Tag: 5 stars
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The First World War
Review: What new things could a student of the Great War like Neilos possible learn? Oh… so much. It is true that for years I have read and listened to all sorts of material on this conflict. And it is still as clear as trench-mud. There was so much even leading up to August 1914… Read more
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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… Read more
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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… Read more
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The Song of the Lark
Review: “Here were the sand hills, the grasshoppers and locusts, all the things that wakened and chirped in the early morning, the reaching and reaching of high plains, the immeasurable yearnings of all flat lands.” I cannot express how magnificent this book is so I’m not going to even try. This book made me want… Read more
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Death in Venice
Review: A literary triumph. I nearly said tour de force but I’m gay enough already without adding fuel to the fire. A dark, brooding tale of homosexual obsession. Kind of like a gay Lolita. The prose is magnificent without being overly wordy and pedantic. Leitmotifs abound, so many that Wagner would be jealous. And speaking… Read more
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O Pioneers!
Review: Absolutely magnificent. The more of Willa Cather I read, the more she speaks to me. And not just speaking like to someone waiting for the bus, but speaking at a primal emotional level. Like the rich prairie soil she so beautifully describes. “The gold flecks in her irises were like the color of sunflower… Read more
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Germinal
Review: 5 stars. Let’s get that out of the way. 5 stars. Needed to be said again. J.K. Huysmans described Germinal as ‘a lament rising from the darkness of hell.’ And he described it perfectly. This is my first Zola experience, and it will be my last, a masterpiece beyond any doubt but so depressing… Read more
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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… Read more
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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… Read more
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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… Read more