In His Own Words

Category: Review

You need these reviews in your life.

  • Links

    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… Read more

  • British Short Stories – Classics Criticism

    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… Read more

  • Islands in the stream

    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… Read more

  • The Colour of Magic

    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… Read more

  • Youth and the Bright Medusa

    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… Read more

  • The Mystery of the Ghost Train

    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,… Read more

  • The World’s Most Dangerous Place

    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:… Read more

  • Sapphira and the Slave Girl

    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… Read more

  • Kokoro

    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… Read more

  • The Math Book

    The Math Book

    Review: This was tough, but I learned a lot of interesting new things. Pascal, Fermat, LaGrange – all were names known to me but now I have learned about the men behind the names. Merseen primes, Pi, Euler’s number… this stuff is fascinating if almost completely beyond the ken of most mortals. This book made… Read more