| Half a Life: A Novel by V.S. Naipaul, 211 pages Jaqi Ross 17 March 2004 Half a Life finds the veteran Booker and Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul on familiar territory, blending autobiography and fiction in an exploration of the "half lives" of individuals brought up in the English colonies and educated in metropolitan cities. A perfect gift from a thoughtful friend. | The Wire in the Blood by Val McDermid, 496 pages Mike Gadd 04 September 2002 This book finished better than it started. Criminal profiling has been a popular subject of late for stories, but it gets old when every book has the best guy there ever was. They're always tormented with straying too close to the deviant mind, letting themselves 'become' like the bad guy in order to catch him but not so close so that they become him. This version improved with the sudden death of one of the main characters, and we see who the bad guy is. It becomes a game to try to catch him. Based in London, I enjoyed the local idioms and slang usage. |
A Place of Execution by Val McDermid, 404 pages Mike Gadd 07 March 2003 I learned a whole bunch of great new British phrases in this one. The story wasn't half bad either. I now know what it means 'to go completely hairless' or to 'have a feeling in your water'. I don't know what it means to 'sit there with my paper hat on pulling crackers'. I really shouldn't give a monkey's toss though, because it just doesn't mean owt. I'll just grab my mac and trilby and be on my way with a flea in my ear. |
Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin, 244 pages Jeff Gadd 15 November 1999 |
Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales by Valerie Paradiñ, 195 pages James Donahue 27 June 2005 Paradiñ relates well the biographies of the Grimm brothers and the women who helped them collect the folk tales and old women’s stories. The Grimms undertook this scholarly activity in order to preserve German Volkkultur from the Napoleonic hordes threatening to overwash the Rhineland in the wake of the dissolution of the First Reich. Even after reading the book, I’m unsure of the motivations of their feminine counterparts. Which is a shame, since Paradiñ’s intent is to write a feminist re-reading of the tales’ birth. Yet all she can point to is the fact they were ‘robbed’ (even though she relies on modern standards of scholarship and citation to do so). In the end, the women come across as victims, not historical agents, to me, and Paradiñ comes off as someone who missed a great story by returning to a preachy point. |
Surrender on Demand by Varian Fry, 272 pages Tony Pisarenkov 18 April 2009 Fry, as the representative of the Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseille from August 1940 until September 1941, is credited with saving over 1,000 refugees from Nazi-occupied France, most of them clandestinely. It is a shame he is not better known. This is his fascinating and occasionally chilling memoir. Highly recommended. |
Nobel Prize Reader by various, 576 pages Steve Gadd 12 November 1998 Short story collection by Nobel winners. |
The Best of Granta Travel by various, 408 pages Steve Gadd 20 October 2002 Paul Theroux's homage to the New York City subway, Salman Rushdie eats the "eggs of love" in Nicaragua, Nicholas Shakespeare searches for the reclusive leader of the Shining Path in Peru, Ryszard Kapuscinski helps carry a dead miner home for burial in Poland. A bit heavier fare than most travel writing I've read, so I learned some things as well as hearing about some good adventures. |
Notre Dame of Paris by Victor Hugo, 491 pages James Donahue 12 May 2003 Certainly not like the Disney movie! A wonderful read that contains Hugo's usual mixture of Christian themes of reconciliation, liberal-political allusions (written in 1830), and gripping plot. This book accomplished a difficult task: it made me love Paris all the more. Sidenote: The Penguin translation that I read was not very good. |
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, 1232 pages James Donahue 02 May 2005 While cramming at the last minute and taking my final exams, I slipped away for brief escapes into Hugo's attempt to capture the entire 19th-c in one Parisian book. Perfect because its so bombastic; who doesn't love the mega-read? Three comments: 1) I don't get why this is one of Eric Phillips' favorite book - on moral or stylistic grounds; 2) the definition of Hugo-esque = to not delete any thought, any sentence (the antonym of Kundera-esque); 3) not that I've seen it, but how in hell did this become transfored into an Andrew Lloyd Weber 'opera'? |
God: The Failed Hypothesis by Victor J Stenger, 294 pages Steven Krise 07 July 2008 Starting with the hypothesis that there is a god who created the universe and life, imbued humans with an immortal soul, and taught us our moral values, Stenger reviews current scientific facts to test the hypothesis. Aside from giving away the outcome in the title, this is an engaging, delightful, easy read. Highly recommended for theists and atheists alike. |
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, 193 pages Micaela Larkin 18 November 2006 |
Term Limits by Vince Flynn, 656 pages Mike Gadd 08 October 2004 |
Transfer of Power by Vince Flynn, 592 pages Mike Gadd 19 April 2005 Another nicely written political thriller. |
The Third Option by Vince Flynn, 432 pages Mike Gadd 14 September 2005 I let too much time go by between this book and the two that proceeded it. I had trouble connecting some of the pieces. I was a little disappointed with this effort. The lack of a real finish didn't help. |
Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf, 188 pages James Donahue 19 February 2003 Woolf's rich and ironic response to a request for support for a pacifist cause in 1938. |
Nikolai Gogol by Vladimir Nabokov, 162 pages Steve Gadd 20 February 1998 Somehow you feel you learn more about Nabokov than his subject. |
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, 309 pages Kristin Schrock 29 October 2002 This, as you can imagine, is a difficult book to read. Humbert is both repulsive and sympathetic which makes for an interesting, complex, unreliable narrator. On the cover, Vanity Fair proclaims that this is the most believable love story of the 20th century? That can't possibly be true, right? What does that say about the 20th century? |
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, 0 pages Steve Gadd 19 August 2008 Odd that I would have qualms about picking up this book, while happily reading novels about murder and war. I suppose I feared the book was well-known for its subject rather than its quality. Thanks to Tony for pointing out that Nabokov, to say the very least, knows how to turn a phrase. He turns them so well in this polyglot ballet of words that the reader forgets to despise the wretched narrator. Audio version read lovingly by Jeremy Irons. |
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, 335 pages Tony Pisarenkov 28 August 2008 I can't believe it took me so many years to get around to reading this book. |
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, 335 pages Steven Krise 11 September 2008 From the Afterword, by VN: "Certain techniques in the beginning of 'Lolita' (Humbert's Journal, for example) misled some of my first readers into assuming that this was going to be a lewd book. They expected the rising succession of erotic scenes; when these stopped, the readers stopped, too, and felt bored and let down. This, I suspect, is one of the reasons why not all the four firms read the typescript to the end. Whether they found it pornographic or not did not interest me. Their refusal to buy the book was based not on my treatment of the theme but on the theme itself, for there are at least three themes which are utterly taboo as far as most American publishers are concerned. The two others are: a Negro-White marriage which is a complete and glorious success resulting in lots of children and grandchildren; and the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life, and dies in his sleep at the age of 106." |