Ed Park is a very entertaining writer, very well executed, I keep being reminded of a combination of Lilla and Pynchon, light and dark, light and heavy. If you are in the mood for something dense, well written, this novel is great, full of wit as well. The author is Korean-American and tells the story … [Read more…]
Considered Teffi’s single greatest work, Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea is a deeply personal account of the author’s last months in Russia and Ukraine, suffused with her acute awareness of the political currents churning around her, many of which have now resurfaced. In 1918, in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Teffi, … [Read more…]
Fatale, (1977,) by Jean-Patrick Manchette, is my first French noir novel. Translated by Donald Nicholson Smith and published by the New York Review of Books, I borrowed this slim volume from our county library. I read it in two sittings, wondering, after the first, if I wanted to finish it and I still wonder. There … [Read more…]
Nov 15, 2023 I finished “reading” Democracy awakening : notes on the state of America by Heather Cox Richardson recently. I use quotes for read because she, as a historian, tells the story of our democracy from about 1960 onward, which spans my experience, so I was able to skim much of the text while … [Read more…]
Jun 11, 2023 Needed something classic so blew the dust off a 1971 Dell Edition of Christie’s Dead Man’s Mirror including Murder in the Mews and Triangle at Rhodes. Great fun, Poirot is dry and clever, two locked rooms and a love triangle with a twist.
Jun 4, 2023 Read the ebook edition off Hoopla of Roadside Picnic, it is dated 2012 and contains the introduction by Le Guin. She points out that this book is a great example of non-heroic science fiction, no supermen, no geniuses, just a bunch of common people slogging through their reality. And slog they do, … [Read more…]
May 8, 2023 For the second time, I’ve finished “Against the Day” by Thomas Pynchon, (2006). This lengthy romp follows the lives of the two generations of the Traverse family, circa 1860 -> 1920 and their involvement in anarchist causes across the globe. There is a huge cast of characters touched by the family and … [Read more…]
Mar 19, 2023 Speaking of dry, a few years ago I reread 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Verne and recall skipping large chunks of page due to fin de siècle taxonomy, must have been fascinating at the time, but for us 20th C. sophisticates, not so much. More recently, Around the World in 80 … [Read more…]
Feb 1, 2023 Let us not forget “The Lathe of Heaven.”
Jan 10, 2023 One thing mentioned in all the tidying up advice columns around the new year, you are unlikely to reread book from your bookshelf. To disprove that, I’m reviewing my Pynchon collection. Including some interesting book markers and some dust, so far they are holding up well. I reread the last half of … [Read more…]