In his own words
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Casino Royale
Review: My first James Bond novel, and fittingly the first James Bond novel written by Ian Fleming. This was surprisingly good, and surprisingly thoughtful and introspective. Written in 1953, the effects of the war were still very real and the novel reflects this. This protagonist is not the superhuman gadget wielding hero of the schlocky…
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The Gulag Archipelago Volume 1
Review: Dark. Holy fuck. And this was only Volume 1. A chilling first-hand account of life in the soviet prison industry system. Man’s inhumanity to man, repeated ad nauseum. Like a very long version of the author’s own One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. A lucid reminder to keep people like Trump out…
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The Pegnitz Junction
Review: Wow. That was awful. Not just a little bad, but so tiresome I could barely get through it. In fact I made it 73 pages, skimmed the next few, then flipped to the last page (89) and found that nothing had happened. There were more stories and about 100 more pages to go in…
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My Ántonia
Review: One of the last “best known” books by Cather. So now I can say I have read all of her most recognized books. Beautifully written, like all her novels. Now where is the however pivot? However. <– there it is! Nothing happens throughout the novel. I mean, people live and grow old and have…
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The Elected Member
Review: This one took home the Booker Prize in 1970. Not sure why. Not going to say a lot about it, lots has been written on it over the years. I just didn’t like it. One can’t love every book, even the prize winners. This book made me want to: finish it and move forward…
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The Ghost Road
Review: What an extraordinary book. A tour de force from first to last. Set in 1918 and with retrospectives to an earlier time prior to the war. A gritty, even shockingly brutal look at life in 1918. Imagine all the old codgers you see at the cenotaph on November 11 being young and fucking each…
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The History of the Blues
Review: This was excellent. Not too technical, no “augmented for the syncopated declension on the minor chord.” When needed the author spelled it out musically, but in such a way as to be understandable to a non-musician. What they call narrative history nowadays, in that it’s very readable just like a novel. Every third guy…
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Something to Answer For
Review: This was the first ever (inaugural is the word) Man Booker Prize winner, way back in 1969. My goal beginning with this one is to read all 50 Booker Prize winners from 1969-2019 in the next year. I don’t get this book. It was well written, very crisp prose and some really elegant phrasing.…
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Burning Marguerite
Review: Powerful and intensely moving. If that sounds like every book jacket review in history it doesn’t matter. It’s still true. There is a very calm space right at the heart of this novel, like the silence in a cathedral. There is not a lot of wasted prose. Short, intense sentences that convey pages of…
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The Poetics of Space
Review: Wow. This was a tough one. Not that it was bad, not at all, it was just difficult. A treatise on the philosophy of how we experience our own houses. Using examples from poetry, psychiatry, and nature the author delves into the phenomenological ways that each area of our domiciles affect us. Cellars, for…