Jul 24, 2024Clarissa
By Samuel RichardsonJust good old fashioned juicy drama, a tragic soap opera, a tale of woe that is as scintillating now as it ever was. I mean, quite long-winded, it could be less long-winded. But brilliant, it sucks you in and surrounds with the history of this young lady, just doing her damndest so survive some horrible people.
Mar 29, 2024How Forests Think
By Eduardo KohnBased on its snappy title, I was expecting this to be a study of a particular form of non-western ecological philosophy - but the first chapter claimed the book would be a provincialization of European thought! Not merely other ideas but new ways of having ideas! An ambitious goal! In the end, it was neither.
Mar 7, 2024Pale Fire
By Vladimir NabokovPale Fire is a delightful escape-room of a novel, with layers of meaning, unreliablility, and puns that might seem a bit highfalutin but crucially does not take itself seriously. The conceit of a somewhat crazy man telling a story through the footnotes of an unrelated poem is good fun. Also helpful is the fact that Nabokov has maybe the best grasp of language of anyone ever? And the poem is actually quite good.
Mar 2, 2024Rules Of Civility
By Amor TowlesThere is something half-full about books by Amor Towles, and I can't quite place it. Maybe it is just an undue obsession with trappings of wealth? Or maybe they are just without objectionability - feels like most proper literature is a bit more transgressive, pushes the bounds some how, does something a bit more. Which is not to say its not good! It is quite good (perhaps not quite as good as A Gentleman in Moscow), engaging, easy to digest. I think there is something to the well-read protagonist's predilection for Agatha Christie; the reading experience is not so different, and at the end you are left with a pleasant sense of conclusion.
Feb 29, 2024The God Of Small Things
By Arundhati RoyArundhati Roy might be the best living writer? I don't remember having that opinion last I read this, although I did apparently rate it 5 stars. The bubbling, overwrought prose is on the verge (perhaps past the verge) of Too Much - but it works, or it works for me, or it worked for me. Sweet, quick, lyrical, weird but grounded.
Feb 27, 2024Molloy
By Samuel BeckettMaybe I am biased, predisposed by the forces of Canonized Culture, to find such great beauty in the stream-of-conscious depiction of a man (two? or just the one?) on an odyssey of his own making in Ireland - but this was really good. Rereading Waiting for Godot made me think that huh, Beckett is pretty good. Reading this makes me think that Beckett, for all his worldwide fame, is under-appreciated? A potentially backhanded compliment: I think this should be on high-school curricula. Gotta love a miserable misanthrope, gotta love a confused bumbler, gotta love these slices of humanity.
Feb 17, 2024The Three Body Problem
By Liu CixinI think the parts that I found interesting in this book, Liu Cixin did not. There are some intriguing concepts here, I think alien astronomy during the cultural revolution is a cool setting to explore...but there is a also a lot of tired lecturing about concepts that Liu Cixin seemed excited about like dimensional folding, VR, and a do-you-see-the-same-blue-as-I skepticism that drags down the story a bit. Maybe if they were completely unconsidered thoughts I would find the space they take up warranted? But it is just pretty standard scifi tropes, mostly. I may also be a bit biased because the narrator on the audio book kept doing silly voices like the gravelly detective that underlined how little novelty there was here.