Bovary and the Beatles
Near the end of Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, in the translation by Geoffrey Wall, there is a line, describing Charles’s inability to cope with the loss of his wife:…
Category: Reading
What is being read at the moment.
A Worthy Quote from Borges
From “The Immortal,” by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley: “I have noticed that in spite of religion, the conviction as to one’s own immortality is extraordinarily rare. Jews,…
It All Starts with Sturgeon, sort of…
Science fiction took a big step toward modernity (actually postmodernity) with Theodore Sturgeon’s “Unite and Conquer,” which I read recently in the collection A Way Home. Within that story, the…
The end of “The End of the Affair”
The End of the Affair was simply a great book. I had avoided Graham Greene books up to this point. I do not know why since he is often associated…
The Reivers – Read It!
I recently finished reading William Faulkner’s The Reivers. It was an excellent book, highly recommended. Some great passages stood out in my mind: “…if all the human race ever stops…
It’s all in a name…
I do not remember a time when the words “Skywalker” or “Alderaan” sounded nonsensical and silly. In fact, I don’t know if that time ever existed. They seem like perfectly…
Burgess’s Honey for the Bears
I recently finished reading Honey for the Bears, by Anthony Burgess. Of course his most famous work by far is A Clockwork Orange, although his other writing is highly regarded…
Hammett’s Red Harvest
The plot of Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett, plays out, in a microcosm, for larger events in the U.S. What starts the main sequence of events in the book is…
A Legacy of Annihiliation
Palahniuk takes an expansive approach to the culling song in his book Lullaby. For those who have not read the book, it features a bedtime poem, the recitation of which…
Snowmobiles of Doom
“Every generation wants to be the last.” That is one of the many mantras repeated throughout Lullaby (like Palahniuk’s own version of “so it goes”) – and that certainly feels…