The Drowned World by JG Ballard
I want to say that this is JG Ballard’s second novel. And while I’ve read only two other of his novels (that I can recall), I have read all of his short fiction so I have a decent sense of him. We are asked to resist the temptation to see JG Ballard as a kind of prophet in an introduction to the novel by Martin Amis. His point, as a good liberal, is that if we read this book as a prophetic vision of our […]
Byrne by Anthony Burgess
The opening line of this drawer novel in verse found among Anthony Burgess’s papers after his death is “Somebody had to do it.” and well, agree to disagree. The is short, a little over a hundred pages, and the story involves the long life of an Irish poet who finds himself among all sorts of sorts in the 20th century as he bandies about his world. It’s kind of a novel in complain, and while I am no poetry expert, it feels quite artificial. The […]
The Blue Room by Georges Simenon
This is a non-Maigret novel by Georges Simenon who I legally have to mention wrote 200+ novels and 80 or so mysteries starring the detective Maigret. I’ve read one other “non-Maigret” novel by Simenon, and also thought that one was quite good. This book is still structured like a mystery, where the tone and level of seriousness that the narration involves clearly indicates that something has occurred that is much more intense than the few scant details we initially have. We know that Tony and […]
Kristy's Great Idea by Ann M Martin
In which middle-schoolers create a price fixing cartel. My brother used to read and love these books and my older sisters and my mom used to really give him crap for it in some real internalized misogyny kind of way. But if you haven’t read these, and this is the only one I’ve ever read and am only reading it now for the first time, I think it’s solid and holds up. There’s some funny 80sness from it, some references to hair and clothes that […]
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
I feel like this book gets so much praise and adulation that I can push back on it a little without being too unfair. I grew up a few miles from where this memoir “takes place” so to speak, and I genuinely mean a few miles, like we could ride our bikes there, and did, while only crossing one main road. I didn’t actually know that in the sense that I’ve know about this book for a long time as it’s quite famous and won […]
Typhoon by Joseph Conrad
The Children of the Sea by Joseph Conrad
Typhoon – 3/5 Stars This is classic storm story. What’s interesting about it, as is contained in the opening lines is that the captain of the boat is not remotely remarkable in any ways. He’s perfectly competent, and not a buffoon, but also not a hero. To me the idea of writing an adventure thriller where the main character does not stand out for his bravery, does not stand up to the challenge, or does not reveal some great moral failing or lack of character […]
