop dweeb and turntablist savant who decamps to Berlin in the late eighties in search of a phenomenally talented, long-missing jazzman named Charles Stone. If you'll read it, though, you'll also get acquainted with what might be Beatty's opinions of Tom Cruise, Wynton Marsalis, techno music, and the hygienic habits of modern Germans. Like a talented soloist, Beatty somehow manages to keep it all together; "Slumberland" is messy, hyperactive, and playful, but it never comes off as sloppy. Beatty's kinetic, often uproariously funny prose – keeps "Slumberland" from becoming a long series of pointless digressions.

Beatty's trying to make his readers laugh,of course, but there's a lot of serious stuff in "Slumberland," too. Beatty's fascinated by American blackness and his decision to situate his story in Berlin lets him play with this theme in some interesting and unexpected ways. Offhand, I can't think of another novel with a beautiful, biracial East German dancer in it. Situating his novel in this world-altering time and space lets both Beatty and his characters consider whether race, which is to say, blackness, is still a useful category in a constantly transforming world. The answer they come up with is "yes," and much of that has to do with black music. It's not surprising, then, that Beatty also nails the mania that drives DJs and music nerds in general to find the coolest, most obscure sounds they can find, and even manages to even write about the experience of listening to music without resorting to journalistic cliché or vague superlatives, and that's a lot harder than it sounds. I can't imagine that "Slumberland" will be everyone's thing, but it's fierce, funny, and a whole lot more profound than you'd figure. Recommended. ( )

Not quite finished with this book yet, but I'm liking it so far. Falls into the trap of being a bit of narcissistic self-loathing narrator who-is-relentlessly-clever, which I feel like I've read over and over again, but at least this book is full of charm and hilarity to compensate. Beatty writes fantastically well about hip-hop and jazz and music in general: the enthusiasm just jumps off the page. The music is elusive but palatable in the text, and totally in a good way. I may end up bumping up my review to four stars if the book keeps up the, well, beats. ( )