Tag: 5 stars
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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
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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 Read more
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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 Read more
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Chasing New Horizons
Review: This is exactly how science needs to be communicated to the public. Lots of science for sure, but written so clearly that anyone can understand it easily. I learned so much. And I’m astonished this mission ever got off the drawing board. The number one concern, like all projects is: money, budgets, funding, costs. Read more
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Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp
Review: What a little jewel this is. Just a lucky find on Amazon based on my previous browsing. From memory, without access to the books, this remarkable Polish officer delivered a series of erudite and passionate lectures on Proust and his great novel. While locked up in a Soviet P.O.W. camp that was deplorably bad Read more
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If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler
Review: Without doubt one of the most peculiar and yet most enjoyable books I have ever encountered. To describe it is difficult. A man starts to read a new novel and finds it cuts off after the first chapter. So he goes back to the shop to complain and meets a woman who had the Read more