Some trepidation is normal when visiting a old friend with whom one has not passed any time for many years. One fears that he has changed, that you’ve changed, that neither of you are the persons who once shared the deep intimacies and easy bonhomie that make up true friendship. How pleasant it is, therefore, …
Continue reading “Monday Book Report: Confessions Of A Crap Artist“
As I mentioned earlier this week, I recently finished reading book #400 since I started keeping count in 2015, and, since I’ve already caught you up with lists of the first 75 books in the last hundred books, here I’ll catch you up with the remaining twenty-five books making up the full hundred. (As usual, …
I’ve just finished my 400th book since I started tracking such data back in June of 2015. The book which saw me cross this fictional milestone was an interesting look at the Soviet Union just after World War II, Why They Behave Like Russians, written by John Fischer and published in 1947. Fischer visited the …
or, Through the mirror of Curt Hopkins’s poetry, and what I found there The first book of poetry by Curt Hopkins, The Dog Watches and other poems, shows off this American writer’s talent for picking out the poetic shards of life from the collision between humans and the onrushing train of time and thought. In …
Continue reading “Monday Book Report: The Dog Watches and other poems“
Nightwatch, by Andrew M. Stephenson Too much and too little compete for the reader’s inattention in this barely workable SF book in which the most human characters are robots. The protagonist, though purportedly a human earthman, seems to understand human emotions as poorly as the author understands actual human beings and such things as plots …
Roald Dahl’s classic work of children’s fiction, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is neither very good nor very bad, unlike the ridiculous stereotypes of children presented to us by the author. The book is ‘classic’ in the both senses: old and made into a movie. (Two, actually, but the second does not improve the Gene …
Continue reading “Monday Book Report: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory“
The first novel featuring the adventurer, importer, sometime gun-runner Paul Harris is not as cohesive, nor as finished as the only other I’ve read in the series (You Want To Die, Johnny?), but it rollicks around Malaya and Sumatra quite successfully, kicking off the long-running series with gunshots, plane wrecks, and hot boat on boat …
Continue reading “Monday Book Report: Suddenly, At Singapore“
Supplemental to Monday Book Report Just watched the 1935 film version of Hammett’s novel The Glass Key, which I mentioned in yesterday’s book report. I had never seen the short (just over 1-¼ hours) movie starring George Raft, and wanted to see how it compared with the 1942 remake featuring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. …
Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key is one of the ten best books of all time. At least in English, which is the only language I feel even the slightest competence for such judgment. (Being born and raised in Georgia, English is my second language, never having had a first.) I’d be hard-pressed to say what …
I have just finished reading book #375 since I started keeping count in 2015, and, as I have done when occasion suits and time permits, I here present a listing of the last 25 books I’ve read. Make of it what you will. (As usual, I do not include comics and graphic novel books in …
