Category Archives: Book and film reviews

The New Wilderness, by Diana Cook, follows the wanderings of a small band of humans in a dystopian future (though not always clear it is really a dystopia or whether the group wandering the wilderness are the ones who cannot … Continue reading →

Got this for Christmas: A Song of Wraiths and Ruin, by Roseanne Brown. Young adult fantasy novels keep improving the genre, as authors take the best elements from prior work, clean up the writing, put into interesting new contexts. I … Continue reading →

Our neighborhood book club read The Stranger by Albert Camus. Everyone thought it was worth reading, and we had a good discussion about the fiction/story aspect of the novel, the philosophical aspects, and the psychological possibilities. Probably modern readers immediately … Continue reading →

I quite enjoyed these classic early short stories that defined the genre.

Excellent war stories, fables, and slightly comedic tales of woe. Quite sad, often.

This year I started but never really finished three Nabokov books… don’t know… I think I find the books excellent through the middle but then lose steam. So I start skimming, reading a chapter here and there, enjoy the writing … Continue reading →

First of my Christmas books to read. Providence by Max Barry is an enjoyable “war” sci-fi. Lots of shooting. Well-crafted. Excellent characterization. Still I think I would rather read Vietnam memoirs than sci-fi war novels. They don’t bring that much … Continue reading →

Enjoying every frame of French translation I found in our local used bookstore of Jiro Taniguchi’s superb graphic novel, Quartier Loitain. A story about discerning meaningfulness and discovering family. These kinds of novels will have no meaning for readers in … Continue reading →

I use this blog mainly to track my own reading (and remember what I read several years later!). I loved reading Vol. 1 of Le Seigneur des anneaux in French. Gave the whole novel a fresh perspective (I had not … Continue reading →

Old Man’s War confirmed the Elmore Leonard-ish style, which is not really my preference. I guess it was a decent read? A beach/airplane novel. Nothing memorable except the plot concept. Remarkably blinkered for sci-fi. The “aliens” may as well have … Continue reading →

The Country of the Pointed Firs, by Sarah Orne Jewett, was our book club book. Our criterion is “under 200 pages” and good. This short novel of vignettes written in the late 1800s is filled with memorable characters and beautiful … Continue reading →

Definitely the Elmore Leonard of science fiction: all plot, almost no science. Characters are tough guys, molls with mouths as long as their legs… you get the picture. Enjoyable. not sure I could read more than a few of these, … Continue reading →

Nice historical novel following several historical characters (Frederick Douglass, George Mitchell) and some fictional characters who crossed the eastern seaboard to Ireland transatlantically…. by ship, by plane, by letter…. Very nice, very readable, super interesting. You learn a bunch of … Continue reading →

Short novel by Ma Jian, China Dream is a poignant allegory. I am sure it is far richer in original Chinese, but I enjoyed and appreciated the deft characterizations and set pieces. Every person, to varying degrees, has to confront … Continue reading →

I enjoyed 1776 by David McCullough and would encourage any reader to pick it up. It is a narrative of the fateful year when the rebellion against the authority of the British Crown was gathering steam and blew out into … Continue reading →

We read Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell for my neighborhood book club. I loved it, though admit it did get a tiny bit tedious. Plotless, kind of a “road” report (presumably mostly non-fiction). Very interested … Continue reading →

The Chemistry of Tears, by Peter Carey, is a very literary novel: most readers, I think, will be annoyed by the sudden shifts in narrative structure as Carey jumps back and forth between two first-person narrators, one the grieving horologist … Continue reading →

Kate Morton’s The Lake House is a reasonably enjoyable gothic-style mystery set in Cornwall with a death, mysterious semi-aristocrats, beautiful garden, tortured police officer, some other unhappy people… engrossing for the setup, it runs out of steam halfway through, and … Continue reading →

“Children of Ruin” by Adrian Tchaikovsky was a long sequel to Children of Time. The first was enjoyable due to the accelerated social evolution of the spiders. This one has similar features: a genuine concern for social evolution (octopi, and … Continue reading →

The three novellas that comprise Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter were the perfect read after the two longer pandemic novels (Severance and Station Eleven). They go back to Willa Cather subject matter: the hardscrabble ordinary lives of … Continue reading →