I may be the only person you know who has read all three of Danzy Senna’s novels. There’s a memoir and a collection of short stories that I’ve not read so I can’t call myself a super-fan, but I’m a fan-boy. I might even have to confess having something of a crush, an author-crush, on her. New People, like her previous two novels, deals with people … Continue reading New People by Danzy Senna
I suppose I’m like most Americans in that I know little of Korea’s history. We know the war, at least the version of it we saw on television’s M*A*S*H, and the Korean miracle–the economic powerhouse South Korea has become. But anything in between, certainly the dark chapters many South Korean’s would like to keep buried, we don’t know. This has begun to rapidly change lately, … Continue reading Human Acts by Han Kang
I’ve devoted this round of my tournament of short stories to science fiction and fantasy tales. I’ve just enough anthologies to make it interesting, though I’m going to stretch the genre to include magical realism and people who included some SF/F in their books. It may be a challenge, but it should be fun. Science fiction and fantasy, even at their darkest, are fun. For … Continue reading Tournament of Short Stories SF/F Edition: Ted Chiang vs. The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Vol. VII
Raymond Carver wins! Patrick Ryan beat out Randall Jarrell’s Book of Stories in the semifinal round, but I don’t think anyone in the English-speaking world could have done better than the final three stories in Raymond Carver’s collection Cathedral. For the last couple of years I have been reading short stories from different authors in competition with each other, a tournament of short stories sort of thing. … Continue reading Tournament of Short Stories: Patrick Ryan’s “The Dream Life of Astronauts” vs. Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”
It’s just happenstance. Pure random phenomena that led me to read Karan Mahajan’s highly praised novel The Association of Small Bombs right after reading Rudyard Kipling’s classic novella The Man Who Would Be King. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t even know Mr. Mahajan’s novel took place in India. I did know about Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King from the very entertaining John Huston film … Continue reading The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan and The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling
There should be a designated sub-genre for books about books, a German word for it at least. Like Bildungsroman. Our new “German word” novel will be defined as a work of fiction where-in the reading of a particular book figures heavily as a plot element or forms a part of the overall narrative structure. In Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones the love of literature can … Continue reading Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
The Slap by Christos Tsiolka begins at an afternoon barbecue in suburban Australia. Family, friends of family and their children gather together with the usual blend of affection and affectation. Everyone gets along until three-year-old Hugo threatens another child with a cricket bat. The threatened child’s father, Harry, takes the bat away only to be kicked by Hugo whom he then slaps. Once. The other … Continue reading The Slap by Christos Tsiolka
One of the many reasons for reading literature in translation is the window it can provide onto experiences other than our own, sometimes experiences we never knew existed. The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vasquez provides a window on life among German nationals living in Columbia during the second world war. Because of diplomatic pressure from the United States, the government of Columbia published a list … Continue reading The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vasquez
In the 1960’s science fiction was about ideas. It was also about rocket ships and invading space aliens, but there was still plenty of room for books about ideas. Even ideas based in actual science. This is still true, but you’d never know judging from what’s playing at the local theatre and on cable television. Not much in the way of ideas there. Once in … Continue reading Solaris by Stanislav Lem
Joan Didion was one of the best chroniclers of life in California. The essays collected in Slouching Towards Bethlehem make up the best portrait of California in the 1960’s that you’re likely to ever find. I hope people are still reading them fifty years from now. The non-fiction essay is typically so tied up with its own time that it fails to remain widely read after its initial … Continue reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Seven Places of the Mind by Joan Didion
Truth be told, once William Swain arrived in California, his letters became a bit dull. The journey across the plains and over the mountains offered a wide variety of hardships, enough to fill his stories for the rest of his life, (His wife would refer to him as “My 49’er” when he died decades later) but the mining camps featured day after day of digging, … Continue reading The World Rushed in by J.S. Holiday — Chapter 10 to the End — California and Back Home
I was looking for a book called A Husband of No Importance by “Rita.” I’ve been looking for this book since graduate school. It’s mentioned in a couple of books I read for my thesis project on late 19th century New Women novels, and I hoped to find a copy in the Yale libraries. No luck. But they did have The Truth of Spiritualism by … Continue reading The Truth of Spiritualism by Rita (Mrs. Desmond Humphreys)
May Contain Spoilers 