In his own words
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The Flight of the Horse
Review: A collection of time travel themed short stories. I don’t really dig time travel stories and yet… these were no exception. It’s all been done, the paradoxes explored and presented in more ways than an obi clue in a crossword. But. The last two novellas were not time travel and were excellent. “Flash Crowd”…
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The Key to Rebecca
Review: A thrilling thriller! A lusty romp through 1942 Cairo, fez wearing baddies chasing or being chased by sturdy British soldiers and all either spies or being spied upon. A page turner for sure, some of it far-fetched, some of it fairly accurate, tales of high adventure tend to be that way. A good author,…
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Greek Tragedies Volume 3
Review: Very good. Very, very good. 5 plays that are by the famous playwrights but are not the most popular and well known ones. Aeschylus – The Eumenides: Orestes on trial for matricide, 12 jurors of citizens, Athena as judge, Apollo for the defense. Sophocles – Philoctetes: Odysseus being a smartypants asshole like he was…
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The Dead Zone
Review: Well that was the first Stephen King book I have read. Not that I was avoiding it, but when you read as much as I do, coupled with a 25 year beer break, some books and authors get missed. This was brilliant, amazing, beautifully crafted. Scary, sure. But more importantly it makes you feel…
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Aku-Aku
Review: Easter Island! So remote and mysterious. So many questions, so much to learn. Thor Heyerdahl of Kon-Tiki raft fame in the 1950s led a scientific expedition to explore and dig on Easter Island and he found answers to many questions. Not all, but more importantly, he found adventure. Since this was written in 1957…
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The Ramayana
Review: A long read, I started in March and read a short chapter a day, just like daily Bible readings. This is one of the ancient texts along with the likes of the Mahabarata and the Bhagavad Gita that brown people use to delude themselves into believing in nonsense. Like what white people do with…
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The Enormous Room
Review: Powerful and deeply personal narrative of the author’s experience in a prison in France during the Great War. So many of the things, feelings and experiences I know intimately from my own jailhouse experience. The prose was so exquisite in places that I grabbed my highlighter to preserve them. Really great reading, I’m sad…
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Dubliners
Review: This was fucking magnificent. Joyce brings to life fin de siècle Dublin like to LIFE. God I felt I was there. Is it modernist? Not in the same sense as Portrait of the Artist and certainly not as in Ulysses, but it deviates sharply from the rigid narrative structure that we are familiar with…
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Alexander’s Bridge
Review: A five star performance again from Cather. Reminded me a lot of Henry James in The Ambassadors or the The Bostonians, men and women trying to be men and women but hidebound by manners and etiquette. This is the difference between good writing and great writing. The only criticism I would make is that…
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Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time
Review: Finally got through this after an abortive fist attempt in 2020 (made it 50 pages). The prose is purple, just gushing descriptions of each song, each chord, each performance. Musicological language throughout with no purpose except to confuse and lose the non-musicologist reader. 2/3 of the way through he finally gets down to where…