This is a landmark novel which manages to still be pretty entertaining but has dated in a few ways which make it kind of hard to appreciate how important it probably was when it came out.
Category: Fiction
The Loved One (1948) by Evelyn Waugh
This is a mildly amusing pitch black comedy about the American funeral industry and the British in Hollywood. (And American advice columnists.) It’s pretty slight and it feels like Waugh didn’t exactly know what kind of story he wanted to tell for this. (There are three or four main topics in a book that is …
Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace
Take that David Chang! SPOILERS: The end of this review contains a relatively massive spoiler.
The Poorhouse Fair (1958) by John Updike
Updike is a great literary stylist. Even in this very early novel, he does an excellent job. His sentences are often beautiful. And even when they are not beautiful, they are so full of detail about the person and/or the scene that they leave a vivid picture in the mind. I am prone to imagining …
Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories (1962) by John Updike
This is a collection of Updike’s short stories and I feel like it might be his first collection. They range in length and quality but, on the whole, I think they are worthwhile if you like Updike as a writer.
Of the Farm (1965) by John Updike
There is a genre in American drama in which a family get together or reunion builds to a emotional climax where everyone’s feelings are revealed. It is not a genre I love. I am familiar with many plays in this genre but, honestly, I’m not sure if I’ve ever read a novel in that genre …
The Return of the King (1955) by JRR Tolkien
I don’t remember much about the film of The Return of the King, except for what felt like eternal denouement. I don’t actually remember but, if memory serves, it felt as though the last 45 minutes of that film were devoted to wrapping things up. I was worried that this book would be the same and, …
The Two Towers (1954, JRR Tolkien)
The Two Towers has many of the same issues of its predecessor, but is also a superior read, just from an entertainment point of view. So though my rating at Goodreads is the same, it’s actually half a star higher because I found Books 3 and 4 to be much more of the page turner …
The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) by JRR Tolkien
Full disclosure: I am not a fantasy fan. I don’t know that I can tell you how many fantasy novels I’ve read in my life. Off the top of my head, I know The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was read to me when I was young, but I’m not sure I’ve read anything …
Sophie’s Choice (1979) by William Styron
Mild Spoiler Alert: If you are at all interested in reading this novel I strongly suggest you know as little as possible before reading it, to make the experience more enjoyable.
The Pearl (1945) by John Steinbeck
Steinbeck takes a Mexican folk tale, one which features so many classic elements of a folk tale, and turns it into a story of class and racism, mixed with a little bit of adventure. SPOILERS
Cancer Ward (1966, 1968) by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
I have no idea why it took me so long to finish this one. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, but something about it turned into a slog for me. (It also happened that I was listening to podcasts when I supposed to be reading, which was a problem.) Anyway, the time it took …
RIP Philip Roth
When any famous author whom I’ve read dies, I always struggle with what to write. I have a lot to say about musicians and sometimes I have a lot to say about filmmakers, but with authors I feel like whatever I write will be inadequate. When someone as prolific and respected as Philip Roth dies, …
The Plot Against America (2004)
This is a flawed but near-great alternative history of the United States in the first years of World War II that manages to be incredibly compelling and affecting even while you suspect the premise might be slightly implausible. However, Roth is such a good writer that you kind of stop caring and if his handling …
The Caretaker (1960) by Harold Pinter
This is my first Pinter and I should mention that I had no idea what I was getting into before I read it. I suspect that it would have made more of an impression on me had I seen it, rather than read it, simply because some of the tone of one of the characters …
A Fine Balance (1995) by Rohinton Mistry
Every day, but especially days in December, I see someone in Canada or the US on Facebook or YouTube or Twitter who is complaining about how awful our world is. If it’s not an individual, it’s an article or other post about something terrible happening. And this really drives me crazy because I know that …
Runaway Horses (1969) by Yukio Mishima
All of us approach anything new from our frame of reference. And so I cannot help but liken this novel, the second part of a tetralogy the rest of which I haven’t read, to Dostoevsky’s The Possessed (aka Demons). It’s been years since I read it, but I felt strong echoes of it in this …
Space (1982) by James Michener
The older I get the more I seem to be winning the battle – or at least not losing the battle – with my completist streak. I am writing a review of this flawed novel after having read only 470 pages as a celebration of defeating my completist impulse yet again. I do not need …
Hawaii (1959) by James Michener
This was my first Michener, though I did read a novel called London, which was basically an imitation Michener, back when I was a teenager. My understanding is that he is very much the author of these alternative histories of given places. So I guess I had to read him at some point. But holy …
Life of Pi (2001) by Yann Martel
This review contains major SPOILERS. Hype is a dangerous thing. I heard a lot about this book, all positive, and I heard it for what felt like years. In addition to the hype, I had some aspects of the plot spoiled for me by the existence of the movie. So, basically, I waited way too …
The Westing Game (1978) by Ellen Raskin
This is the kind of novel all kids should read. I am far too old for this type of book now but, as a child or tween, this would have been great. It feels like a legitimate game – it’s basically a far more complicated version of Clue, but with character development – and its …
The Golden Bowl (1904) by Henry James
At long last I am done with this tedious novel. But, I shouldn’t start this on a bad note, so let’s start with the positives:
The Ambassadors (1903) by Henry James
I hate giving up on a book – I just hate it. I have a really strong completist streak in me that has helped me endure through things I’ve really disliked. Since I graduated university I can count the number of books I’ve given up on, on one hand. Usually, it’s non-fiction (such as The …
A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007) by Khaled Hosseini
This is, for the most part, a compelling, affecting and, at times, devastating novel of what it was like to live as a woman in Afghanistan for the last quarter century or so of the 20th century. It is particularly effective of giving insight into the men who hate women – into an entire society …
The Dilettantes (2013) by Michael Hingston
Full Disclosure: This novel was written by a friend of my brother’s. When I was younger, I reviewed everything without regard to who created it and so wrote some reviews of music made by friends that I didn’t love, though I couldn’t tell them this to their faces because I’m a coward. As I’ve gotten …
The Prodigy aka Beneath the Wheel (1906) by Hermann Hesse
This coming of age story is quite affecting and feels like a much better glimpse into the youth of a German male of the era than I am used to, either from Hesse himself or from someone like Thomas Mann.
Demian (1919) by Hermann Hesse
This is the kind of book I’d have eaten up when I was in my early 20s, I think. It’s one of those novels of ideas, and the ideas are vague enough that one can project one’s own feelings on them. That’s one reason it would have appealed to me. Also, I was a young …
The Art of Fielding (2011) by Chad Harbach
This is an excellent debut novel, featuring a richly constructed world and (mostly) believable characters. It works as both a baseball novel and a college novel. It has been a long time since I cared about characters this much.
Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Mellville
I discovered there was a free audio version of Moby Dick online, as a podcast, so I started listening to it. However, 3/4s through it, the site went down. So I resumed with an audio book from the library. I think listening to it was a mistake. I distracted myself too many times and missed …
The Good Soldier (1915) by Ford Madox Ford
Sometimes I can handle stories of the idle rich, sometimes I cannot. This is one of the latter, where I really struggled to care about any of the characters, their rich, bored lives and their endless emotional struggles with being rich and bored, and having to deal with each other.