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…

The Midwife Toad

The Case of the Midwife Toad, by Arthur Koestler, focuses on the dispute between the neo-Darwin clan and Lamarckian proponents of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The personal disputes that…

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…

Damn that Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk does things that should not work. There is a quality to his writing that is prima facie absurd. It shouldn’t work. Kurt Vonnegut was the same way. It…

One Fat Englishman

One Fat Englishman, by Kingsley Amis, was a decent read – but it was one of those works where reading plodded along, drawn more by the thought of finishing the…