In his own words
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Brief Lives
Review: Exactly what the title suggests, brief little biographies of 17th century notables. Walter Raleigh, William Harvey, Inigo Jones, and a major section dedicate to Thomas Hobbes. Despite the age of this book the prose is clean and concise. Aubrey also blends in plenty of juicy gossip with the biographical data. My favorite was something…
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Slaughterhouse Five
Review: A brilliantly executed and skillfully written book. An anti-war manifesto if ever there was one. Funny, sad, disturbing, and throughout the book is a consistent moral statement. Most of the time we look at war as an historical event but forget the deeply disturbing personal stories that make it up. I award this book…
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The Catcher in the Rye
Review: A very unusual, very interesting read. I always thought it was a book about baseball. Poignant, often very depressing, it brought back some vivid memories of my drunken history. I could feel, almost literally feel, the deep down to the bone exhaustion after drinking misadventures. **Shiver** If you asked me what the book is…
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Johnny Carson
Review: A fast and penetrating look inside the world of the King of Late Night. I had no idea that Carson was that wealthy. Like most celebrities I have read about, the man behind the makeup is nothing like the face you see on the screen. Like his predecessor Bob Hope, Carson spent his life…
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Tender is the Night
Review: An excellent novel. Not quite on the same level as Gatsby or Paradise, but very good. A lot of the narrative involving alcohol reminded me perfectly of myself. Settings were beautiful, Nice, Cannes, Zurich. I had a hard time liking any of the characters, though. They were interesting and yet not fully likeable, like…
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Parade’s End Book 1: Some Do Not
Review: This was excellent. True literature in every sense. That being said, it was difficult to follow in parts, long parts often and the language was erudite but often convoluted. From a 21st century perspective the way that men and women viewed sexuality seems so dated and stilted. Interesting to see how the pre-war generation…
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A Tale of Two Cities
Review: This was amazing. This was grim. All Dickens is grim. But amongst all the grimness of the Dickens, this rises above the rest. So it was amazingly grim. That works. A few parts took suspension of disbelief too far so I’ll take off a star, but this is truly a great novel. This book…
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Leaves of Grass
Review: Wow. That was gay. Seriously, get a room. Whitman reminds me of one of those big bushy bearded professors or writers who act like they’re native and then it comes out they were born in Brooklyn to Orthodox Jews. Like James Fenimore Cooper, he writes what he thinks the working man must be like,…
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Eugene Onegin
Review: My goal in reading this was to simply get through it, and hopefully to gain a better understanding of the Tchaikovsky opera of the same name. But this was good. Really good. Being a verse novel it is broken up into 8 cantos, composed of around 50 stanzas of 14 rhyming lines. At first…
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The Complete Odes and Epodes
Review: When you first pick up a 2000 year old book of poetry you have the obvious apprehension, and hope that you can make some sense out of it all. This was different. Very different. The odes, epodes and hymns within this little volume are as vibrant today as when they were first written. Horace…