10
Dec
2009
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
I was a bit skeptical about this, as I have a certain disapproval about fiction about real people, living or dead. But I must say I found this one delightful! With an exclamation point!
7
Dec
2009
Alexander’s Bridge by Willa Cather
The first thing you have to know is not about this book, or about Willa Cather. It’s about me. I have an abnormal love of suspension bridges.
3
Dec
2009
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
Oh books that have no real ending, why do you exist? Is it just to taunt and frustrate me? Did you, Saul Bellow, predict that I would read this, writing it as you did 30 years before my birth, and leave a stupid, jaded ending to what otherwise might have been just an O.K. novella?
1
Dec
2009
The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
I finished this one a week or two ago, but I had to let my brain digest it for a while.
29
Nov
2009
The Dream Life of Balso Snell by Nathanael West
This novella starts out with an American poet, Balso Snell, in Troy on vacation. He encounter the Trojan Horse and decides to climb inside. Snell can’t reach the opening in the horse’s mouth, and the opening in it’s navel is apparently stuck or something, so he climbs in through the horse’s asshole.
4
Nov
2009
The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
The Country of the Pointed Firs, written in the 1890’s, captures the customs and dialects that were dying out in Maine at the time. Sarah Orne Jewett tried to preserve as much as she could in her fiction before it was forgotten.
29
Oct
2009
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
This is one of those books where nobody will ever know if it’s really a ghost story or if the narrator is nuts. Certainly, there seem to be two strictly divided camps in the world of literary criticism.
22
Oct
2009
Review Page for the November Novella Challenge
Yo! Let’s get this party started!
8
May
2009
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Have you seen Apocalypse Now? Good, then you already know the story of Joseph Conrad’s most famous novella. No? Then DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WATCH THAT MOVIE UNTIL YOU READ THIS BOOK.
6
May
2009
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
In preparing to take the A.P. English test when I was in eleventh grade, I chose this book, The Tempest, and I don’t know…something else. The question on the test that year was something to effect of “sometimes the journey, getting from one place to another, is the most important part rather than the actual destination blah, blah, blah.” I made a case for the search for Prospero’s daughter and it was pretty weak. I ended up getting a 3 on the test and I blame my idiocy with this question for it. Why I didn’t realize that Siddhartha is in itself a journey, I don’t know. Also, had we read Heart of Darkness yet I could have used that and would have aced the damn thing, but alas, we’d not read it yet.
