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.
Category: Books
Turning Pro (2012) by Steven Pressfield
At this point, Pressfield has made a second writing career out of inspiring others to write. This is the third book of his I’ve read, and they get less effective each time I read a new one.
Younger Next Year (2007) by Chris Crowley, Henry S. Lodge
This is a book about exercise, nutrition and mental health, geared towards retired American men. I did not actually finish the book; I read it until it was due back at the library. I made it most of the way through, though, and I don’t fee like I missed much.
The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) by Steven Pinker
If you watch the news today, you will be told the world is awful. Even if, like me, you do not have cable, you can still get enough news of the awfulness of the world from your antenna or the internet. The news is an endless barrage of controversy and tragedy; controversy over the supposedly …
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.
Informing the News (2013) by Thomas E. Patterson
This book was written to make the case for “knowledge-based” journalism. It was sponsored by an initiative that is trying to establish that kind of journalism. The author believes strongly in the cause and has been a crucial part of the initiative that sponsored his work here.
Less than Zero (1985) by Bret Easton Ellis
On some level, this feels like an ’80s LA Catcher in the Rye, albeit with richer and older kids, and drugs and prostitution. I feel like this may have been Ellis’ intent, I also think that the acclaim that greeted it upon its release likely was due, in part to that comparison, however misguided.
The Peep Diaries (2009) by Hal Niedzviecki
This book is a relatively interesting and amusing book about how modern technology and modern culture have created a brave new world that we don’t really understand how to navigate – and which could have all sorts of unintended consequences for us. However, the book suffers from a number of problems which make it not …
Baudolino (2000) by Umberto Eco
This is a fairly uproarious comic novel about the fine line between truth and fiction, that also functions as a critique of medieval logic and reasoning and as a celebration/satire of the power of myth (and faith, and belief). But I felt a nagging sense of deja vu the entire time I was reading it.
Thomas Paine (2006) by Craig Nelson
I have only ever read The Rights of Man many years ago. I loved Paine’s wit – there are many classic one-liners, including my favourite anti-monarchist barb of all time: “a hereditary monarch makes as much sense as a hereditary poet laureate” – but found his philosophy superficial, probably because I had just left grad …
Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks (2007) by Christopher Brookmyre
This is not only a well-done mystery but it is also a fine indictment of a certain kind of chicanery, one that drives me particularly crazy. SPOILERS
The Violence of Financial Capitalism (2011) by Christian Marazzi
It has been a long time since I’ve read a book this dense. A long time. Maybe grad school, maybe in the years after grad school when I tried to re-read or finish lots of books that I felt I hadn’t spent enough time with in school. Either way, I don’t think my brain is …
The Quest for a Moral Compass (2014) by Kenan Malik
I have been reading Malik’s blog for more than a few years at this point (I think), in part because I feel like he has much greater insight into the issues around jihadism than most of the people writing in North America (who I’ve had a chance to read). I find his approach not only …
A Case of Need (1968) by Michael Crichton writing as Jeffery Hudson
This is a real page turner and it’s easy to see why it’s the book that properly launched Crichton’s career: it’s full of detailed information about contemporary medicine but Crichton uses that detail to drive the plot, not to overwhelm the reader in minutiae (as some “techno thriller” writers do). Though this type of thriller …
A History of Rome – Second Edition (1991, 1994, 1996, 2001) by Marcel Le Glay, Jean-Louis Voisin, Yann Le Bohec, David Cherry
This is a general history of Rome meant, I believe, for use in schools as a textbook. It’s written that way anyway, so it’s rather dry. The strength of the book is in the early going when it provides a great deal of pre-history to the empire, pretty much all of which I was unfamiliar …
Adolphe (1816) by Benjamin Constant
Adolphe is an odd one: it’s a story of a romance with virtually no context. Sure, we get some idea of what Europe was like for a son of a wealthy family in the early 19th century. And, in one of the later chapters, Constant describes the physical geography of an area of Poland. But, …
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1962) edited by Donald Kagan
This particular Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is an old sampler of theories about the decline of the Roman Empire that I think was part of a class my father took in university. It was assembled in 1962, but the first issue with it is that many of the books and articles it …
Lord Jim (1900) by Joseph Conrad
Conrad is perhaps my favourite (English language) writer from the turn of the last century. I find “The Secret Sharer” to be one of the greatest English language short stories ever written. And Nostromo is a favourite of mine. And yet it took me forever to get into this, considered by some to be among …
How to Work a Room (1988, 2013) by Susan RoAne
There are parts of this book that are helpful if you are shy – the author claims that most of us are shy, which may or may not be true and I have trouble believing most of us are as shy as I used to be – or if you don’t know how to go …
The End of Absence (2014) by Michael Harris
The End of Absence is a thoughtful and sometimes thought-provoking examination of my generation – the last generation to remember life before the internet – and the consequences of technological change for this generation and subsequent generations. It is entirely too personal a work for me – it reminds me a little too much of …
The Portable Chekhov (1947), edited and translated by Avrahm Yarmolinksy
This is a pretty great collection of selected short stories from Chekhov, plus two plays (one major, one minor) and a few letters. I am not a man who cares about an author’s letters, so I won’t be discussing those.
A Guide for the Perplexed (2002, 2014) by Werner Herzog with Paul Cronin
Werner Herzog is probably my favourite filmmaker. It’s not that I think he’s “greater” or “better” than others, but that when I see a Herzog film, I know I’m going to see something different, whether it’s his newest film, or some old short of his I managed to find. His films are always provocative, usually …
RIP EL Doctorow
I got into E.L. Doctorow because he was once one of my father’s favourite American novelists. Over the years I read eight of his twelve novels – though not his most famous, Ragtime – one of his two short story collections and his play. I haven’t read any of them recently. I feel like I …
The Essential Plays (1993) by Anton Chekhov
This is a fine collection of Chekhov’s four most famous plays.
The Worldly Philosophers (1953, 1999) by Robert L. Heilbroner
The Worldly Philosophers is an impressive and engaging summary of the lives and ideas of the major economists from Adam Smith through Joseph Schumpeter, covering both the people you would expect (Ricardo, Keynes) and some people you would not. Heilbroner is a refreshing guide because he both has a historical sense of economics and he …
A Game of Thrones (1996) by George RR Martin
I have never liked fantasy novels and usually only enjoy fantasy movies for their cheesiness and predictability – though there are exceptions. However, the TV show won me over due to its drastic differences from most fantasy I am familiar with. As a fan of the show, I really felt no need to read the …
Super-Cannes (2000) by J.G. Ballard
This is a provocative page turner that raises lots of questions about where late 20th century capitalism is headed. FYI, it’s also the first Ballard novel I’ve read, but I have seen both of the films that were adapted from his books. I found it entertaining and mostly provocative, but I did have a few …
The Age of Innocence (1920) by Edith Wharton
Scorsese’s version of this book is, in my opinion, one of his very best films and on the short list of films I would recommend to anyone wanting to understand good direction. This despite Michelle Pfeiffer’s supposedly miscast as the female lead.
The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) by Anthony Hope
I thought I was completely unfamiliar with this story as I had not seen the movie nor did I know anything about the book. However, it turns out that I have indeed seen a similar movie, Dave! It turns out that story has been used over and over again by various people. I don’t know …