Impressive, compelling and detailed story of a bunch of crazy Britishers, gallivanting through life, clinging to the glory of a bygone era, callously causing wanton death and performing feats of greatness. It is astonishing their arrogance, what they lived through,...
A sweet and thoughtful novel, a little bit lonely, Henry James looking back on an interesting and humane life and set of relationships, father and sister and artist friends. Contemplative but never (terribly, I suppose it is in the eye...
Pretty good for self-insert fanfic. Better then the Iliad, better in parts and pieces than the Odyssey.
I’ve been keeping a little inventory of books that misuse and abuse the word palimpsest. It is, in my opinion, a bit of a trap of a word - arcane yet evocative, strange sounding with a compelling meaning that is...
You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand You see somebody naked and you say, “Who is that man?” You try so hard but you don’t understand Just what you will say when you get home Because...
I think I spend too much time trying to solve for the author of a book, in general, when I read. Really I suppose I should kill the author, that is the cool thing to do. But I think here...
A Passage to India is a moral story of a friendship, and I want to be able to say that the moral story that it tells is of course completely obvious these days and is in fact full of its...
I am a cat is a delight! I guess just an old-timey I-can-haz-cheezeburger meme, but written by an author who I adore for the beauty and elegance of his prose and the delicacy of the relationships he portrays…which does feel...
I think this is likely the best of Thomas Pynchon, one of the great novels of my lifetime, although I enjoyed his Bleeding Edge more. I don’t know that I’ve read a better book that was written since I’ve been...
Toni Morrison is perhaps the most powerful writer.