Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: 3/5 Stars Sometimes when I have seen the movie version of a book first, I run out the same day and find a copy of the book. Sometimes I even go read books for movies coming out even if I have no desire to see the movie, just in case I ACCIDENTALLY see the movie. I am not saying it’s sane; it’s just what I do. With this one, I saw the movie a few years back and I think I […]
I want to assign my students some of these, but they might be toooooo murdery.
Devil and Sherlock Holmes – 4/5 All the stories in this collection of long nonfiction journalism are good. A few of them are absolutely great. They’re great because they are so carefully cultivated as subjects, well-researched, and satisfying. There is a way in which all these stories are mysteries, and what makes so many of them great is that they aren’t generally covering any huge topic that would have been covered regularly and thoroughly in the news. So even though several deal with circumstances from […]
Odds and Ends
Presumed Innocent: 4/5 Stars So I didn’t realize this was the same as the Harrison Ford movie until about halfway through the book. I picked it up for two distinct reasons: 1) It was listed as one of the best legal thrillers (old school, we’ll call it) and that reason checks out and 2) the audiobook was read by Edward Hermann, which is obviously great. I have heard him read one book before and it was so good. So the novel itself is told from […]
I sometimes really like Murakami and sometimes stop reading before I get too far.
So there’s an interesting way in which novel gets revisited in the more recent Murakami novel: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. That book is about a man in his thirties reflecting back on his high school/early college years and trying to decide what happened that made his friends leave him. It also involves the power of shame and memory and mental health. This novel is about a man in his thirties reflecting back on his late school and early college relationships with […]
Again, I could not begin to connect these. Except I got a new kitten and as I was sequestered with her keeping the dog out, these are some of the things I read.
North Station: 4/5 Stars This is an interesting collection of longish short fiction by the Korean writer Bae Suah. It’s a recent translation (actually maybe brand new) from the University of Rochester imprint “Open Letter” and I received a subscription to their press as a gift from my old colleagues. This book presents a really interesting set of questions for me. I have read a few different books by Korean authors, but not many at all. In fact, I think it would be true that […]
Weird mix of weird
Across Five Aprils: 4/ 5 Stars This is another Civil War book, and another Civil War book taking place in the midwest, that I read as a kid. I grew up in the South and thought about the Civil War a LOT. It happens. Anyway, like Rifles for Watie mentioned in the previous one, this focuses on the western theater of the war but still deals a lot with the news from the East. This becomes a kind of interesting conceit, where our main character […]
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