Book Reviews
Some people collect coins, stamps, or Star Wars memorabilia. I write book reviews. These are listed in random order, so look around and use the tags, too.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas père. Translated and with an introduction by Robin Buss. Highly recommended. As translator Robin Buss points out in his introduction, many of those who haven’t read The Count of Monte Cristo assume it is a children’s … Continue reading →
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson. Recommended. In The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson has turned what could be a dry retelling of the facts into a suspenseful … Continue reading →
Toujours Provence by Peter Mayle. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. 260 pages. Having survived French bureaucracy, endless home improvement, goat races, hunters, Massot’s dogs, summer visitors, and other hazards during A Year in Provence, Peter Mayle brings us more of the … Continue reading →
Memoir from Antproof Case: A Novel by Mark Helprin. Recommended. Like Winter’s Tale and A Soldier of the Great War, Memoir from Antproof Case is difficult to classify (although Helprin helpfully gives it the subtitle A Novel). It has elements of magical surrealism, but falls short on magic. … Continue reading →
Wives and Daughters: An Every-Day Story by Elizabeth Gaskell. Introduction and notes by Pam Morris. Highly recommended. With its fairy-tale beginning (“In a country there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there was … Continue reading →
The Oxford Book of Short Stories ed. by V. S. Pritchett. Recommended. In his introduction to The Oxford Book of Short Stories, V. S. Pritchett discusses the short story’s “relatively new and still changing form,” an odd statement since one could make a … Continue reading →
Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet by Fritz Redlich, M.D. Recommended. In Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet, psychiatrist Fritz Redlich, a Jewish contemporary, attempts to determine how physical ailments and mental disorders may have affected and influenced the Nazi leader. This type … Continue reading →
Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth. Recommended. Combination lengthy kvetch and documentation of a fictional psychiatric disorder, Portnoy’s Complaint addresses the narrator’s life as a first-generation American Jew and an oversexed male. As both, Alexander Portnoy is unable to reconcile his desire for the American … Continue reading →
Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian. Not recommended. Master and Commander is the first in a series of Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin novels, this one set in the early 1800s. After meeting Dr. Maturin at a concert by annoying him, Aubrey learns he has … Continue reading →
Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence. Highly recommended. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence is a sequel, but knowledge of The Rainbow is not necessary to appreciate the second novel. The title is somewhat misleading, as it is really about … Continue reading →
