In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien
This is a reread from about 20 years ago for me. I first read this in college after reading The Things they Carried for the first time and going on a bit of a Tim O’Brien binge. What’s interesting to me now about that binge is that there’s probably three Tim O’Brien you can read and understand as a young person, but then the rest you probably need a few decades to reflect on. As much as I liked this book when I read it […]
Pillar of Fire by Taylor Branch
At Canaan's Edge by Taylor Branch
Pillar of Fire This is the second of three books by Taylor Branch that tells the story of US history through the biography of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement at large. Covering the years 1963-65, and published 12 years or so later, Taylor Branch spends the first quarter of this history doing two things. One, Branch has to go back and recast 1963 in a few ways. For one, we need to remember about the complicated and uncomfortable relationship between King and […]
Rabbit Redux by John Updike
This is the second novel of the Rabbit Angstrom series by John Updike. I was born the year the third book came out, and the last book, plus the novella followed up 10 and 20 years later. This expansion can give a false impression that the books were always designed as a series. It may well be that that was what John Updike planned all along, but I am not certain of it. This book gives the clear impression of what he’s thinking though. Rabbit […]
I, Claudius by Robert Graves
Poor poor pitiful me! Claudius is a kind of nephew to Caesar Augustus and born outside of Italy, but regardless, he’s still among the court, and eventually, as we know, will become emperor after Caligula. Claudius is also afflicted with a stammer and a limp, which both allows him to hide behind his two infirmities, but also forces him to the side of things. His stammer also causes most people in his life to believe he is not very smart. We know of course, from […]
Vernon Subutex 1 by Virginie Despentes
Oddly, I kind of felt like this book would be grimier than it is. It’s still pretty grimy, but not as much as I thought. We begin this trilogy with our title character, Vernon Subutex, kind of coming to. He’s older middle-aged and has always been around the music scene, specifically as running a record shop for years. He’s well-known, not particularly well-liked, but has generally been in the mix of things. He’s not so much anymore. Upon waking up, among looking for enough money […]
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
Journey to the End of the Night – 4/5 Stars This one is a bitter pill. Not for me, but for the writer and character. I don’t know how much of this is a roman a clef, a veiled memoir, or a persona allowing the writer to hide within the text. But the novel itself is drenched in sarcasm, irony, cynicism, and disgust. We begin with our narrator finding his way into the army right near the beginning of WWI. This of course is not […]