Category Archives: Book and film reviews

Lo único que quiero escribir es que estoy bastante seguro de que en mi lista de 10 libros a leer otra vez antes de que me muera esta novela estará incluida.

People who are older than me often speak in hushed tones of Somerset Maugham… his world-weary tone, the wry commentary, the idea that some special humans grapple with BIG decisions and we should all strive to emulate them or perhaps … Continue reading →

Beautiful writing. I’m inspired a little bit, to think more cosmically. But in the end, it seemed like a Koyaanisqatsi. Without plot, there is just the music of Harvey’s language evoking images.

Almost done with Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House and a nice chart of all the characters imgur.com/gallery/8OLD… reinforced for me that there doesn’t seem to be theme or plot or nada and I guess that’s what people like in novels … Continue reading →

I really liked Doomsday Book, but these two novels, Lincoln’s Dream and Passages, were just awful. Reading goodreads reviews it seems that this is well-known… I wish I had known. Repetitive, constantly dropping obvious hints, incoherent transitions. I gave up … Continue reading →

Our neighborhood book club read a few short stories, including of course “The Lottery.” I had read that long ago, and probably several times since, and there is an excellent reading aloud of the story on The New Yorker website. … Continue reading →

El espíritu de la ciencia-ficción / Roberto Bolaño (stopped after awhile) Nocturno de Chile / Roberto Bolaño (When he goes to the house at the end where they used to have the literary conversations, and it was a torture house… … Continue reading →

I have been working through short stories by Bolaño, in a collection I bought when I accompanied MBA students to Chile. “William Burns” has that narrative ambiguity that I guess is his trademark: the occasional narrator remark that a detail … Continue reading →

I read about 100 pages of Passage, by Connie Willis. I really liked Doomsday Book. But Passage was typing, not writing. Dialogue and inner monologue that repeated itself, the complicated hallways and stairways of the hospital. After 100 pages the … Continue reading →

Read Gene Wolfe’s Shadow & Claw… part of ‘The Book of the New Sun’. Reviews suggest amazing. First part, Shadow, indeed great- wonderfully written, A+ narrator voice. Then falls apart. Claw a hodgepodge. Wolfe seemingly lost track of what we … Continue reading →

My book club read The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis, and discussed today. All agreed: a ham-fisted, boring allegory for thinking about the meaning of life and how to be a person who will be closer to God. God turns … Continue reading →

Published back in 1994 and 1998, the novels seem very prescient about our new cusp-of-AI age. In the novels, scanning and uploading of conscious human sentience is achievable. It feels like that could be 50 years away, at this point … Continue reading →

I loved the narrator voice here. It’s a picaresque farce of a novel, drawing a lot on Shakespeare’s comedies. Very enjoyable read, although in the end maybe more like a delicious trifle. Possibly there is a deeper literary subtext going … Continue reading →

I really wanted to like this, but in the end it seemed more trifling that substantive. A foreword tries hard to make the case for the novelette as a showcase for writing craft mastery, in the device of the narrator … Continue reading →

Our book club read this odd young person book. As one member said in our discussion, “It’s an allegory, but an allegory for what?!” Definitely worth sharing with a 12 year old avid reader, and discussing with them, is my … Continue reading →

Tremendous! I loved reading this. Such amazing writing as Saramogo elides the story of the present-day publishing house with the story of the reconquest of Portugal from the Moors, with the same narrator commenting on what he is doing.

Another in what is apparently an enormous fan-fiction of Greek and Roman myths. That I think I was sort of unaware of. And maybe that is because most of them are bad? This one is a throwaway- Atwood seemingly makes … Continue reading →

I thought they would be better. More clever, more interesting details. Instead they seemed perfunctory. I think I’ll take Patricia Highsmith or Muriel Spark.

I don’t need to write much, since Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s novel, La plus secrète mémoire des hommes, is probably the best novel I’ve read in a decade (since I read Alan Garner, Beppe Fenoglio, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, I guess?). Definitely … Continue reading →

Wow, reading this was a pleasure, after having read Jean Rhys. You can see almost a direct line from Kafka to Rhys to Kavan to more contemporary novels like Annihilation. The subject matter is banal; everything relevant in the novel … Continue reading →