Daniel Martin
by John Fowles (English)
1977 / 629 pages
Rating 9.5 / 20th cent. lit
This book is over-written, it’s dated and it’s predictable. But it got a 9.5 from me.
Overwritten: if Fowles can think of one more way to say a thing he does. This was not so much a problem in The Collector but The Magus showed signs of Fowles wanting to explore and explore the ideas – even when the explorations seem contradictory. >>>>MORE>>>>
The Brutal Telling (Det. Gamache #5)
by Louise Penny
2009 / 386 pages
read by Ralph Cosham 13h 12m
rating – A
Louise Penny writes such lush cozy mysteries – they have death but no gore. Her Detective Armand Gamache is smart enough to be polite and sensitive while putting the clues together and leading his team.
Although Gamache lives in Quebec City, the nearby village of Three Pines is the setting for most of the books in this series. >>>>MORE>>>>
The Door
by Magda Szabo (Hungarian)
1995 / 260 pages
rating 9.5 /20th cent. lit
What an amazing book! This is the first I’ve heard of this Magda Szabo and this work seems to have got some attention in the US and was made into a movie released in 2012 although Szabo, a leading Hungarian author, died in 2007. It’s probably important to remember that the book was first published in Hungary 2 years prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It can certainly be seen as protest literature of a sort – >>>>MORE>>>>
The Orphan Master’s Son
by Adam Johnson (Pulitzer)
2012/443 pages (Kindle)
rating 9 / contemp fiction
Started one time and got really frustrated. Started over again on 9/20 and it’s working this time. Pak Jun Do is the young 1st person North Korean protagonist. He was raised in an orphanage not because he has no living parents, but because his father is the orphan master and his mother, a singer, has run away. The famine, or Arduous March, occurred between 1994 >>>>MORE>>>>
The Metaphysical Club: A History of Ideas in America
by Louis Menand
2002 / 546 pages
rating 10 – US history
I read this when it first came out in paperback and totally loved it. I was prime reader for it though, being a history major and having taken ”Cultural and Intellectual History of the US” 1 and 2 at uni. They were wonderful classes and I remember some of our texts to this day. Had Menand’s book been published then (or were the course taught today) it would have fit perfectly and I’m sure we would have been assigned several readings from it. There was a LOT on Transcendentalism and the Pragmatists (and much more). >>>>MORE>>>>
The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
by Reza Aslan
2013 / 213 pages (Kindle)
rating: 8 /non-fict- biography -religion
One of many reasons I am a believer is because of the Jews who survived and have often flourished in spite of having been persecuted and enslaved and were even the subject of genocide many times in their 3000+ year history – (since before Moses really). Another reason is the teachings of Jesus (but not necessarily his divinity).
What does this have to do with a biography of Jesus? >>>>MORE>>>>
The Dark Winter (Det. Aector McAvoy #1)
by David Mark
2012 / 304 pages
rating A- / crime- procedural
Aector McAvoy is a big man and he apparently knows how to throw his weight around, but he’s really not a “cop-type.” He’d rather search data-bases and spend time with his family – one beloved son and his wife pregnant at Christmas time. But whether he likes it or not, he finds himself in the proximity of a young girl whose body is found brutally stabbed to death >>>>MORE>>>>
Bleeding Edge
by Thomas Pynchon
2013/477 pages (Kindle)
rating 9.5 / literary cyber-crime
Wow! Oh my. Yes! Okay, so up to about page 45 my general feeling was that this does just not sound like the old Pynchon of pre-Inherent Vice days. And then I realized that this is the sound of 21st century New York Pynchon, not California Pynchon or 20th century world history Pynchon (see his oeuvre).
This will be a very brief review – there is much to think about here – and another reading coming up. For now … >>>>MORE>>>>
Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens (England)
1837 – 600 pages (varies)
rating: 8.5 /classic
Why read Dickens? It’s kind of like comfort food with the same basic ingredients, but in a lot of different flavors – like flavored yogurt.
Reading Dickens gives me a peek into the past. He wrote for folks of the mid-19th century and was a very popular satirist. Generally he lampoons the social and legal structures of the times as well as the hypocrisy of many Christians. >>>>MORE>>>>
Love Medicine
by Louise Erdrich
1984/4o0 pages (rev. 1993, 2009)
Rating: 9 / contemp Native American fiction
I know I read and reviewed Love Medicine less than a month ago but looking into a bit (googling online) I see I missed so much! – Love Medicine is full to overflowing with meaning – virtually every word and its placement suggest some theme or motif – .
I suppose the over-riding theme is the breakdown >>>>MORE>>>>
How To Read Literature
by Terry Eagleton
2013/ 232 pages
rating 9 /nonfict – lit criticism
It’s been a long time since I read a book on literary criticism but it was fun when I did and I read quite a lot (but more theory than criticism, I think). This book is really new on the market and I’ve never read anything by Eagleton, although I’d heard and read his name often enough, so, with the recommendation of a couple friends, I went ahead. >>>>MORE>>>>
MaddAddam
by Margaret Atwood (Canada)
2013/ 418 pages
read by Bernadette Dunne and 2 males 13h 23m
rating: 7.5 / literary sci-fi (dystopian)
I’ve been waiting for this one! I read the first, Oryx and Crake(2003) as well as the second, The Year of the Flood (2009) when they came out so I don’t have my old reviews. – Suffice it to say I thoroughly enjoyed Oryx and Crake but thought The Year of the Flood was kind of silly – YA fiction perhaps – ? Still, overall, I looked forward to MaddAddam.
First, although I’m happy with this very imaginative and heavily satirical >>>>MORE>>>>
Evil and the Mask
by Fuminori Nakamura (Japan)
2013/356 pages
rating: 9 / literary thriller
I really didn’t know if I wanted to read this. It sounded so horrific. But I rather enjoyed Nakamura’s first novel in English, The Thief, so I thought maybe this might be okay.
Okay? It’s a terrific novel – better than The Thief, more nuanced, >>>>MORE>>>>
Retirement Homes Are Murder
by Mike Befeler
2007/291 pages
read by Jerry Sciarrio 7h 37m
rating B+ / light crime
Paul Jacobson who is in his 80s has no idea where he is because his short term memory erases itself when he sleeps. The previous day his son had checked him into a retirement facility and Paul can’t remember any of that. Then he finds a man stuffed into the trash chute and ends up as the prime suspect for the guy’s murder.
Paul learns how to cope with his lack of memory >>>>MORE>>>>
No, this is not about foodie books. It’s about my calling that last book, Sandrine’s Case, “literary crime.” To me, “literary” is a very broad and ambiguous adjective to be added to a genre, and the term “fiction” is way too broad to be useful. So I think of “literary” as being a word like “gourmet,” and just as I can eat a formula hamburger or a gourmet one, so too I can read a formula western or a more literary one. I generally don’t want to go out and eat “gourmet” food – I want to go out to eat Mexican or American or Californian or Southern – gourmet is an added attraction, or deterrent from, comfort food. I can have a Duncan Hines box chocolate cake with canned frosting or I can have a gourmet chocolate cake with a cooked butter-chocolate glaze. They’re both still chocolate cakes. Just as gourmet is not a food, so too, literary is not a genre and fiction is the equivalent of dessert. (By my rules.)
I’ve read several literary crime books (I really enjoy these) – Benjamin Black (John Bancroft) is noted for his style, Sandrine’s Case gets that adjective for the literary allusions and the life-styles of the main characters, Samuel and Sandrine – Sam’s attitude, his snobbish intellectual arrogance, particularly. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History is also a campus crime novel along these lines. Josephine Tey’s masterpiece is about crime in history – very different from the conventions.
Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler are more classic now – I’d say classic crime although years ago they might have been more literary than classic for their changes to the genre of crime novels.
Bottom line I think it’s a book-by-book judgement call.
Wolfy and the Strudelbakers
by Zvi Jagendorf (German/British/Israeli)
2001 / 187 pages
rating 9 /historical fiction
An extended Jewish family of “refijees” from Austria arrives in London during WWII. They are not totally welcome and don’t understand British ways but they get by and go on. Barely. Most of them.
Wolfy is a young boy, born just before the emigration, who grows up in this family. Even if they aren’t in Austria, they have troubles of all sorts from anti-Semitism to normal growing up pains to family deaths and finding love. >>>>MORE>>>>
Sandrine’s Case
by Thomas Cook
2013/352 pages
read by Brian Holsopple / 10h.
Rating: A /literary legal crime
This is my first Thomas Cook book but I have a feeling it may not be my last. Also, I’m a sucker for legal crime books so this is also right up a favorite dark alley. And Holsopple does an excellent job.
Samuel Madison tells us, in 1st person, about the >>>>MORE>>>>
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