In his own words
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Around the World in a Hundred Years
Review: I get more solid information our of young readers books than I can from a stack of textbooks. They’re uncluttered and in plain language. 1421 to 1521, from Henry the Navigator through to Magellan. Just 100 years from sailing within sight of shore to a complete circumnavigation of the globe. Nothing short of incredible.…
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Links
Review: 20 years after publication and still contemporary with the new every day. Somalia is a shithole. An inside look at just exactly what it’s like everyday there, which is to say awful. An excellent novel, a brilliant novelist. Dark, disturbing, but an important novel. This book made me want to: read more from this…
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British Short Stories – Classics Criticism
Review: From Kipling to Huxley, Conrad through Greene, this collection covered a broad cross-section of early 20th century British short fiction. Wow. Lots of casual, routine racism. All of these stories were excellent. None very happy, some downright depressing. I didn’t “get” all of them, but maybe nobody does, stories hit or miss with each…
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Islands in the stream
Review: I bailed on this. Got through about 30% and just had to move on. I wanted to like this. I wanted it to live up to A Farewell to Arms or the short stories. But no. Drinks, bars, descriptions of making drinks, descriptions of bars, descriptions of drinking drinks in bars. I would have…
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The Colour of Magic
Review: I really wanted to like this. But I just couldn’t get into it. It’s schlocky 80s comic-fantasy. You know one thing: a troll is about to kill the protagonist but then gets asked why and then delivers a monologue about how life as a troll is hard and how he’s misunderstood, etc. That would…
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Youth and the Bright Medusa
Review: Superb Cather at her very best. Opera stories. Just the way I like it! I was surprised by the veiled, and not so veiled, references to sexy times. Interesting that in one story she killed off the protagonist on the Titanic, and I don’t mean a schlocky tale of Titanic romance. Just a description…
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The Mystery of the Ghost Train
Review: Sheesh. What a clunker. Self published fan fiction. I guess I need to do a better job of reading the description before ordering! I went through and counted 20 typographical or grammatical errors in the first 31 pages. And they kept on coming throughout the rest of the book. The investigators were rude, coarse,…
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The World’s Most Dangerous Place
Review: A fascinating look deep inside the world’s most dangerous outlaw country: Somalia. The book was great, well written, tight and journalistic. It’s like this: Great book but so difficult to read. Heartbreaking. Somalia is the asshole of the universe and I can’t see it getting any better, ever. This book made me want to:…
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Sapphira and the Slave Girl
Review: The final Willa Cather novel. This was written and published around 1939-1940, but set in 1856. Pre-Civil War America in the south. I’m not sure who was meant to be the hero of this one. Every character seemed to be very human, very flawed. I was expecting a sort of anti-slavery treatise, but I…
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Kokoro
Review: Very insightful and rich in understanding. A unique (for me) glimpse into Meiji era Japan and Japanese culture. Like all Japanese novels this was moving, intellectually satisfying, and depressing as fuck. The prose was interesting, can’t describe it any better. But then again, this might be due to the English translation. Every time I…