Darwin8u's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 29 Apr 2025 08:29:37 -0700 60 Darwin8u's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Windeye: Stories 13064460 Praised by Peter Straub for going "furthest out on the sheerest, least sheltered narrative precipice," Brian Evenson is the author of ten books of fiction. He has been a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the World Fantasy Award, and the winner of the International Horror Guild Award, and the American Library Association's award for Best Horror Novel. Fugue State was named one of Time Out New York's Best Books of 2009. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and three O. Henry Prizes, including one for the title story in "Windeye," Evenson lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University's Literary Arts Department.


]]> 188 Brian Evenson 1566892988 Darwin8u 0 currently-reading 4.03 2010 Windeye: Stories
author: Brian Evenson
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4)]]> 35519109
Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah—its former owner (protector? friend?)—submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit.

But who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue?

And what will become of it when it’s caught?]]> 163 Martha Wells Darwin8u 4 4.38 2018 Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4)
author: Martha Wells
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: 2025, american, fiction, scifi
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Murderbot Diaries #1-4: : All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy]]> 53427947
"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid � a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.� Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.

But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.]]> Martha Wells 1250784271 Darwin8u 4 4.55 2019 The Murderbot Diaries #1-4: : All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy
author: Martha Wells
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)]]> 65211701 Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.

Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back.

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.

But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast.

Yeah, this plan is... not going to work.]]> 245 Martha Wells 1250826977 Darwin8u 4 4.19 2023 System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)
author: Martha Wells
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/28
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: 2025, american, fiction, scifi
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries, #6)]]> 53205854 No, I didn’t kill the dead human. If I had, I wouldn’t dump the body in the station mall.

When Murderbot discovers a dead body on Preservation Station, it knows it is going to have to assist station security to determine who the body is (was), how they were killed (that should be relatively straightforward, at least), and why (because apparently that matters to a lot of people—who knew?)

Yes, the unthinkable is about to happen: Murderbot must voluntarily speak to humans!

Again!]]> 168 Martha Wells 1250765374 Darwin8u 4 4.25 2021 Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries, #6)
author: Martha Wells
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/28
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: 2025, american, fiction, scifi
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge]]> 1193492
Malte Laurids Brigge is a young Danish nobleman and poet living in Paris. Obsessed with death and with the reality that lurks behind appearances, Brigge muses on his family and their history and on the teeming, alien life of the city. Many of the themes and images that occur in Rilke's poetry can also be found in the novel, prefiguring the modernist movement in its self-awareness and imagistic immediacy.]]> 304 Rainer Maria Rilke 0679732454 Darwin8u 4 4.09 1910 The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
author: Rainer Maria Rilke
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1910
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/27
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: 2025, european, german, memoir-autobiography-diary, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)]]> 32758901 "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated space-faring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. For their own safety, exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.� Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.]]> 144 Martha Wells Darwin8u 4 4.11 2017 All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)
author: Martha Wells
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: 2025, fiction, scifi, american
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)]]> 52381770
It worries about the fragile human crew who've grown to trust it, but only where no one can see.

It tells itself that they're only a professional obligation, but when they're captured and an old friend from the past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action.

Drastic action it is, then.

]]> 350 Martha Wells 1250229863 Darwin8u 5 4.44 2020 Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)
author: Martha Wells
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/26
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: 2025, american, scifi, fiction
review:

]]> Pedro Páramo 201375308 NATIONAL BESTSELLER•SOON TO BE A NETFLIX FILM

"One of the best novels in Hispanic literature, and in literature as a whole.� —Jorge Luis Borges

The highly influential masterpiece of Latin American literature, now published in a new, authoritative translation, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel García Márquez



A masterpiece of the surreal that influenced a generation of writers in Latin America, Pedro Páramo is the otherworldly tale of one man’s quest for his lost father. That man swears to his dying mother that he will find the father he has never met—Pedro Páramo—but when he reaches the town of Comala, he finds it haunted by memories and hallucinations. There emerges the tragic tale of Páramo himself, and the town whose every corner holds the taint of his rotten soul. Although initially published to a quiet reception, Pedro Páramo was soon recognized as a major novel that has served as a touchstone text for writers including Mario Vargas Llosa and José Donoso. Now published in a new translation from the definitive Spanish edition by celebrated Rulfo scholar Douglas J. Weatherford, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel García Márquez, this new edition of the novel cements its place as one of the seminal literary texts of the twentieth century.]]> 139 Juan Rulfo 0802163483 Darwin8u 5 4.10 1955 Pedro Páramo
author: Juan Rulfo
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1955
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/25
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: 2025, experimental, fiction, latin-american, magical-realism
review:

]]> The Stand 56793452
And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides -- or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abigail -- and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man.

In 1978 Stephen King published The Stand, the novel that is now considered to be one of his finest works. But as it was first published, The Stand was incomplete, since more than 150,000 words had been cut from the original manuscript.

Now Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and embroiled in an elemental struggle between good and evil has been restored to its entirety. The Stand : The Complete And Uncut Edition includes more than five hundred pages of material previously deleted, along with new material that King added as he reworked the manuscript for a new generation. It gives us new characters and endows familiar ones with new depths. It has a new beginning and a new ending. What emerges is a gripping work with the scope and moral comlexity of a true epic.

For hundreds of thousands of fans who read The Stand in its original version and wanted more, this new edition is Stephen King's gift. And those who are reading The Stand for the first time will discover a triumphant and eerily plausible work of the imagination that takes on the issues that will determine our survival.]]> 1348 Stephen King Darwin8u 4 4.43 1978 The Stand
author: Stephen King
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1978
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/24
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: 2025, american, dystopia, fiction, horror, scifi
review:

]]> The Golden House 34197420
Our guide to the Goldens� world is their neighbor René, an ambitious young filmmaker. Researching a movie about the Goldens, he ingratiates himself into their household. Seduced by their mystique, he is inevitably implicated in their quarrels, their infidelities, and, indeed, their crimes. Meanwhile, like a bad joke, a certain comic-book villain embarks upon a crass presidential run that turns New York upside-down.

Set against the strange and exuberant backdrop of current American culture and politics, The Golden House also marks Salman Rushdie’s triumphant and exciting return to realism. The result is a modern epic of love and terrorism, loss and reinvention—a powerful, timely story told with the daring and panache that make Salman Rushdie a force of light in our dark new age.]]> 400 Salman Rushdie 0399592814 Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.93 2017 The Golden House
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Art of Biblical Poetry 671130 228 Robert Alter 0465004318 Darwin8u 5 4.07 1985 The Art of Biblical Poetry
author: Robert Alter
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1985
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/17
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: 2025, american, fable, jewish, literary-criticism, nonfiction, poetry, writing
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Don't Fear the Reaper (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #2)]]> 59366246 Jade returns to the rural lake town of Proofrock the same day as convicted Indigenous serial killer Dark Mill South escapes into town to complete his revenge killings, in this riveting sequel to My Heart Is a Chainsaw from New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones.

Four years after her tumultuous senior year, Jade Daniels is released from prison right before Christmas when her conviction is overturned. But life beyond bars takes a dangerous turn as soon as she returns to Proofrock. Convicted Serial Killer, Dark Mill South, seeking revenge for thirty-eight Dakota men hanged in 1862, escapes from his prison transfer due to a blizzard, just outside of Proofrock, Idaho.

Dark Mill South’s Reunion Tour began on December 12th, 2019, a Thursday.

Thirty-six hours and twenty bodies later, on Friday the 13th, it would be over.]]> 457 Stephen Graham Jones 1982186593 Darwin8u 4 4.04 2023 Don't Fear the Reaper (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #2)
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/07
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: 2025, american, horror, native-writers, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3)]]> 35519101
And Murderbot would rather those questions went away. For good.

]]> 158 Martha Wells 1250191785 Darwin8u 4 4.21 2018 Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3)
author: Martha Wells
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: 2025, american, fiction, scifi
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)]]> 36223860 alternate cover for ISBN 9781250186928

It has a dark past � one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot." But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.

Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A� stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.

What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks.]]> 158 Martha Wells Darwin8u 4 4.23 2018 Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)
author: Martha Wells
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: 2025, fiction, scifi, american
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Angel of Indian Lake (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #3)]]> 178019710 The final installment in the most lauded trilogy in the history of horror literature

It’s been four years since Jade Daniels last set foot in Proofrock, Idaho. Since then, her reputation, and everything around Indian Lake, has changed dramatically. There’s a lot of unfinished business in Proofrock, from serial killer cultists to the rich trying to buy Western authenticity. But there’s one aspect of the savage history of Proofrock, Idaho, no one’s got the mettle to confront � no one except a final girl, making her last stand, this time for everything.

New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones has crafted an epic horror trilogy of generational trauma and stolen hope. It’s the story of the American West written in blood. And it’s the story of one girl who doesn’t know how to give up.]]> 455 Stephen Graham Jones 1668011662 Darwin8u 5 4.15 2024 The Angel of Indian Lake (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #3)
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: 2025, american, fiction, horror, native-writers
review:
OMG. It is going to take me a while to write about the trilogy and just how well SGJ wrapped this series up. What a Goddam, beautiful, bloody bow. Also, listen to the afterword. The man is incredible. When he writes, he writes. He is like WTV, Dostoevsky, Steven King, etc. He must be superhuman, hypergraphic, or maybe he just walks on water that other writers swim in.
]]> <![CDATA[The Wealth of Nations, Books 1-3]]> 115596
The publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1776 coincided with America's Declaration of Independence, and with this landmark treatise on political economy, Adam Smith paved the way for modern capitalism, arguing that a truly free market - fired by competition yet guided as if by an 'invisible hand' to ensure justice and equality - was the engine of a fair and productive society. Books I - III of The Wealth of Nations examine the 'division of labour' as the key to economic growth, by ensuring the interdependence of individuals within society. They also cover the origins of money and the importance of wages, profit, rent and stocks; but the real sophistication of his analysis derives from the fact that it encompasses a combination of ethics, philosophy and history to create a vast panorama of society.

This edition contains an analytical introduction offering an in-depth discussion of Smith as an economist and social scientist, as well as a preface, further reading and explanatory notes.]]> 544 Adam Smith 0140432086 Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.88 The Wealth of Nations, Books 1-3
author: Adam Smith
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.88
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Trilogy 228427778 Winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature

This is Jon Fosse’s critically acclaimed, luminous love story about Asle and Alida, two lovers trying to find their place in this world. Homeless and sleepless, they wander around Bergen in the rain, trying to make a life for themselves and the child they expect. Through a rich web of historical, cultural, and theological allusions, Fosse constructs a modern parable of injustice, resistance, crime, and redemption. Consisting of three novellas (Wakefulness, Olav’s Dreams, and Weariness), Trilogy is a haunting, mysterious, and poignant evocation of love, for which Fosse received The Nordic Council’s Prize for Literature in 2015.]]> Jon Fosse Darwin8u 4 4.25 Trilogy
author: Jon Fosse
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/07
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: 2025, european, experimental, fiction, scandinavian
review:
Will review later. Lovely, dark, beautiful.
]]> <![CDATA[The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase]]> 20893512
In his inimitably entertaining and wonderfully witty style, he takes apart famous phrases and shows how you too can write like Shakespeare or quip like Oscar Wilde. Whether you’re aiming to achieve literary immortality or just hoping to deliver the perfect one-liner, The Elements of Eloquence proves that you don’t need to have anything important to say—you simply need to say it well.

In an age unhealthily obsessed with the power of substance, this is a book that highlights the importance of style.]]> 256 Mark Forsyth 042527618X Darwin8u 4 4.32 2013 The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase
author: Mark Forsyth
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: 2025, essays, literary-criticism, nonfiction, poetry, writing
review:
A book that doesn’t take itself, authors, or the reader too seriously. A fun look at rhetoric and writing.
]]> <![CDATA[Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)]]> 214333691 When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]> 400 Suzanne Collins 1546171479 Darwin8u 3 4.68 2025 Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.68
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: dystopia, 2025, american, fiction, scifi
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Other Name: Septology I-II]]> 46024004 The Other Name follows the lives of two men living close to each other on the west coast of Norway. The year is coming to a close and Asle, an aging painter and widower, is reminiscing about his life. He lives alone, his only friends being his neighbor, Åsleik, a bachelor and traditional Norwegian fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in Bjørgvin, a couple hours� drive south of Dylgja, where he lives. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter. He and the narrator are doppelgangers—two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life.

Written in hypnotic prose that shifts between the first and third person, The Other Name calls into question concrete notions around subjectivity and the self. What makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another? Through flashbacks, Fosse deftly explores the convergences and divergences in the lives of both Asles, slowly building towards a decisive encounter between them both. A writer at the zenith of his career, with The Other Name, the first two volumes in his Septology, Fosse presents us with an indelible and poignant exploration of the human condition that will endure as his masterpiece.]]> 351 Jon Fosse Darwin8u 4 4.04 2019 The Other Name: Septology I-II
author: Jon Fosse
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: 2025, fiction, european, scandinavian
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Mirror & the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3)]]> 58111573 The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with her peerless, Booker Prize-winning novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.

The story begins in May 1536: Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour.

Cromwell, a man with only his wits to rely on, has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to the breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. All of England lies at his feet, ripe for innovation and religious reform. But as fortune’s wheel turns, Cromwell’s enemies are gathering in the shadows. The inevitable question remains: how long can anyone survive under Henry’s cruel and capricious gaze?

Eagerly awaited and eight years in the making, The Mirror & the Light completes Cromwell’s journey from self-made man to one of the most feared, influential figures of his time. Portrayed by Mantel with pathos and terrific energy, Cromwell is as complex as he is unforgettable: a politician and a fixer, a husband and a father, a man who both defied and defined his age.]]> 913 Hilary Mantel 125081877X Darwin8u 5 4.54 2020 The Mirror & the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: 2025, aere-perennius, british, fiction, historical-fiction
review:

]]> Boathouse 34415483 Boathouse is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator leading a largely hermit-like existence until he unexpectedly encounters a long-lost childhood friend and his wife. Told partially in a stream-of-consciousness style and with an atmosphere reminiscent of a gripping crime novel, Boathouse slowly unravels the story of a love triangle leading to jealousy, betrayal, and eventually death.]]> 128 Jon Fosse Darwin8u 0 3.96 1989 Boathouse
author: Jon Fosse
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: 2025, fiction, experimental, european, scandinavian
review:

]]> Boathouse 57675880 Boathouse is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator leading a largely hermit-like existence until he unexpectedly encounters a long-lost childhood friend and his wife. Told partially in a stream-of-consciousness style and with an atmosphere reminiscent of a gripping crime novel, Boathouse slowly unravels the story of a love triangle leading to jealousy, betrayal, and eventually death.]]> 117 Jon Fosse 1628971827 Darwin8u 4 3.92 1989 Boathouse
author: Jon Fosse
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: novella, fiction, scandinavian, experimental, european
review:

]]> Scenes from a Childhood 39906327 152 Jon Fosse 191069553X Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.62 2018 Scenes from a Childhood
author: Jon Fosse
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Melancholy 118449 284 Jon Fosse 1564784517 Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.83 1995 Melancholy
author: Jon Fosse
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Angel Walks Through the Stage and Other Essays]]> 228421944 Winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature

Jon Fosse said farewell to theory early in his career, choosing poetry, fiction, and drama as his mediums of choice. Here, however, in a selection from his two books of essays, we see just how incisive a critic and memoirist he can be. Not only including a generous portion of Fosse's writing on literature and theater—including the irresistible "Thomas Bernhard and His Grandfather"—this collection also includes such personal essays such as "My Dear New Norwegian," "Old Houses," and "He Who Didn't Want to Become a Teacher."]]> Jon Fosse Darwin8u 0 to-read 0.0 An Angel Walks Through the Stage and Other Essays
author: Jon Fosse
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Trilogy 28649367 Trilogy is Jon Fosse’s critically acclaimed, luminous love story about Asle and Alida, two lovers trying to find their place in this world. Homeless and sleepless, they wander around Bergen in the rain, trying to make a life for themselves and the child they expect. Through a rich web of historical, cultural, and theological allusions, Fosse constructs a modern parable of injustice, resistance, crime, and redemption. Consisting of three novellas (Wakefulness, Olav’s Dreams, and Weariness), Trilogy is a haunting, mysterious, and poignant evocation of love, for which Fosse received The Nordic Council’s Prize for Literature in 2015.]]> 147 Jon Fosse 1628971398 Darwin8u 0 to-read 4.06 2014 Trilogy
author: Jon Fosse
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> By Night in Chile 230216511
A hypnotic deathbed confession revolving around Opus Dei, poetry, and Pinochet, By Night in Chile pours out the self-justifying dark memories of the Jesuit priest Father Urrutia. As through a crack in the wall, Urrutia’s nightlong rant provides a terrifying, clandestine view of those strange Chilean bedfellows: Church and State.]]> 130 Roberto Bolaño 0811215474 Darwin8u 5 4.10 2000 By Night in Chile
author: Roberto Bolaño
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/27
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: 2024, aere-perennius, fiction, historical-fiction, literary-criticism, novella, south-american
review:

]]> The Captive 17158895 563 Marcel Proust Darwin8u 5 “We remember the truth because it has a name, is rooted in the past, but a makeshift lie is quickly forgotten.�
� Marcel Proust, The Captive or perhaps The Fugitive (I have now forgotten which)

description

This is the fifth volume of Proust's In Search of Lost Time/Remembrance of Things Past. In the Captive, Proust's narrator is concerned about who Obama is in love with. The ardor of Speaker Boehner is face-to-face with the serenity of the House's hatred. The happiness that Congress knows is impossible, their fear that they will be rejected in the next election, faces the narrator with a dilemma -- does he leave the President he thinks he loves, or stay with the President he now ceases to love. The Fall, like the Spring of 17 years before, forces the narrator to shut government down to stir his soul to remind him of a vivid more pronounced period. Thinking of Gingrich, Boehner grips his heart in his hands as he discovers that the President has fled and left him alone, all alone, a captive in his own disgraced and ruined House.]]> 4.31 1923 The Captive
author: Marcel Proust
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1923
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves:
review:
“We remember the truth because it has a name, is rooted in the past, but a makeshift lie is quickly forgotten.�
� Marcel Proust, The Captive or perhaps The Fugitive (I have now forgotten which)

description

This is the fifth volume of Proust's In Search of Lost Time/Remembrance of Things Past. In the Captive, Proust's narrator is concerned about who Obama is in love with. The ardor of Speaker Boehner is face-to-face with the serenity of the House's hatred. The happiness that Congress knows is impossible, their fear that they will be rejected in the next election, faces the narrator with a dilemma -- does he leave the President he thinks he loves, or stay with the President he now ceases to love. The Fall, like the Spring of 17 years before, forces the narrator to shut government down to stir his soul to remind him of a vivid more pronounced period. Thinking of Gingrich, Boehner grips his heart in his hands as he discovers that the President has fled and left him alone, all alone, a captive in his own disgraced and ruined House.
]]> Morning and Evening 26221990 109 Jon Fosse Darwin8u 5 3.98 2000 Morning and Evening
author: Jon Fosse
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: 2025, european, novella, fiction, scandinavian
review:
A beautiful sentence constructed of 3 chapters. Beginning with a birth. Ending with a death. A beautiful ellipsis of a life in between. Memories and people overlap. Present overlaps with past. A pastiche of life and love, birth and death, memory and action.
]]> A Shining 78311985 48 Jon Fosse 1804270636 Darwin8u 4 Aliss at the Fire just a little bit better. But still, this book feels a bit like the Joseph Smith story. Male goes into the Woods and sees God(s)/shining light. I'm mostly joking. I'm pretty sure Fosse's inspiration for the shining in the forest, in the dark, was not Mormon Mythology, but Fosse and his Catholicism. Another very religious book by Fosse, but one that also transcends religion mostly.


* See Septology]]> 3.48 2023 A Shining
author: Jon Fosse
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: 2025, european, experimental, fiction, novella, scandinavian
review:
Any longer and this would be a novella. Any shorter it would be a pamphlet or zine. But I liked it. This is now my 3rd (or 9th*) Fosse book. I only gave it four stars because like a fancy restaurant, I left feeling slightly underfed for the money, just too damn short and wonderful. I also gave it four stars because I technically liked Aliss at the Fire just a little bit better. But still, this book feels a bit like the Joseph Smith story. Male goes into the Woods and sees God(s)/shining light. I'm mostly joking. I'm pretty sure Fosse's inspiration for the shining in the forest, in the dark, was not Mormon Mythology, but Fosse and his Catholicism. Another very religious book by Fosse, but one that also transcends religion mostly.


* See Septology
]]> Aliss at the Fire 60246551 Aliss at the Fire is a visionary masterpiece, a haunting exploration of love and loss that ranks among the greatest meditations on marriage and human fate.]]> 74 Jon Fosse 1804270040 Darwin8u 5 Septology too, but as an introduction to Fosse, this might be the one. I kept bouncing around thinking of grief, loss, death, family (big themes), but also memory, time, and even omniscience. Speaking of omniscience, the floating through time; where the past intrudes on the present and even a memory contains a memory, it feels almost like a stream of omniscience that is outside of time, if that makes sense. Not fully. The narrator is definitely only backward dreaming. Nobody is drowning in the future. That would be the sequel I guess. ]]> 3.78 2003 Aliss at the Fire
author: Jon Fosse
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: 2025, experimental, european, novella, scandinavian
review:
I really liked this. I mean I really liked Septology too, but as an introduction to Fosse, this might be the one. I kept bouncing around thinking of grief, loss, death, family (big themes), but also memory, time, and even omniscience. Speaking of omniscience, the floating through time; where the past intrudes on the present and even a memory contains a memory, it feels almost like a stream of omniscience that is outside of time, if that makes sense. Not fully. The narrator is definitely only backward dreaming. Nobody is drowning in the future. That would be the sequel I guess.
]]> Ulysses Annotated 882850
The annotations gloss place names, define slang terms, give capsule histories of institutions and political and cultural movements and figures, supply bits of local and Irish legend and lore, explain religious nomenclature and practices, trace literary allusions and references to other cultures. Annotations are keyed not only to the reading text of the critical edition of Ulysses, but to the standard 1961 Random House edition, and the current Modern Library and Vintage texts.]]> 694 Don Gifford 0520253973 Darwin8u 3 2011 4.20 1922 Ulysses Annotated
author: Don Gifford
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1922
rating: 3
read at: 2011/06/22
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: 2011
review:
After reading Ulysses, I recognized this probably wasn't the best guide I've ever used. Not bad, certainly it was comprehensive. It just didn't fit the way I was reading, and what I was looking for.
]]> A New Name: Septology VI-VII 58382687
In this final instalment of Jon Fosse’s Septology, the major prose work by ‘the Beckett of the twenty-first century� (Le Monde), Christmas is approaching. Tradition has it that Åsleik and Asle eat lutefisk together, but this year Asle has agreed for the first time to celebrate Christmas with Åsleik and his sister, Guro. On Christmas Eve, Åsleik, Asle, and the dog Bragi take Åsleik’s boat out on the Sygnefjord. Meanwhile, we follow the lives of the two Asles as younger adults in flashbacks: the narrator meets his lifelong love, Ales; joins the Catholic Church; starts exhibiting with Beyer; and can make a living by trying to paint away all the pictures stuck in his mind. After a while, Asle and Ales leave the city and move to the house in Dylgja. The other Asle gets married too, but his wedding ends with a sobbing bride and is followed soon after by a painful breakup.

Written in melodious and hypnotic ‘slow prose�, A New Name: Septology VI-VII is a transcendent exploration of the human condition by Jon Fosse, and a radically other reading experience � incantatory, hypnotic, and utterly unique.]]> 228 Jon Fosse 1913097722 Darwin8u 5 4.43 2021 A New Name: Septology VI-VII
author: Jon Fosse
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/27
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: 2025, european, fiction, scandinavian
review:
A nice meditation on art, death, life, faith. I'll add more after I sit on this for a bit longer.
]]> I Is Another: Septology III-V 55434012 In this second instalment of Jon Fosse’s Septology, ‘a major work of Scandinavian fiction� (Hari Kunzru), the two Asles meet for the first time in their youth. They look strangely alike, dress identically, and both want to be painters. At art school in Bjørgvin, Asle meets and falls in love with his future wife, Ales. Written in melodious and hypnotic ‘slow prose�, I Is Another: Septology III-V is an exquisite metaphysical novel about love, art, God, friendship, and the passage of time.]]> 271 Jon Fosse 1913097382 Darwin8u 5 4.41 2020 I Is Another: Septology III-V
author: Jon Fosse
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: 2025, fiction, religion, european, scandinavian, art
review:
Second collection of Fosse's Septology. I'm synched with Fosse's rhythm now. I love his slow burn, his repetition. Certain parts feel like clicking through rosary beads or Misbaha prayer beads. He thought. He thought. He thought. Anyway, on to the last section. I can definitely see his influence on Knausgaard too. Spent a lot of time the last couple days looking at St Andrew's Cross art.
]]> The Lucky Star 46251054
In such earlier works of fiction as The Rainbow Stories and The Royal Family, William T. Vollmann wrote memorably of characters living in the seamy underbelly of San Francisco's Tenderloin district. In this new novel, Vollmann returns to that gritty world with a story that centers around a woman with magical powers whom everyone loves, and who has to love them all back.

Neva's world is a bar in the Tenderloin. Her worshippers include Richard, the ineffectual, alcoholic, occasionally omniscient narrator; a hardcore transgender street worker named Shantelle; the brisk but motherly barmaid Francine; and the former Frank, who has renamed herself after Judy Garland. When Judy starts to love Neva too much, Judy's retired policeman boyfriend embarks on a mission of exposure and destruction.

Crafted out of language by turns eloquent, terse, humorous, sensual, and spiritual, The Lucky Star aches with compassion as it examines loneliness, celebrity, abuse and the heroism of marginalized people who in the face of humiliation and outright violence seek to love in their own way, and stand up for who they are.]]> 672 William T. Vollmann 0399563520 Darwin8u 3 3.69 2020 The Lucky Star
author: William T. Vollmann
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: 2025, american, fiction, fable, myth, lgbtq
review:
I'll have to chew on this. Not an easy novel. Judy wears the reader down. Eventually, too, does Neva (and the others). Nobody gets out alive or with their dignity, I guess.
]]> Imperial (Photographs) 5563503
Named for the corporation that brought it to life, the Imperial Valley, its surrounding regions (including the Coachella and Mexicali Valleys), and the people who live there are the subjects of the latest work by acclaimed author and now published photographer William T. Vollmann (who will release an epic nonfiction book about the area with Viking in 2009). “It’s an incredible area, teeming with secrets and the tension of the border,� says Vollmann of his first pictorial work. “It’s that tension that gives the place its meaning.� �

Imperial is a study of a people and place on the margins, familiar territory for its author. Through his exploration, Vollmann uncovers the people and their struggles, which have been so easily pushed aside. It’s a photographic portrait of the Valley’s last decade, in which Vollmann’s pictures provide a visual identity to those who call it home. They have suffered and flourished amidst a landscape that is both breathtaking and heartbreaking, alluring and repelling.
]]> 224 William T. Vollmann 1576874893 Darwin8u 0 to-read 4.19 Imperial (Photographs)
author: William T. Vollmann
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.19
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Book of Dolores 17288756 The Book of Dolores brings the genre of self-portraits to a new level of vulnerability and bravery. In the process, it offers virtuoso performances of nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first-century photographic techniques, including the seductively difficult gum bichromate method. Each section of the book is accompanied by an essay on motives and techniques.]]> 200 William T. Vollmann 1576876578 Darwin8u 0 to-read 4.10 2013 The Book of Dolores
author: William T. Vollmann
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement, and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater]]> 7097913 � Booklist William T. Vollmann, the National Book Award–winning author of Europe Central, offers a charming, evocative, and piercing examination of the ancient Japanese tradition of Noh theatre and the keys it holds to our modern understanding of beauty. Kissing the Mask is the first major book on Noh by an American writer since the 1916 publication the classic study Pisan Cantos and the Noh by Ezra Pound. But Kissing the Mask is pure Vollman—illustrated with photos by the author with provocative related side-discussions on femininity, transgender, kabuki, pornography, geishas, and more.]]> 528 William T. Vollmann 0061228486 Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.66 2010 Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement, and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater
author: William T. Vollmann
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Last Stories and Other Stories]]> 18693671 Supernaturally tinged stories from William T. Vollmann, author of the National Book Award winner Europe Central

In this magnificent new work of fiction, his first in nine years, celebrated author William T. Vollmann offers a collection of ghost stories linked by themes of love, death, and the erotic.

A Bohemian farmer’s dead wife returns to him, and their love endures, but at a gruesome price. A geisha prolongs her life by turning into a cherry tree. A journalist, haunted by the half-forgotten killing of a Bosnian couple, watches their story, and his own wartime tragedy, slip away from him. A dying American romances the ghost of his high school sweetheart while a homeless salaryman in Tokyo animates paper cutouts of ancient heroes.

Are ghosts memories, fantasies, or monsters? Is there life in death? Vollmann has always operated in the shadowy borderland between categories, and these eerie tales, however far-flung their settings, all focus on the attempts of the living to avoid, control, or even seduce death. Vollmann’s stories will transport readers to a fantastical world where love and lust make anything possible.]]> 677 William T. Vollmann 0670015970 Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.84 2014 Last Stories and Other Stories
author: William T. Vollmann
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Afghanistan Picture Show: Or, How I Saved the World]]> 16085528 320 William T. Vollmann 1612191983 Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.64 1992 An Afghanistan Picture Show: Or, How I Saved the World
author: William T. Vollmann
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> News of a Kidnapping 16251
From the highest corridors of government to the domain of the ruthless drug cartels, we watch the unfolding of a bizarre drama replete with fascinating characters Cesar Gaviria, the nation's cool and secretive president; Diana Turbay, a famous television journalist and magazine editor; three indomitable women who are imprisoned for miserable months in a small room with a light perpetually on; an eighty-two-year-old priest with a mission to bring the regime and the cartel to the negotiating table; and Escobar himself, the legendary drug baron who changes his bodyguards daily and maintains a private zoo with giraffes and hippos from Africa.

All of this takes place in a country where presidential candidates and cabinet officers are routinely assassinated; where police go into the Medellín slums to murder boys they think may be working for Escobar; but where brave and honest citizens are trying desperately to make democracy survive.

An international best-seller, News of a Kidnapping combines journalistic tenacity with the breathtaking language and perception that distinguish the writings of Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez. It draws us unto into a world that, like some phantasmagorical setting in a great Garcí­a Márquez novel, we can scarcely believe exists--but that continually shocks us with its cold, hard reality.]]> 291 Gabriel García Márquez 0140267832 Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.89 1996 News of a Kidnapping
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Duplex 17287054 Duplex, Kathryn Davis, whom the Chicago Tribune has called "one of the most inventive novelists at work today," has created a coming-of-age story like no other. Once you enter the duplex—that magical hinge between past and future, human and robot, space and time—there's no telling where you might come out.]]> 208 Kathryn Davis 1555976530 Darwin8u 3 2025, fiction, american 3.34 2013 Duplex
author: Kathryn Davis
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: 2025, fiction, american
review:
I get what Davis was doing. I’m just not sure I loved the neighborhood. A couple of the stories seemed better-centered as standalone stories. Victorian house with a brutalist addition? I did enjoy her ability (even at the sentence-level) to throw the read off-center. Her prose disorients and wobbles well; like the gentle tug of another object near, a blue planet’s gravity throwing a star off its spin.
]]> The Art of Biblical Narrative 398085 Bible, and a fundamental return to its narrative prose, Robert Alter reads the Old Testament with new eyes—the eyes of a literary critic. Alter takes the old yet simple step of reading the Bible as a literary creation.]]> 207 Robert Alter 046500427X Darwin8u 5 4.27 1981 The Art of Biblical Narrative
author: Robert Alter
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1981
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: 2025, nonfiction, religion, jewish, literary-criticism
review:
One of the best books about reading the Hebrew Bible I’ve read since finishing Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes. Lovely. I’m a big fan of Alter’s translation of the Hebrew Bible and his commentary on his translations are worth the price of admission by themselves.
]]> Greek Lives 6356893
Lycurgus, Solon, Themistocles, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias, Alcibiades, Agesilaus, Alexander]]> 483 Plutarch 0199540055 Darwin8u 0 to-read 4.14 100 Greek Lives
author: Plutarch
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.14
book published: 100
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Mirror Of the Sea (Folio Society)]]> 7192043 He describes the ocean's moods, her anger and charm, how men deal with her. Conrad had no illusions about the sea or the men who worked its commerce. He saw the ocean as metaphor against which men could measure themselves.

"For MIRROR OF THE SEA we would make bold to predict a very long life. We see it being discovered and re-discovered as the years roll on." (The Times, London)

]]> 311 Joseph Conrad Darwin8u 5 4.33 1906 The Mirror Of the Sea (Folio Society)
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1906
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: 2025, british, memoir-autobiography-diary, nonfiction, travel, sea
review:
A lovely narrative of Conrad's experiences on the ocean. A love note to ships, sailing, sailors, and the sea. Well done. Remind me why I let so many years float beneath me without reading Conrad. Everytime I read him, I'm reminded that his prose is one of the most beautiful prose ever written in English, but a dude whose first two languages WEREN'T English. Like Nabokov, it is almost embarrassing to see someone school everyone in their third language.
]]> The Autumn of the Patriarch 1046963 269 Gabriel García Márquez 0060114193 Darwin8u 4 3.84 1975 The Autumn of the Patriarch
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1975
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: 2025, fiction, historical-fiction, latin-american, south-american
review:

]]> Living to Tell the Tale 4392 Living to Tell the Tale spans Marquez's life from his birth in 1927 through the beginning of his career as a writer to the moment in the 1950s when he proposed to the woman who would become his wife. It is a tale of people, places and events as they occur to him: family, work, politics, books and music, his beloved Colombia, parts of his history until now undisclosed and incidents that would later appear, transmuted and transposed in his fiction. A vivid, powerful, beguiling memoir that gives us the formation of Marquez as a writer and as a man.]]> 496 Gabriel García Márquez 0141019425 Darwin8u 0 to-read 4.01 2002 Living to Tell the Tale
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Personal Record 63920492 230 Joseph Conrad Darwin8u 4 4.50 1912 A Personal Record
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1912
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: 2025, british, memoir-autobiography-diary, nonfiction, sea, travel
review:
My second Conrad of the day. Reading his two memoirs about his early life (Personal Record) and his sea life (Mirror of the Sea). Both were great. Both reminded me a bit of my dad. My dad had a similar call to the sea (and a low draft number during Vietnam). Both were men whose experience in the Navy shaped them for the better for the rest of their lives. My dad never became a writer (other than a piece published in the New York Times), but the same reserved spirit of kindness and work resides in both Conrad and my dad. So, emotionally, how can I not adore these? Really? All ships sail toward Poland and Idaho.
]]> Suspense 9733073 286 Joseph Conrad 1434495051 Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.29 1925 Suspense
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.29
book published: 1925
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The End of the Tether 2083902 - Bertrand Russell

This selection of four tales by Conrad is about radical lone human beings involuntarily forced into confrontation with a terrifying universe in which they can never be wholly at home. It leads with 'The End of the Tether' and includes also ' The Duel', ' The Return', and 'Amy Foster' - Sailor, Soldier, Rich Man, Immigrant. These powerful shorter works remind readers that Conrad is not just the teller of sea stories and tales of imperialist action, and not only the author of the
ubiquitous 'Heart of Darkness'. This is the Conrad who is master of the terror element - global crisis, individual test, and personal trauma - in modern literature.

For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.]]> 142 Joseph Conrad 1426425961 Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.71 1902 The End of the Tether
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1902
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Rover: A Novel 25763512
The Rover is the last complete novel written by Joseph Conrad, and was published shortly before his death.

HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.]]> 296 Joseph Conrad Darwin8u 0 to-read 4.13 1923 The Rover: A Novel
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1923
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Amy Foster 1387344 28 Joseph Conrad 1406922242 Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.40 1901 Amy Foster
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.40
book published: 1901
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Typhoon and Other Tales 12195 Typhoon, The Secret Sharer, Falk, and Amy Foster. Typhoon, a story of a steamship and her crew beset by a tempest, is a masterpiece of descriptive virtuosity and moral irony, while The Secret Sharer excels in symbolic ambiguity. Both stories vividly present Conrad's abiding preoccupation with the theme of solidarity, challenged from without by the elements and from within by human doubts and fears.

Conrad's experiences as a captain of the ship Otago in 1888 provided material for both The Secret Sharer and Falk. Amy Foster, written in 1901, is bleak and stark in its depiction of human isolation and incomprehension.

In a range of tones extending from the sombre to the radiant, Conrad's central preoccupations are displayed at their best, strangest, and most plangent in this selection of stories.]]> 304 Joseph Conrad 0192801732 Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.89 1902 Typhoon and Other Tales
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1902
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> On Mysticism 7895531 128 Jorge Luis Borges 0143105698 Darwin8u 5 4.13 2010 On Mysticism
author: Jorge Luis Borges
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: 2025, essays, fiction, myth, philosophy, short-stories, south-american
review:
Some of my favorite of Borges stories reside inside this small collection.
]]> <![CDATA[Strong as Death is Love: The Song of Songs / Ruth / Esther / Jonah / Daniel (A Translation with Commentary)]]> 22253740 The Song of Songs: Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and Daniel offer readers a range of pleasures not usually associated with the Bible. As distant in time from the Five Books of Moses as Updike is from Shakespeare, these Late Biblical books are innovative, entertaining literary works. Women often stand center stage. The Song of Songs is a celebration of young love, frankly sensuous, with no reference to God or covenant. It offers some of the most beautiful love poems of the ancient world. The story of Queen Esther’s shrewd triumph is also a secular entertainment, with clear traces of farce and sly sexual comedy. The character of Ruth embodies the virtues of loyalty, love, and charity in a harmonious world. Enigma replaces harmony in Daniel’s feverish night dreams. The apocalyptic strangeness of Daniel echoes in works from the New Testament’s Book of Revelations to the lyrics of Bob Dylan. And Jonah, the tale of a giant fish who, on God’s command, swallows the prophet and imprisons him in his dark wet innards for three days, ends with a question that lingers, unanswered, leaving the reader to ponder the many limitations of humankind.]]> 256 Robert Alter 0393243044 Darwin8u 0 currently-reading 4.38 2015 Strong as Death is Love: The Song of Songs / Ruth / Esther / Jonah / Daniel (A Translation with Commentary)
author: Robert Alter
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[April in Spain (Quirke, #8 and St. John Strafford, #3)]]> 56383032
Don't disturb the dead�

On the idyllic coast of San Sebastian, Spain, Dublin pathologist Quirke is struggling to relax, despite the beaches, cafés and the company of his disarmingly lovely wife. When he glimpses a familiar face in the twilight at Las Acadas bar, it's hard at first to tell whether his imagination is just running away with him.

Because this young woman can't be April Latimer. She was murdered by her brother, years ago—the conclusion to an unspeakable scandal that shook one of Ireland's foremost political dynasties.

Unable to ignore his instincts, Quirke makes a call back home to Ireland and soon Detective St. John Strafford is dispatched to Spain. But he's not the only one en route. A relentless hit man is on the hunt for his latest prey, and the next victim might be Quirke himself.

Sumptous, propulsive and utterly transporting, April in Spainis the work of a master writer at the top of his game.]]> 320 John Banville 1335471405 Darwin8u 4 3.36 2021 April in Spain (Quirke, #8 and St. John Strafford, #3)
author: John Banville
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: 2025, fiction, irish, crime, thriller
review:
My 8th of Banville/Black's Quirke novels.
]]> I, Claudius/Claudius the God 18769 Clau-Clau-Claudius the stammerer was known as a buffoon and a pitiful fool.

He made it his business to watch from the sidelines and record the antics, funny, violent and lustful, of the imperial household as its members vied with each other for power. Then he found himself Emperor.

From the great days of Augustus and the cruelties of Tiberius to the deified insanity of Caligula, he records a story breathtaking in its murderousness, greed and folly. Throughout the swings of fortune, his own disastrous love affair with the depraved Messalina and surprisingly successful reign, his voice sometimes puzzled, sometimes rueful, always sane, speaks to us across the centuries in two great, classic historical novels.]]> 839 Robert Graves 0140093141 Darwin8u 5 4.45 1934 I, Claudius/Claudius the God
author: Robert Graves
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.45
book published: 1934
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves:
review:

]]> The Control of Nature 77 Rising from the Plains, he happened to walk by the engineering building at the University of Wyoming, where words etched in limestone said: "Strive on--the control of Nature is won, not given." In the morning sunlight, that central phrase--"the control of nature"--seemed to sparkle with unintended ambiguity. Bilateral, symmetrical, it could with equal speed travel in opposite directions. For some years, he had been planning a book about places in the world where people have been engaged in all-out battles with nature, about (in the words of the book itself) "any struggle against natural forces--heroic or venal, rash or well advised--when human beings conscript themselves to fight against the earth, to take what is not given, to rout the destroying enemy, to surround the base of Mt. Olympus demanding and expecting the surrender of the gods." His interest had first been sparked when he went into the Atchafalaya--the largest river swamp in North America--and had learned that virtually all of its waters were metered and rationed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' project called Old River Control.

In the natural cycles of the Mississippi's deltaic plain, the time had come for the Mississippi to change course, to shift its mouth more than a hundred miles and go down the Atchafalaya, one of its distributary branches. The United States could not afford that--for New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and all the industries that lie between would be cut off from river commerce with the rest of the nation. At a place called Old River, the Corps therefore had built a great fortress--part dam, part valve--to restrain the flow of the Atchafalaya and compel the Mississippi to stay where it is.

In Iceland, in 1973, an island split open without warning and huge volumes of lava began moving in the direction of a harbor scarcely half a mile away. It was not only Iceland's premier fishing port (accounting for a large percentage of Iceland's export economy) but it was also the only harbor along the nation's southern coast. As the lava threatened to fill the harbor and wipe it out, a physicist named Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson suggested a way to fight against the flowing red rock--initiating an all-out endeavor unique in human history. On the big island of Hawaii, one of the world's two must eruptive hot spots, people are not unmindful of the Icelandic example. McPhee went to Hawaii to talk with them and to walk beside the edges of a molten lake and incandescent rivers.

Some of the more expensive real estate in Los Angeles is up against mountains that are rising and disintegrating as rapidly as any in the world. After a complex coincidence of natural events, boulders will flow out of these mountains like fish eggs, mixed with mud, sand, and smaller rocks in a cascading mass known as debris flow. Plucking up trees and cars, bursting through doors and windows, filling up houses to their eaves, debris flows threaten the lives of people living in and near Los Angeles' famous canyons. At extraordinary expense the city has built a hundred and fifty stadium-like basins in a daring effort to catch the debris.

Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking in his vivid depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those who would attempt to wrest control from her--stubborn, often ingenious, and always arresting characters.
]]> 288 John McPhee 0374522596 Darwin8u 4 “The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.�
� Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

description

Three long-form essays that originally appeared in the New Yorker:

1. Man vs Flood - "Atchafalaya" - Feb 23, 1987

2. Man vs Fire - "Cooling the Lava" - February 22, 1988 & February 29, 1988

3. Man vs Earth - "Los Angeles Against the Mountains" - September 26, 1988 & October 3, 1988]]> 4.25 1989 The Control of Nature
author: John McPhee
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: 2025, american, enviornmentalism, geology, history, nature, nonfiction, science, essays
review:
“The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.�
� Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

description

Three long-form essays that originally appeared in the New Yorker:

1. Man vs Flood - "Atchafalaya" - Feb 23, 1987

2. Man vs Fire - "Cooling the Lava" - February 22, 1988 & February 29, 1988

3. Man vs Earth - "Los Angeles Against the Mountains" - September 26, 1988 & October 3, 1988
]]> Declare 15818391 624 Tim Powers 0062221388 Darwin8u 4 Neal Stephenson and Nick Harkaway. This is the first Tim Powers I've read and I dug the plot and narrative and felt it had better prose than I had any right to demand. Liked it enough I'll probably read another Powers. ]]> 3.99 2000 Declare
author: Tim Powers
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: 2025, american, british, espionage, fable, fiction, historical-fiction, scifi
review:
Reminds me in bits of a couple authors I like: Neal Stephenson and Nick Harkaway. This is the first Tim Powers I've read and I dug the plot and narrative and felt it had better prose than I had any right to demand. Liked it enough I'll probably read another Powers.
]]> Snow (St. John Strafford, #2) 50353739
The year is 1957 and the Catholic Church rules Ireland with an iron fist. Strafford—flinty, visibly Protestant, and determined to identify the murderer—faces obstruction at every turn, from the heavily accumulating snow to the culture of silence in this tight-knit community. As he delves further, he learns the Osbornes are not at all what they seem. And when his own deputy goes missing, Strafford must work to unravel the ever-expanding mystery before the community’s secrets, like the snowfall itself, threatens to obliterate everything.

The incomparable Booker Prize winner's next great crime novel - the story of a family whose secrets resurface when a parish priest is found murdered in their ancestral home.]]> 304 John Banville 1335230009 Darwin8u 5 3.38 2020 Snow (St. John Strafford, #2)
author: John Banville
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: 2025, british, fiction, crime, irish
review:
Eight books into the Quirke/Strafford novels and Banville hasn't lost his touch or his anger.
]]> <![CDATA[The Drowned (Quirke, #10 and St. John Strafford, #5)]]> 203647816 From the renowned Booker Prize winner and nationally bestselling author of Snow comes a richly atmospheric new mystery about a woman’s sudden disappearance in a small coastal town in Ireland, where nothing is as it seems.

"John Banville is one of my favorite writers alive, and I pick up his books whenever I need a reminder how to write a good sentence.”—R.F. Kuang

“He had seen drowned people. A sight not to be forgotten.�

1950s, rural Ireland. A loner comes across a mysteriously empty car in a field. Knowing he shouldn’t approach but unable to hold back, he soon finds himself embroiled in a troubling missing person case, as a husband claims his wife may have thrown herself into the sea.

Called in from Dublin to investigate is Detective Inspector Strafford, who soon turns to his old ally—the flawed but brilliant pathologist Quirke—a man he is linked to in increasingly complicated ways. But as the case unfolds, events from the past resurface that may have life-altering ramifications for all involved.

At once a searing mystery and a profound meditation on the hidden worlds we all inhabit,The Drownedis the next great Strafford and Quirkenovel from a beloved writer at the top of his game.]]> 336 John Banville 1335000593 Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.51 2024 The Drowned (Quirke, #10 and St. John Strafford, #5)
author: John Banville
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Infinities 6595136
The Infinities—John Banville’s first novel since his Booker Prize-winning and bestselling The Sea—is at once a gloriously earthy romp and a wise look at the terrible, wonderful plight of being human -- a dazzling novel from one of the most widely admires and acclaimed writers at work today]]> 273 John Banville 0307272796 Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.28 2009 The Infinities
author: John Banville
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Untouchable 163
One of the most dazzling and adventurous writers now working in English takes on the enigma of the Cambridge spies in a novel of exquisite menace, biting social comedy, and vertiginous moral complexity. The narrator is the elderly Victor Maskell, formerly of British intelligence, for many years art expert to the Queen. Now he has been unmasked as a Russian agent and subjected to a disgrace that is almost a kind of death. But at whose instigation?

As Maskell retraces his tortuous path from his recruitment at Cambridge to the airless upper regions of the establishment, we discover a figure of manifold Irishman and Englishman; husband, father, and lover of men; betrayer and dupe. Beautifully written, filled with convincing fictional portraits of Maskell's co-conspirators, and vibrant with the mysteries of loyalty and identity, The Untouchable places John Banville in the select company of both Conrad and le Carre.

"Victor Maskell is one of the great characters in recent fiction.... The Untouchable is the best work of art in any medium on [its] subject." � Washington Post Book World

"As remarkable a literary voice as any to come out of Ireland; Joyce and Beckett notwithstanding." � San Francisco Chronicle]]> 368 John Banville 0679767479 Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.95 1997 The Untouchable
author: John Banville
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Lock-Up (Quirke, #9 and St. John Strafford, #4)]]> 62325806 Booker Prize winner and “Irish master�(The New Yorker)John Banville’s most ambitious crime novel yet brings two detectives together to solve a globe-spanning mystery

In 1950s Dublin, Rosa Jacobs, a young history scholar, is found dead in her car. Renowned pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI St. John Strafford begin to investigate the death as a murder, but it’s the victim’s older sister Molly, an established journalist, who discovers a lead that could crack open the case.

One of Rosa’s friends, it turns out, is from a powerful German family that arrived in Ireland under mysterious circumstances shortly after World War II. But as Quirke and Strafford close in, their personal lives may put the case, and the lives of everyone involved, in peril, including Quirke’s own daughter.

Spanning the mountaintops of Italy, the front lines of World War II Bavaria, the gritty streets of Dublin and other unexpected locales,The Lock-Upis an ambitious and arresting mystery by one of the world’s most celebrated authors.]]> 320 John Banville 1335449639 Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.50 2023 The Lock-Up (Quirke, #9 and St. John Strafford, #4)
author: John Banville
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (The Art of the Novella)]]> 16156343
Ostensibly, it’s a classic adventure story about a young boy who runs away to sea and encounters all the classic scenarios: mutinies, storms, shipwrecks, ravenous sharks, hostile natives. And Poe drew on many contemporary accounts of exploration in the South Seas to give his story a sense of verisimilitude.

But there are far deeper currents at work in the book than mere adventure: elements of the supernatural as they near the South Pole, evocations of the protagonists� experiences at sea that rival Poe’s best tales of horror, and a disturbing ending that continues to stir debate.]]> 235 Edgar Allan Poe 161219222X Darwin8u 4 3.65 1838 The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (The Art of the Novella)
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1838
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: art-of-the-novella, 2025, thriller, novella, fiction, american, scifi
review:

]]> Bronshtein in the Bronx 212249370 A vivid, visceral portrait of ten weeks in the life of Leon Trotsky, by the New York Times bestselling author of The Company

On Saturday, January 13, 1917, an ocean liner docks in New York Harbor. Among the disembarking emigrants is one Lev Davidovich Bronshtein—better known by his nom de guerre, Leon Trotsky. Bronshtein has been on the run for a decade, driven from his beloved Russia after escaping political exile in Siberia, his companion and two sons in tow. He lives and would die for a worker’s revolution, at any cost—but is he ready to become an American? In the weeks leading up to the February Revolution that will see Lenin’s Bolsheviks in power, Bronshtein haunts the streets, newspaper offices, and socialist gathering places of New York City, wrestling with the difficult questions of his personal revolutionary ideology, his place in his own family, his relationship to Lenin, and, above all, his conscience.

Master of espionage fiction Robert Littell brings to fictional life the ten weeks the world-famous revolutionary spent in the Bronx in this extraordinary meditation on purpose, passion, and the price of progress.]]> 208 Robert Littell 1641296860 Darwin8u 4 3.78 2025 Bronshtein in the Bronx
author: Robert Littell
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: 2025, american, fiction, historical-fiction, politics, russian
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rising Up and Rising Down, Volume I (Rising Up and Rising Down, #2)]]> 59273956 332 William T. Vollmann Darwin8u 4 4.69 2003 Rising Up and Rising Down, Volume I (Rising Up and Rising Down, #2)
author: William T. Vollmann
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.69
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rising Up and Rising Down, Volume II (Rising Up and Rising Down #3)]]> 59274831 556 William T. Vollmann Darwin8u 4 4.67 2003 Rising Up and Rising Down, Volume II (Rising Up and Rising Down #3)
author: William T. Vollmann
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rising Up and Rising Down, Volume III (Rising Up and Rising Down, #4)]]> 59275232 495 William T. Vollmann Darwin8u 4 4.67 2003 Rising Up and Rising Down, Volume III (Rising Up and Rising Down, #4)
author: William T. Vollmann
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rising Up and Rising Down, Volume IV (Rising Up and Rising Down #5)]]> 59275492 331 William T. Vollmann Darwin8u 4 4.50 2003 Rising Up and Rising Down, Volume IV (Rising Up and Rising Down #5)
author: William T. Vollmann
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[No Good Alternative: Volume Two of Carbon Ideologies]]> 36424258 “The most honest book about climate change yet.� —The Atlantic�TheInfinite Jestof climate books.� —The BafflerAn eye-opening look at the consequences of coal mining and oil and natural gas production—the second of a two volume work by award-winning author William T. Vollmann on the ideologies of energy production and the causes of climate changeThe second volume of William T. Vollmann's epic book about the factors and human actions that have led to global warming begins in the coal fields of West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, where "America's best friend" is not merely a fuel, but a "heritage." Over the course of four years Vollmann finds hollowed out towns with coal-polluted streams and acidified drinking water; makes covert visits to mountaintop removal mines; and offers documented accounts of unpaid fines for federal health and safety violations and of miners who died because their bosses cut corners to make more money.To write about natural gas, Vollmann journeys to Greeley, Colorado, where he interviews anti-fracking activists, a city planner, and a homeowner with serious health issues from fracking. Turning to oil production, he speaks with, among others, the former CEO of Conoco and a vice president of the Bank of Oklahoma in charge of energy loans, and conducts furtive roadside interviews of guest workers performing oil-related contract labor in the United Arab Emirates.As with its predecessor, No Immediate Danger, this volume seeks to understand and listen, not to lay blame--except in a few corporate and political cases where outrage is clearly due. Vollmann is a carbon burner just like the rest of us; he describes and quantifies his own power use, then looks around him, trying to explain to the future why it was that we went against scientific consensus, continually increasing the demand for electric power and insisting that we had no good alternative.]]> 687 William T. Vollmann 0525558500 Darwin8u 5 4.36 2018 No Good Alternative: Volume Two of Carbon Ideologies
author: William T. Vollmann
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/29
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: 2025, american, enviornmentalism, history, nonfiction, politics, science
review:
Fantastic. Another Vollmann done. Volume 2 of Carbon Ideologies was amazing, but god it kills me.
]]> The Complete Stories 23365262
From one of the greatest modern writers, these stories, gathered from the nine collections published during her lifetime, follow an unbroken time line of success as a writer, from her adolescence to her death bed.]]> 650 Clarice Lispector 0811219631 Darwin8u 5 “How living hurt. Living was an open wound.�
� Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

description

None of these stories stick with me as tight as some stories of Kafka or Marquez might just be because these stories, to me at least, are newer. But as a whole, in a dozen years, as I return to this book, reread stories that touched me, perhaps several will resonate with the same weight. But I think my relationship with individual stories in here is also a product of how I approached both Kafka's and Marquez's stories vs Lispector's. With Kafka and Marquez I'd read one here, one there, study them in a college course, discussed them with a roommate or later my wife. I invested serious time pondering these short stories.

All these collected Lispector stories I read in under a week. So, they are naturally more of a soup or stew (a spicy Feijoada?); stories more mingled and blended in my mind, but in the end, they still--all together--blew me away with an equal force. One positive approach of reading these together, in order, is they gave me a sense of a young, brilliant woman aging into a brilliant, older woman (I know there is supposed to be a correct way of ordering adjectives, but fuck it. I'll take the 50% and move on).

Anyway, I love Lispector more with every work of hers I read.]]> 4.41 2015 The Complete Stories
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: 2025, fiction, short-stories, south-american
review:
“How living hurt. Living was an open wound.�
� Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

description

None of these stories stick with me as tight as some stories of Kafka or Marquez might just be because these stories, to me at least, are newer. But as a whole, in a dozen years, as I return to this book, reread stories that touched me, perhaps several will resonate with the same weight. But I think my relationship with individual stories in here is also a product of how I approached both Kafka's and Marquez's stories vs Lispector's. With Kafka and Marquez I'd read one here, one there, study them in a college course, discussed them with a roommate or later my wife. I invested serious time pondering these short stories.

All these collected Lispector stories I read in under a week. So, they are naturally more of a soup or stew (a spicy Feijoada?); stories more mingled and blended in my mind, but in the end, they still--all together--blew me away with an equal force. One positive approach of reading these together, in order, is they gave me a sense of a young, brilliant woman aging into a brilliant, older woman (I know there is supposed to be a correct way of ordering adjectives, but fuck it. I'll take the 50% and move on).

Anyway, I love Lispector more with every work of hers I read.
]]> The Hour of the Star 88564038 The Hour of the Star�"her finest book" (The Nation)—tells the haunting story of Macabéa, an underfed, unattractive, and unloved typist who lives in the slums of Rio. Yet for all her outward misery, Macabéa is inwardly free. She doesn't seem to know how unhappy she should be.]]> 81 Clarice Lispector 0811237532 Darwin8u 5 “Do not mourn the dead. They know what they are doing.�
� Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star

description

"The Hour of the Star is like being brought backstage during the performance of a play and allowed odd glimpses of the actors and the audience, and further and more intense glimpses of the mechanics of the theatre � the scene and costume changes, the creation of artifice � with many interruptions by the backstage staff."
- Colm Tóibín's Sat 18 Jan 2014 review in the Independent

Ostentiably, the story is about a story is about a woman from the state of Alagoas. She's poor. She makes poor decisions, but more interesting the story is, well sorta, told by a narrator who isn't exactly an unreliable narrator, in the traditional sense, rather, he's an unreliable storyteller. He never exactly tells us the story. Or in not giving us the story directly, he tells us what he's going to tell us. Tells us why he's telling us this story, this way. We keep glancing this woman's story through mirrors, reflections, memories, etc. So, it is framed thus. And, add to this, it is also Clarice Lispector telling us a bit about herself, a bit about being a woman in Brazil. It is maddening in parts, brilliant almost throughout, and not for the easily distracted (or who the hell knows, perhaps this is a perfect book for those easily sent into new directions, chasing new squirrels, or in CL's case chickens, dogs, or horses). I loved it. I love Clarice Lispector. And like so many writers (Kafka, Virginia Woolf, etc) it is nearly impossible to separate the writer from the work or the work from the writer. They are woven forever in my mind. inseparable, but not siamese twins.]]> 4.20 1977 The Hour of the Star
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1977
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: 2025, fiction, latin-american, novella
review:
“Do not mourn the dead. They know what they are doing.�
� Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star

description

"The Hour of the Star is like being brought backstage during the performance of a play and allowed odd glimpses of the actors and the audience, and further and more intense glimpses of the mechanics of the theatre � the scene and costume changes, the creation of artifice � with many interruptions by the backstage staff."
- Colm Tóibín's Sat 18 Jan 2014 review in the Independent

Ostentiably, the story is about a story is about a woman from the state of Alagoas. She's poor. She makes poor decisions, but more interesting the story is, well sorta, told by a narrator who isn't exactly an unreliable narrator, in the traditional sense, rather, he's an unreliable storyteller. He never exactly tells us the story. Or in not giving us the story directly, he tells us what he's going to tell us. Tells us why he's telling us this story, this way. We keep glancing this woman's story through mirrors, reflections, memories, etc. So, it is framed thus. And, add to this, it is also Clarice Lispector telling us a bit about herself, a bit about being a woman in Brazil. It is maddening in parts, brilliant almost throughout, and not for the easily distracted (or who the hell knows, perhaps this is a perfect book for those easily sent into new directions, chasing new squirrels, or in CL's case chickens, dogs, or horses). I loved it. I love Clarice Lispector. And like so many writers (Kafka, Virginia Woolf, etc) it is nearly impossible to separate the writer from the work or the work from the writer. They are woven forever in my mind. inseparable, but not siamese twins.
]]> Bottom's Dream 22104096
Since its publication in 1970 Zettel’s Traum/Bottom’s Dream has been regarded as Arno Schmidt’s magnum opus, as the definitive work of a titan of postwar German literature. Readers are now invited to explore its verbally provocative landscape in an English translation by John E. Woods.]]> 1496 Arno Schmidt 1628971592 Darwin8u 0 currently-reading 4.43 1970 Bottom's Dream
author: Arno Schmidt
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #1)]]> 55711617
That’s not the only thing that’s getting carved up, though � this, Jade knows, is the start of a slasher. But what kind? Who’s wearing the mask? Jade’s got an encyclopedic recall of every horror movie on the shelf, but� will that help her survive? Can she get a final girl trained enough to stop all this from happening? Does she even want to?

Isn’t a slasher exactly what her hometown deserves?

This new novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones, called “one of our most talented living writers� by Tommy Orange, explores the changing landscape of the West through his distinct voice of sharp humor and prophetic violence.

Go up the mountain to Proofrock. See if you’ve got what it takes � see if your heart, too, might be a chainsaw.]]> 405 Stephen Graham Jones 1982137630 Darwin8u 4 3.52 2021 My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #1)
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: 2025, american, crime, fiction, horror, native-writers
review:
A fantastic deconstruction of/love letter to the slasher film/horror movie genre. Set in a small forrest/lake town in Idaho, the novel plays with the form, while introducing a fantastic protagonist who shows that not every final girl is a trope. The more I read of SGJ, the more I adore his writing and his ability to bend genre to tell a story that sneaks a bloody, beating heart into every page.
]]> <![CDATA[The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World]]> 62790909 Bestselling journalist Antony Loewenstein uncovers the widespread commercialisation and brutal deployment globally of Israel’s occupation-enforcing technologies.

For more than 50 years, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has given the Israeli state invaluable experience in controlling an ‘enemy� population, the Palestinians. It’s here that they have perfected the architecture of control, using the occupied Palestinian territories as a testing ground for weaponry and surveillance technology that they then export around the world.

The Palestine Laboratory shows in depth and for the first time how Israel has become a leader in developing spying technology and defence hardware that fuels some of the globe’s most brutal conflicts � from the Pegasus software that hacked Jeff Bezos’s and Jamal Khashoggi’s phones, and the weapons sold to the Myanmar army that has murdered thousands of Rohingyas, to the drones being used by the European Union to monitor refugees in the Mediterranean who are left to drown.

In a global investigation that uncovers secret documents, based on revealing interviews and on-the-ground reporting, Antony Loewenstein shows how, as ethno-nationalism grows in the 21st century, Israel has built the ultimate tools for despots and democracies.]]> 320 Antony Loewenstein 1922310409 Darwin8u 5 4.46 2023 The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World
author: Antony Loewenstein
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: 2025, history, jewish, nonfiction, politics, war, palestine
review:
So many parts of this hit so hard. It is a lesson of how Israel's relationship with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is a warning of state and economic power when other states use the tools of Israel to control their population or separate those they control. The bias of information coming of Israel and Palestine is problematic. This book is written by a former Israeli, interviewing experts in Israel, and is well-researched and careful. It is also scary. I would love to see Israel to live up to its potential instead of another pariah state. This book was published, however, right before the October 7 attacks and Israel's response makes my optimistic hope seem like a child's fantasy. Especially in this environment in both Israel and the United States.
]]> Nobody Move 4907243 Tree of Smoke comes a provocative thriller set in the American West. Nobody Move, which first appeared in the pages of Playboy, is the story of an assortment of lowlifes in Bakersfield, California, and their cat-and-mouse game over $2.3 million. Touched by echoes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, Nobody Move is at once an homage to and a variation on literary form. It salutes one of our most enduring and popular genres—the American crime novel—but with a grisly humor and outrageousness that are Denis Johnson’s own. Sexy, suspenseful, and above all entertaining, Nobody Move shows one of our greatest novelists at his versatile best.]]> 196 Denis Johnson 0374222908 Darwin8u 4 3.35 2009 Nobody Move
author: Denis Johnson
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: 2025, american, crime, fiction, hard-boiled
review:
Fantastic. Originally written on deadline for Playboy, Nobody Moves reads like a strong pairing of Cormac McCarthy with Jim Thompson. It doesn’t matter if you like your novels literary or hard-boiled, everybody eats well here.
]]> Villa E 199454251 192 Jane Alison 1324095059 Darwin8u 5 3.38 Villa E
author: Jane Alison
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.38
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: 2025, fiction, historical-fiction, novella
review:
I really enjoyed this. Scratched several itches. Planning my trip to Villa E�1027 soon.
]]> <![CDATA[Sandra Nichols Found Dead (Jerry Kennedy, #4)]]> 1335452 241 George V. Higgins 0805052224 Darwin8u 3 3.44 1996 Sandra Nichols Found Dead (Jerry Kennedy, #4)
author: George V. Higgins
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: 2025, fiction, hard-boiled, legal
review:
A legal thriller, that exists entirely in preliminary work? A murder mystery where the murderer doesn't get thrown in jail? What about where one of the victims might not even want his mother's murderer to be found at fault? In fact, this book exists in a space where they aren't looking to prove he did it beyond reasonable doubt, but only to a standard of balance of probability, say 51%? Higgins is playing with the form and his language is delicious. His idioms are adictive, but he also doesn't quite pull it off. It felt like eating a meal prepared by a world-class chef who is sorta playing around and enjoying himself. If you like the chef and like the process, this is a good place for you. If you are looking for a perfect book, maybe not.
]]> <![CDATA[Always Crashing in the Same Car: A Novel after David Bowie]]> 119743844 A prismatic, imaginative exploration of David Bowie’s last days


An intricate collage-novel fusing and confusing fact and imagination, Always Crashing in the Same Car is a prismatic exploration of David Bowie through multiple voices and perspectives—the protean musician himself, an academic trying to compose a critical monograph about him, friends, lovers, musicologists, and others in Bowie’s orbit.


At its core beat questions about how we read others, how we are read by them, how (if at all) we can tell the past with something even close to accuracy, what it feels like being the opposite of young and still committed to bracing, volatile innovation.


Set during Bowie’s last months—those during which he worked on his acclaimed final album Black Star while battling liver cancer and the consequences of a sixth heart attack—yet washing back and forth across his exhilarating, kaleidoscopically costumed life, Always Crashing in the Same Car enacts a poetics of impermanence, of art, of love, of truth, even of death, that apparently most permanent of conditions.]]> 272 Lance Olsen 1573669016 Darwin8u 5 "The rest is just the rest."
- Lance Olsen, Always Crashing the Same Car

description

"It is rather the case that language can’t locate the appropriate language. It isn’t as if, if you tried hard enough, you could rummage out the right phrase. It’s that our system of communication just can’t tolerate certain pressures and torques."
- Lance Olsen, Always Crashing the Same Car

description

Almost broke me in parts. Nearly broke me in pieces. Experimental, playful, sad. Let me process and I'll get back and expand on my experience with Bowie. Always writing the same review twice here on ŷ.

Fragments that could
all be their own
review:

- Chapter as a glossary
- Chapter as Bowie's favorite books
- Chapter contradicting previous chapter
- Author as narrator
- Author as fan
- Narrator (Alec Nolens) anagram of author (Lance Olsen)
- Author as mensch
- Memory in fragments
- Knowledge as fragments
- Love as fragments
- Decay as fragments
- Art as fragments
- Art as theft
- Death as theft
- Love as theft

We live in a world of fragments: twitter, tik tok dances, instagram photos, quotes, collective memories and memes. Someone like David Bowie is constructed into this world, before the world. Bowie is a strange UFO that shoots and screeches across a green screen, appears, and then disappears. How do we make sense of the mosaic? What are these collection of facts, myths, images, constructs, songs, lovers, but a giant play pretending to be a life pretending to be a man trying to communicate in a sea of strangeness. How can we ever really know our heroes? Our idols? Our lovers? Ourselves?

Olsen doesn't give the reader any answers, but gives us enough ways of looking at the Icon from Mars, the Thin White Duke, that you start to believe -- not in Bowie, not in Tom, not in Newton, but in billion of stars that exist, love, shine, and eventually darken and die together.]]> 4.29 Always Crashing in the Same Car: A Novel after David Bowie
author: Lance Olsen
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.29
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/15
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: 2024, american, biography, fiction, music, experimental
review:
"The rest is just the rest."
- Lance Olsen, Always Crashing the Same Car

description

"It is rather the case that language can’t locate the appropriate language. It isn’t as if, if you tried hard enough, you could rummage out the right phrase. It’s that our system of communication just can’t tolerate certain pressures and torques."
- Lance Olsen, Always Crashing the Same Car

description

Almost broke me in parts. Nearly broke me in pieces. Experimental, playful, sad. Let me process and I'll get back and expand on my experience with Bowie. Always writing the same review twice here on ŷ.

Fragments that could
all be their own
review:

- Chapter as a glossary
- Chapter as Bowie's favorite books
- Chapter contradicting previous chapter
- Author as narrator
- Author as fan
- Narrator (Alec Nolens) anagram of author (Lance Olsen)
- Author as mensch
- Memory in fragments
- Knowledge as fragments
- Love as fragments
- Decay as fragments
- Art as fragments
- Art as theft
- Death as theft
- Love as theft

We live in a world of fragments: twitter, tik tok dances, instagram photos, quotes, collective memories and memes. Someone like David Bowie is constructed into this world, before the world. Bowie is a strange UFO that shoots and screeches across a green screen, appears, and then disappears. How do we make sense of the mosaic? What are these collection of facts, myths, images, constructs, songs, lovers, but a giant play pretending to be a life pretending to be a man trying to communicate in a sea of strangeness. How can we ever really know our heroes? Our idols? Our lovers? Ourselves?

Olsen doesn't give the reader any answers, but gives us enough ways of looking at the Icon from Mars, the Thin White Duke, that you start to believe -- not in Bowie, not in Tom, not in Newton, but in billion of stars that exist, love, shine, and eventually darken and die together.
]]> <![CDATA[Let it Burn (Alex McKnight, #10)]]> 16044993
Then he gets a call from his old sergeant. A young man Alex helped put away—in the one big case that marked the high point of his career—will be getting out of prison. When the sergeant invites Alex downstate to have a drink for old times' sake, it's an offer he would normally refuse. However, there's a certain female FBI agent he can't stop thinking about, so he gets in his truck and he goes back to Detroit.

While there, he's reminded of something about that young man's case, a seemingly small piece of the puzzle that he never got to share. It's not something anyone wants to hear, but Alex can't let go of the feeling that they arrested the wrong man. And that the real killer not only got away, but went on to kill again.

Let it Burn continues the acclaimed Alex McKnight series by two-time Edgar award-winner and New York Times bestselling author Steve Hamilton.]]> 276 Steve Hamilton 0312640226 Darwin8u 4 4.03 2013 Let it Burn (Alex McKnight, #10)
author: Steve Hamilton
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: 2025, american, crime, fiction
review:
A solid crime novel set mostly in Detroit. Hamilton does a pretty good job of dealing with some of Detroit's stickier issues with race and not stumbling too hard against any cliches. Not the best Alex McKnight in the series, but a complicated character that finds himself, once again, in the thickets and the water.
]]> Orbital 123136728 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Darwin8u 5 3.56 2023 Orbital
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: 2025, fiction, novella, science
review:
Beautiful. Lovely prose. Thoughtful. A delight to start 2025 with.
]]> Skin Elegies 58523691
In a dystiopian future, an American couple flee their increasingly authoritarian country by transferring to a quantum computer housed in North Africa. The novel’s structure mimics a constellation of firing neurons—a sparking collage of many tiny narraticules flickering through the brain of one of the refugees as it is digitized. Those narraticules comprise nine larger stories intersecting with memorable moments in human time: the Fukushima disaster; the day the Internet was turned on; the final hours of the Battle of Berlin; John Lennon’s murder; an assisted suicide in Switzerland; the Columbine massacre; a woman killed by a domestic abuser; a Syrian boy making his way to Berlin; and the Challenger disaster.

With his characteristic brilliance and unrivaled uniqueness, Lance Olsen delivers an innovative, speculative, literary novel in the key of Margaret Atwood, Stanislaw Lem, and J.G. Ballard.]]> 248 Lance Olsen 1950539350 Darwin8u 5 "This is how the present worked:
we are features of tales
we will never be features of."
- 11 :::: march :::: 2011

"What was hardest to accept was next morning the clocks kept collecting the minutes inside them just like usual."
- 10 :::: june :::: 2015

"When you are inside a tale like that, it never feels like you are in a tale like that."
- 29 :::: october :::: 1969

"Who ever imagined tourniquets could feel like tenderness?"
- 20::::april :::: 1999

"Memory is the mother of grief."
- 2 :::: may :::: 1945

"...it hitting you what a curious condition thinking was, exactly like waking up one day with a French accent."
- 8 :::: december :::: 1980

"The Me of Us can sense The Was has entered the God Swirl."
- 8 :::: august :::: 1974

'It is just the no no-light strewn with diamond-dust stars suspended in the middle of his reeling mind like an always."
- 28 :::: january :::: 1986

"wading farther and farther into
the warm dark sea."
- 11 :::: september :::: 2001

+++++++

"Living forever is tantamount to being trapped inside one's freedom."
- 29 :::: october :::: 2072 :::: 10:30 a.m.

+++++++

description

+++++++

I read this book twice over two years. Bits and pieces never dissolved. Bits and pieces will never be solved. Goddam I loved this book. I'm not usually a BIG fan of experimental fiction or art. I get the need for it, but often something gets lost; the humanity, emotions. But those writers and artists who can push the envelope without losing the thread of humanity are just amazing. This novel is a thread of 9, well, 10 different narratives. Broken. Fractured. Dislocating. Blending. I can't explain fully, but Olsen (who is an absolute mensch btw) manages to maintain the tension and the stories and land them in unexpected ways. I'm sad. But sad in a way something only beautiful, risky, and human can be sad. I don't want to say more. Saying more might give the game away, but if you've never read Olsen give this book a chance, or two.

Also.

Try another of his more recent novels: My Red Heaven. It is also amazing. Similar and different than this one. Equally built like a Kaleidoscope. Working with small packets, threads, strings wrapped un in various streams of consciousness to produce a picture of a place (My Red Heaven) or a mirror on life, death, and time (Skin Elegies).

Good luck.]]> 4.06 Skin Elegies
author: Lance Olsen
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.06
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/08/23
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: american, 2023, aere-perennius, fiction, scifi, experimental
review:
"This is how the present worked:
we are features of tales
we will never be features of."
- 11 :::: march :::: 2011

"What was hardest to accept was next morning the clocks kept collecting the minutes inside them just like usual."
- 10 :::: june :::: 2015

"When you are inside a tale like that, it never feels like you are in a tale like that."
- 29 :::: october :::: 1969

"Who ever imagined tourniquets could feel like tenderness?"
- 20::::april :::: 1999

"Memory is the mother of grief."
- 2 :::: may :::: 1945

"...it hitting you what a curious condition thinking was, exactly like waking up one day with a French accent."
- 8 :::: december :::: 1980

"The Me of Us can sense The Was has entered the God Swirl."
- 8 :::: august :::: 1974

'It is just the no no-light strewn with diamond-dust stars suspended in the middle of his reeling mind like an always."
- 28 :::: january :::: 1986

"wading farther and farther into
the warm dark sea."
- 11 :::: september :::: 2001

+++++++

"Living forever is tantamount to being trapped inside one's freedom."
- 29 :::: october :::: 2072 :::: 10:30 a.m.

+++++++

description

+++++++

I read this book twice over two years. Bits and pieces never dissolved. Bits and pieces will never be solved. Goddam I loved this book. I'm not usually a BIG fan of experimental fiction or art. I get the need for it, but often something gets lost; the humanity, emotions. But those writers and artists who can push the envelope without losing the thread of humanity are just amazing. This novel is a thread of 9, well, 10 different narratives. Broken. Fractured. Dislocating. Blending. I can't explain fully, but Olsen (who is an absolute mensch btw) manages to maintain the tension and the stories and land them in unexpected ways. I'm sad. But sad in a way something only beautiful, risky, and human can be sad. I don't want to say more. Saying more might give the game away, but if you've never read Olsen give this book a chance, or two.

Also.

Try another of his more recent novels: My Red Heaven. It is also amazing. Similar and different than this one. Equally built like a Kaleidoscope. Working with small packets, threads, strings wrapped un in various streams of consciousness to produce a picture of a place (My Red Heaven) or a mirror on life, death, and time (Skin Elegies).

Good luck.
]]> My Red Heaven 50190809
The subjects include Robert Musil, Otto Dix, Werner Heisenberg, Anita Berber, Vladimir Nabokov, Käthe Kollwitz, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Rosa Luxemburg � as well as others history has forgotten: a sommelier, a murderer, a prostitute, a pickpocket, and several ghosts.

Drawing inspiration from Otto Freundlich’s painting by the same name, My Red Heaven explores a complex moment in history: the rise of deadly populism at a time when everything seemed possible and the future unimaginable. A terrific read for fans of Richard Powers' The Overstory and Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin.]]> 200 Lance Olsen 1950539032 Darwin8u 5 "All that remains is our bungled joy, the sensation of those moments we've forgotten that were important as they were passing..."
- Lance Olsen, My Read Heaven

description

"...there will always be rebels. And you know who they are: the mutinous poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, dancers, mystics, thinkers, journalists...and other outcasts willing to accept personal sacrifice in the name of principle. They live in the shadows. They're poor. The state has little toleration for them. Mass propaganda has conditioned society to belittle them as parasites and traitors. They live that way, not because it's exotic or adventurous, but because to collaborate with radical evil is to betray all that is beautiful and good."
- Lance Olsen, My Read Heaven

description

I'm still digesting all the pieces. The fragments. Some of them literally are stuck in my throat. Notes I've taken have literally fallen into my bath (the penciled notes fade, the ink notes blur). I love it. Way more than I expected and I expected a lot. Lance is genius. He captures a city: Berlin. He captures a time: 1927. He captures humanity in whispers, fragments, stolen moments, banal thoughts, death, disease, sex, sadness and hundreds of other moments united by butterflies, clouds and shadows. He weaves a tapestry of Germany between two wars and the web of beauty and life and death that unites them (and all of us). I thought I was getting into a contemporary, artistic novel that seemed a bit like Vollmann meets Jonathan Littell meets James Joyce. And yes. It was a bit of those. But the ghosts and ghost notes somehow blend the pieces of this wonderful novel into something new. Something more graceful than the sum of its parts, and more beautiful than the weight of Olsen's soul.

- One could say Berlin is a captive of the nineteenth century (75).
- Berlin: the imperial hallucination (76).
- Berlin: a doomed Pompeii (81).
- If Berlin were a part of speech, he heard, it would be a transitive verb (116).

I can’t recommend it enough. No. Wait. I'm not done here. I need to go reread my notes, untangle my flags, untie my thoughts.]]> 4.24 2020 My Red Heaven
author: Lance Olsen
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2021/01/21
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: american, fiction, historical-fiction, 2021, experimental
review:
"All that remains is our bungled joy, the sensation of those moments we've forgotten that were important as they were passing..."
- Lance Olsen, My Read Heaven

description

"...there will always be rebels. And you know who they are: the mutinous poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, dancers, mystics, thinkers, journalists...and other outcasts willing to accept personal sacrifice in the name of principle. They live in the shadows. They're poor. The state has little toleration for them. Mass propaganda has conditioned society to belittle them as parasites and traitors. They live that way, not because it's exotic or adventurous, but because to collaborate with radical evil is to betray all that is beautiful and good."
- Lance Olsen, My Read Heaven

description

I'm still digesting all the pieces. The fragments. Some of them literally are stuck in my throat. Notes I've taken have literally fallen into my bath (the penciled notes fade, the ink notes blur). I love it. Way more than I expected and I expected a lot. Lance is genius. He captures a city: Berlin. He captures a time: 1927. He captures humanity in whispers, fragments, stolen moments, banal thoughts, death, disease, sex, sadness and hundreds of other moments united by butterflies, clouds and shadows. He weaves a tapestry of Germany between two wars and the web of beauty and life and death that unites them (and all of us). I thought I was getting into a contemporary, artistic novel that seemed a bit like Vollmann meets Jonathan Littell meets James Joyce. And yes. It was a bit of those. But the ghosts and ghost notes somehow blend the pieces of this wonderful novel into something new. Something more graceful than the sum of its parts, and more beautiful than the weight of Olsen's soul.

- One could say Berlin is a captive of the nineteenth century (75).
- Berlin: the imperial hallucination (76).
- Berlin: a doomed Pompeii (81).
- If Berlin were a part of speech, he heard, it would be a transitive verb (116).

I can’t recommend it enough. No. Wait. I'm not done here. I need to go reread my notes, untangle my flags, untie my thoughts.
]]> Girl Imagined by Chance 277304 Girl Imagined by Chance is a critifictional novel about a couple who find themselves having created a make-believe daughter (and soon a make-believe life to accompany her) in order to appease their friends, family, and the culture of reproduction. Structured around twelve photographs from a single roll of film, the book explores the nature of photography and the questions that nature raises about the notions of the simulated and the real, the media-ization of consciousness, originality, self construction, and the way we all continually fashion our faces into masks for the next shot. At its heart,Girl Imagined by Chanceinvestigates the mystery of self-knowledge. The prevailing metaphor and structural device of photography examines the way images, in their magical ability to mimic memory, ultimately mock and eradicate it. Theseemingly stable and fixedindividual past turns out to be as protean and unknowable as the future. The body becomes strangely dispensable, perpetually adrift in a cybernetic world of hyperlinks and interfaces.]]> 328 Lance Olsen 1573661031 Darwin8u 0 to-read 4.04 2002 Girl Imagined by Chance
author: Lance Olsen
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Anxious Pleasures: A Novel after Kafka]]> 780615 Or do they all comprise a few of the disturbing dreams from which Gregor is about to snap awake one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous vermin? In the tradition of Michael Cunningham's The Hours and John Gardner's Grendel, Olsen's novel not only represents a collaboration with a ghost, but, too, a celebration, augmentation, complication, and devoted unwriting of a momentously influential text.]]> 192 Lance Olsen 159376135X Darwin8u 0 to-read 3.79 2007 Anxious Pleasures: A Novel after Kafka
author: Lance Olsen
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Head in Flames 34910996 200 Lance Olsen PH D 0998403741 Darwin8u 4 "-like a trio of ancient philosophers plugged into their iPods."

description

- Indiscretion perhaps being one function of art.

One Vincent Van Gogh in July 1890 after shooting himself in the chest, dying. One Theo Van Gogh (Vincent's great grandnephew) on the day he was shot/assassinated in Amsterdam. One Mohammed Bouyeri, Theo Van Gogh's murderer. The book spins these three narrators together. Two contemporary (1994) and one from the other side of the 20th Century.

description

- Children don't grow up--our bodies get bigger and our minds get torn up.

Using a variation of Burrough's Cut-Up method. Tweets of memory, quotes, lyrics, family spinning together to tell a fragmented, color-filled, story of assimilation, loneliness, passion, art, family, love and hate. In many ways it feels like a story that links past, with present, and future.

description

- Because in the end words don't count.

I was expecting the book to be clever and postmodern. I've read Lance Olsens books before, but I forgot that the genius with Lance is not found in his technique, his boldness, or his clever approach to prose, but in the fact that he turns burning lyrics into tears; a magician who holds your heart in his hand as you are still trying to figure out his last trick.]]> 4.33 2009 Head in Flames
author: Lance Olsen PH D
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024, american, fiction, historical-fiction, islam, novella, experimental
review:
This novel spins "-like a trio of ancient philosophers plugged into their iPods."

description

- Indiscretion perhaps being one function of art.

One Vincent Van Gogh in July 1890 after shooting himself in the chest, dying. One Theo Van Gogh (Vincent's great grandnephew) on the day he was shot/assassinated in Amsterdam. One Mohammed Bouyeri, Theo Van Gogh's murderer. The book spins these three narrators together. Two contemporary (1994) and one from the other side of the 20th Century.

description

- Children don't grow up--our bodies get bigger and our minds get torn up.

Using a variation of Burrough's Cut-Up method. Tweets of memory, quotes, lyrics, family spinning together to tell a fragmented, color-filled, story of assimilation, loneliness, passion, art, family, love and hate. In many ways it feels like a story that links past, with present, and future.

description

- Because in the end words don't count.

I was expecting the book to be clever and postmodern. I've read Lance Olsens books before, but I forgot that the genius with Lance is not found in his technique, his boldness, or his clever approach to prose, but in the fact that he turns burning lyrics into tears; a magician who holds your heart in his hand as you are still trying to figure out his last trick.
]]> Christine Falls (Quirke, #1) 199600
It’s not the dead that seem strange to Quirke. It’s the living. One night, after a few drinks at an office party, Quirke shuffles down into the morgue where he works and finds his brother-in-law, Malachy, altering a file he has no business even reading. Odd enough in itself to find Malachy there, but the next morning, when the haze has lifted, it looks an awful lot like his brother-in-law, the esteemed doctor, was in fact tampering with a corpse—and concealing the cause of death.

It turns out the body belonged to a young woman named Christine Falls. And as Quirke reluctantly presses on toward the true facts behind her death, he comes up against some insidious—and very well-guarded—secrets of Dublin’s high Catholic society, among them members of his own family.

Set in Dublin and Boston in the 1950s, the first novel in the Quirke series brings all the vividness and psychological insight of Booker Prize winner John Banville’s fiction to a thrilling, atmospheric crime story. Quirke is a fascinating and subtly drawn hero, Christine Falls is a classic tale of suspense, and Benjamin Black’s debut marks him as a true master of the form.]]> 352 Benjamin Black 0805081526 Darwin8u 4 "I'm no more morbid than the next pathologist."
- Benjamin Black, Christine Falls

description

"The murdered dead,
You thought.
But could it not have been
some violent shattered boy
nosing out what got mislaid
between the cradle and the explosion."
- Seamus Heaney, from 'The Badger'

It is hard to review this novel without wanting to give the whole chreche away. The nasty, dark, secretive details of this book are where it's all at, but I'm afraid if I started swinging around just one detail, I would end up spilling it all. Dropping the baby I was dangling. So, I'll just stick with some of the things that are obvious and have already been said.

Benjamin Black is really John Banville. The Man Booker award winner who wrote The Sea and The Untouchable. Banville is a serious artist. He has been honored with such wild descriptions as the "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov." So, what does a serious, literary author do for money? I remember reading once that the poet Allen Ginsberg made less than $70k per year at the height of his success. For most authors/poets, literature just doesn't sell or pay the damn mortgage. So, there is option 1) literature + professorship. This seems to be the route of a lot of serious fiction writers. William H. Gass is a professor, so too was Vladimir Nabokov. Yes, true. Many of these top tier authors get their jobs because of their notoriety and the benefit it brings to the University. It works well for all involved. So, there is option 2) literature + other job. This is the route chosen by T.S. Eliot and Franz Kafka. You write at night, work selling insurance or something during the day. But there is also option 3) literature + entertainments.* This happens, but not as often as the others.

Probably the best example of this is Graham Greene. He wrote his serious major novels: Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair, The Quiet American, etc. But he also wrote his entertainments: Stamboul Train, A Gun for Sale, The Confidential Agent, The Third Man, Our Man in Havana, Travels With My Aunt, etc. These were his less serious novels. His spy novels. I'm not sure if Greene meant they were inferior, but I don't think he took them quite as seriously. The reason I bring this up is because I think that is what the Quirke novels of John Banville are. His quirky (sorry, I had to) entertainments. They aren't mean to be dripping with poetry. They aren't supposed to be masterpieces. They are supposed to be entertaining. But because they are written by Banville they can't help being great entertainments. The writing is tight. They pacing is fantastic. It works. I loved it. It wasn't a perfect novel, but I'll give it to Banville. I think he has the opportunity to write a perfect entertainment. One that is on par with John le Carré or Graham Greene.

Addition on 12/31/2024 - Read these novels in order. This is one series where it pays to start at the beginning and work through each one.

* There is also family money, etc., but I'm already bored with my list making.]]> 3.52 2006 Christine Falls (Quirke, #1)
author: Benjamin Black
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2015/08/05
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: 2015, crime, fiction, irish, historical-fiction
review:
"I'm no more morbid than the next pathologist."
- Benjamin Black, Christine Falls

description

"The murdered dead,
You thought.
But could it not have been
some violent shattered boy
nosing out what got mislaid
between the cradle and the explosion."
- Seamus Heaney, from 'The Badger'

It is hard to review this novel without wanting to give the whole chreche away. The nasty, dark, secretive details of this book are where it's all at, but I'm afraid if I started swinging around just one detail, I would end up spilling it all. Dropping the baby I was dangling. So, I'll just stick with some of the things that are obvious and have already been said.

Benjamin Black is really John Banville. The Man Booker award winner who wrote The Sea and The Untouchable. Banville is a serious artist. He has been honored with such wild descriptions as the "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov." So, what does a serious, literary author do for money? I remember reading once that the poet Allen Ginsberg made less than $70k per year at the height of his success. For most authors/poets, literature just doesn't sell or pay the damn mortgage. So, there is option 1) literature + professorship. This seems to be the route of a lot of serious fiction writers. William H. Gass is a professor, so too was Vladimir Nabokov. Yes, true. Many of these top tier authors get their jobs because of their notoriety and the benefit it brings to the University. It works well for all involved. So, there is option 2) literature + other job. This is the route chosen by T.S. Eliot and Franz Kafka. You write at night, work selling insurance or something during the day. But there is also option 3) literature + entertainments.* This happens, but not as often as the others.

Probably the best example of this is Graham Greene. He wrote his serious major novels: Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair, The Quiet American, etc. But he also wrote his entertainments: Stamboul Train, A Gun for Sale, The Confidential Agent, The Third Man, Our Man in Havana, Travels With My Aunt, etc. These were his less serious novels. His spy novels. I'm not sure if Greene meant they were inferior, but I don't think he took them quite as seriously. The reason I bring this up is because I think that is what the Quirke novels of John Banville are. His quirky (sorry, I had to) entertainments. They aren't mean to be dripping with poetry. They aren't supposed to be masterpieces. They are supposed to be entertaining. But because they are written by Banville they can't help being great entertainments. The writing is tight. They pacing is fantastic. It works. I loved it. It wasn't a perfect novel, but I'll give it to Banville. I think he has the opportunity to write a perfect entertainment. One that is on par with John le Carré or Graham Greene.

Addition on 12/31/2024 - Read these novels in order. This is one series where it pays to start at the beginning and work through each one.

* There is also family money, etc., but I'm already bored with my list making.
]]> Even the Dead (Quirke, #7) 23168811
Perhaps Quirke has been down among the dead too long. Lately the Irish pathologist has suffered hallucinations and blackouts, and he fears the cause is a brain tumor. A specialist diagnoses an old head injury caused by a savage beating; all that's needed, the doctor declares, is an extended rest. But Quirke, ever intent on finding his place among the living, is not about to retire.

One night during a June heat wave, a car crashes into a tree in central Dublin and bursts into flames. The police assume the driver's death was either an accident or a suicide, but Quirke's examination of the body leads him to believe otherwise. Then his daughter Phoebe gets a mysterious visit from an the woman, who admits to being pregnant, says she fears for her life, though she won't say why. When the woman later disappears, Phoebe asks her father for help, and Quirke in turn seeks the assistance of his old friend Inspector Hackett. Before long the two men find themselves untangling a twisted string of events that takes them deep into a shadowy world where one of the city's most powerful men uses the cover of politics and religion to make obscene profits.

Even the Dead --Benjamin Black's seventh novel featuring the endlessly fascinating Quirke--is a story of surpassing intensity and surprising beauty.]]> 287 Benjamin Black 1627790667 Darwin8u 5 Christine Falls) and work through book by bloody book. Beautiful. ]]> 3.80 2015 Even the Dead (Quirke, #7)
author: Benjamin Black
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: 2024, aere-perennius, crime, crime-noir, fiction, irish, historical-fiction
review:
Some of the saddest, angriest, most beautiful prose I’ve read. It would be hard to completely tell you why the book, the series, and John Banville are all genius, but let me make one recommendation, read these books in order. This is more of a large, multiple book novels, in flavor of Master & Commander, Remembrance of Things Past, or Powell's Dance to the Music of Time. Start with Book One (Christine Falls) and work through book by bloody book. Beautiful.
]]> <![CDATA[They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty]]> 51872064 An ambitious new history of the Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony, published for the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s landing

In 1620, separatists from the Church of England set sail across the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower. Understanding themselves as spiritual pilgrims, they left to preserve their liberty to worship God in accordance with their understanding of the Bible.

There exists, however, an alternative, more dispiriting version of their story. In it, the Pilgrims are religious zealots who persecuted dissenters and decimated the Native peoples through warfare and by stealing their land. The Pilgrims� definition of liberty was, in practice, very narrow.

Drawing on original research using underutilized sources, John G. Turner moves beyond these familiar narrativesin his sweeping and authoritative new history of Plymouth Colony. Instead of depicting the Pilgrims as otherworldly saints or extraordinary sinners, he tells how a variety of English settlers and Native peoples engaged in a contest for the meaning of American liberty.]]> 464 John G. Turner 0300225504 Darwin8u 4 Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet. As I non-practicing Mormon, I felt he did a fantastic job of telling Young's story and also framing Young in his time and space. I missed reading this over Thanksgiving, but figured late December was better than never, so I picked it up. Turner's approach to the Pilgrims using the lens of American Liberty is instructive to informing the myth surrounding liberty and the myth of the Pilgrims.]]> 3.86 They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty
author: John G. Turner
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.86
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: 2024, american, history, nonfiction, religion
review:
So, I first became aware of John G. Turner when I read his masterful biography of Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet. As I non-practicing Mormon, I felt he did a fantastic job of telling Young's story and also framing Young in his time and space. I missed reading this over Thanksgiving, but figured late December was better than never, so I picked it up. Turner's approach to the Pilgrims using the lens of American Liberty is instructive to informing the myth surrounding liberty and the myth of the Pilgrims.
]]> Politics 302533 II. Categories ; On Interpretation ; Analytics ( Prior and Posterior ); On Sophistical Refutations ; Topica .
III. Twenty-six works (some suspect) including astronomy, generation and destruction, the senses, memory, sleep, dreams, life, facts about animals, etc.
IV. Metaphysics : on being as being.
V. On Art of Rhetoric and Poetics .
VI. Other works including the Athenian Constitution ; more works also of doubtful authorship.
VII. Fragments of various works such as dialogues on philosophy and literature; and of treatises on rhetoric, politics and metaphysics.The Loeb Classical Library® edition of Aristotle is in twenty-three volumes.]]> 720 Aristotle 0674992911 Darwin8u 4 “Man is by nature a political animal.�
� Aristotle, Politics

description

Probably a good time to read a classic about tyranny, demagoguery, democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, etc. Enjoyed the whole book as a read. I've studied large parts of this 30+ years ago, so going back and reading this like a modern nonfiction comes with both cost and benefit. I can say of the eight books of Politics, Book VIII was my least favorite. It basically goes into Education and Music and while Education would have been good on its own, the chapter itself was a bit watered down and the music section seemed a flat way to end the study. A quibble, but still relevant and probably the reason I docked this book a star.

I also probably gave this a 4-star review because the H. Rackham translation (from 1932) was a bit clunky. I've read (without knowledge of classical Greek) other Aristotle translations that felt smoother, but that is a bias with a shallow foundation.]]> 4.37 -350 Politics
author: Aristotle
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.37
book published: -350
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: politics, 2024, classics, greek, loeb, nonfiction, philosophy
review:
“Man is by nature a political animal.�
� Aristotle, Politics

description

Probably a good time to read a classic about tyranny, demagoguery, democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, etc. Enjoyed the whole book as a read. I've studied large parts of this 30+ years ago, so going back and reading this like a modern nonfiction comes with both cost and benefit. I can say of the eight books of Politics, Book VIII was my least favorite. It basically goes into Education and Music and while Education would have been good on its own, the chapter itself was a bit watered down and the music section seemed a flat way to end the study. A quibble, but still relevant and probably the reason I docked this book a star.

I also probably gave this a 4-star review because the H. Rackham translation (from 1932) was a bit clunky. I've read (without knowledge of classical Greek) other Aristotle translations that felt smoother, but that is a bias with a shallow foundation.
]]> Art of Rhetoric, Vol 22 154638
Nearly all the works Aristotle prepared for publication are lost; the priceless ones extant are lecture-materials, notes, and memoranda (some are spurious). They can be categorized as follows: I "Practical" Nicomachean Ethics; Great Ethics (Magna Moralia); Eudemian Ethics; Politics; Economics (on the good of the family); On Virtues and Vices. II "Logical" Categories; Analytics (Prior and Posterior); Interpretation; Refutations used by Sophists; Topica. III "Physical" Twenty-six works (some suspect) including astronomy, generation and destruction, the senses, memory, sleep, dreams, life, facts about animals, etc. IV "Metaphysics" on being as being. V "Art" Rhetoric and Poetics. VI Other works including the Constitution of Athens; more works also of doubtful authorship. VII Fragments of various works such as dialogues on philosophy and literature; and of treatises on rhetoric, politics and metaphysics.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Aristotle is in twenty-three volumes.]]> 544 Aristotle 0674992121 Darwin8u 5 “Rhetoric then may be defined as the faculty of discovering the possible means of persuasion in reference to any subject whatever.�
� Aristotle, Rhetoric

description

Reading Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric in the age of Trump and Twitter and in the season of Luigi and TikTok, is a dizzying task. Like the previous book of Aristotle's I read, Politics, I would prefer to have spaced this book out. I've studied parts in the past, but would really enjoy and it would be really useful, to have a rhetoric professor TEACH this book over the course of a semester. Is that my fault? Certainly. I could have slowed down and taken it book by book, chapter by chapter, instead of just letting if flow around me as I floated. But still, lots to glean from the float.

Aristotle's treatise on Rhetoric is patient zero for all writings on persuasion and rhetoric. The subject is divided by Aristotle into three books:

Book 1 provides an overview of the subject and provides context and definitions.
Book 2 delves into the three major means of persuasion: ethos, pathos, logos.
Book 3 examines style of persuasion and writing: lexis and taxis.

I think of how important, even today, this book would be for politicians (future), lawyers (past), and priests (present). Sadly, we have Twitter, so we just swing hard and hope something goes viral.]]> 4.19 -322 Art of Rhetoric, Vol 22
author: Aristotle
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.19
book published: -322
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: 2024, classics, greek, loeb, nonfiction, philosophy, politics, writing
review:
“Rhetoric then may be defined as the faculty of discovering the possible means of persuasion in reference to any subject whatever.�
� Aristotle, Rhetoric

description

Reading Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric in the age of Trump and Twitter and in the season of Luigi and TikTok, is a dizzying task. Like the previous book of Aristotle's I read, Politics, I would prefer to have spaced this book out. I've studied parts in the past, but would really enjoy and it would be really useful, to have a rhetoric professor TEACH this book over the course of a semester. Is that my fault? Certainly. I could have slowed down and taken it book by book, chapter by chapter, instead of just letting if flow around me as I floated. But still, lots to glean from the float.

Aristotle's treatise on Rhetoric is patient zero for all writings on persuasion and rhetoric. The subject is divided by Aristotle into three books:

Book 1 provides an overview of the subject and provides context and definitions.
Book 2 delves into the three major means of persuasion: ethos, pathos, logos.
Book 3 examines style of persuasion and writing: lexis and taxis.

I think of how important, even today, this book would be for politicians (future), lawyers (past), and priests (present). Sadly, we have Twitter, so we just swing hard and hope something goes viral.
]]> The Goshawk 1188127 The Once and Future King and Mistress Masham's Repose, was a young writer who found himself rifling through old handbooks of falconry. A particular sentence � "the bird reverted to a feral state" � seized his imagination, and, White later wrote, "A longing came to my mind that I should be able to do this myself. The word 'feral' has a kind of magical potency which allied itself to two other words, 'ferocious' and 'free.'" Immediately, White wrote to Germany to acquire a young goshawk. Gos, as White named the bird, was ferocious and Gos was free, and White had no idea how to break him in beyond the ancient (and, though he did not know it, long superseded) practice of depriving him of sleep, which meant that he, White, also went without rest. Slowly man and bird entered a state of delirium and intoxication, of attraction and repulsion that looks very much like love. White kept a daybook describing his volatile relationship with Gos � at once a tale of obsession, a comedy of errors, and a hymn to the hawk. It was this that became The Goshawk, one of modern literature's most memorable and surprising encounters with the wilderness � as it exists both within us and without.]]> 215 T.H. White 1590172493 Darwin8u 4 "For everything that rises must converge."
- Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

"For everything else kids, we either dispose of the corpse in Central Park or we cut off its head and strap it to the roof of our minivan for the five-hour drive home."
- RFK, Jr, perhaps?

description

Who knew 2024 would be my year of falcons and falconry. From the great J.A. Baker book The Peregrine, to Roberto Bolaño's novella By Night in Chile, to County Highway's piece on RFK, Jr's love of falconry (later we learned about his love for lost bear cubs and whale heads). Anyway, T.H. White is one of my favorite YA writers. I loved T.H. White's collection of 4 novels on King Arthur, later collected as The Once and Future King, and I guess so too did RFK.

description
From the Samuel's interview with RFK Jr:
"...when I was nine years old, I read The Once and Future King, which was T.H. White's book about King Arthur as a young kid. T.H. White himself was a falconer and he had a chapter with a very graphic description of falconry. And at that moment I knew that that's what I wanted to do in my life."

It does leave me wondering what book inspired him to later hide a bear cub in Central Park? Catcher in the Rye? No. That would involve ducks. What about decapitating a whale head with a chainsaw and strapping it into the family's minivan? Moby-Dick? Perhaps.

God, our literary and political timeline is kinda fucked-up if I'm honest. God save us. God save the Goshawks and the falcons.]]> 3.83 1951 The Goshawk
author: T.H. White
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1951
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/17
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: 2024, british, classics, memoir-autobiography-diary, nature, nonfiction, nyrb
review:
"For everything that rises must converge."
- Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

"For everything else kids, we either dispose of the corpse in Central Park or we cut off its head and strap it to the roof of our minivan for the five-hour drive home."
- RFK, Jr, perhaps?

description

Who knew 2024 would be my year of falcons and falconry. From the great J.A. Baker book The Peregrine, to Roberto Bolaño's novella By Night in Chile, to County Highway's piece on RFK, Jr's love of falconry (later we learned about his love for lost bear cubs and whale heads). Anyway, T.H. White is one of my favorite YA writers. I loved T.H. White's collection of 4 novels on King Arthur, later collected as The Once and Future King, and I guess so too did RFK.

description
From the Samuel's interview with RFK Jr:
"...when I was nine years old, I read The Once and Future King, which was T.H. White's book about King Arthur as a young kid. T.H. White himself was a falconer and he had a chapter with a very graphic description of falconry. And at that moment I knew that that's what I wanted to do in my life."

It does leave me wondering what book inspired him to later hide a bear cub in Central Park? Catcher in the Rye? No. That would involve ducks. What about decapitating a whale head with a chainsaw and strapping it into the family's minivan? Moby-Dick? Perhaps.

God, our literary and political timeline is kinda fucked-up if I'm honest. God save us. God save the Goshawks and the falcons.
]]> Holy Orders (Quirke, #6) 16044991 You've lived too long among the dead, Quirke, she said.

He nodded. Yes, I suppose I have. She was not the first one to have told him that, and she would not be the last.

1950s Dublin. When a body is found in the canal, pathologist Quirke and his detective friend Inspector Hackett must find the truth behind this brutal murder. But in a world where the police are not trusted and secrets often remain buried there is perhaps little hope of bringing the perpetrator to justice.

As spring storms descend on Dublin, Quirke and Hackett's investigation will lead them into the dark heart of the organisation that really runs this troubled city: the church. Meanwhile Quirke's daughter Phoebe realises she is being followed; and when Quirke's terrible childhood in a priest-run orphanage returns to haunt him, he will face his greatest trial yet...]]> 304 Benjamin Black 0805094407 Darwin8u 4 2024, irish, crime, fiction 3.62 2013 Holy Orders (Quirke, #6)
author: Benjamin Black
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: 2024, irish, crime, fiction
review:
John Banville's sixth novel. Quirke is one of my favorite characters in any detective series. Very Irish, very melancholy, broken, a man without a heart but definitely a man of soul. One of the main themes that unite the Quirke novels is the great transgressions of the Catholic Church in Ireland. I really think it takes several generations to extract the poison of abuse and Ireland has been wrestling with the shadows and the scars of the Reformatory and Industrial Schools abuse of 1930s to the 1950s. Let's just say Banville has very little patience for the Institutions that allow this horrible abuse.
]]> <![CDATA[There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness: And Other Thoughts on Physics, Philosophy and the World]]> 53733107 A delightful intellectual feast from the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and The Order of Time

One of the world's most prominent physicists and fearless free spirit, Carlo Rovelli is also a masterful storyteller. His bestselling books have introduced millions of readers to the wonders of modern physics and his singular perspective on the cosmos. This new collection of essays reveals a curious intellect always on the move. Rovelli invites us on an accessible and enlightening voyage through science, literature, philosophy and politics.

Written with his usual clarity and wit, this journey ranges widely across time and space: from Newton's alchemy to Einstein's mistakes, from Nabokov's epidopterology to Dante's cosmology, from mind-altering psychedelic substances to the meaning of atheism, from the future of physics to the power of uncertainty. Charming, pithy and elegant, this book is the perfect gateway to the universe of one of the most influential minds of our age.]]> 272 Carlo Rovelli 059319215X Darwin8u 3 3.85 2018 There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness: And Other Thoughts on Physics, Philosophy and the World
author: Carlo Rovelli
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: 2024, essays, nonfiction, physics, philosophy
review:
A bunch of essays by Rovelli that center around art, fiction, poetry, physics, and the world. These collected essays reflect Rovelli's variety of interests and underlying personal philosophy. Life is about seeking after knowledge, treating others well, and using physics to be a better philosopher and using philosophy/poetry/etc to be a better physicist. Not all the essays were of equal value. Some were beautiful and some were interesting. The knot tying these essays together was a bit looser than I would have liked, but I still enjoyed it. Just not top-shelf Rovelli.
]]> <![CDATA[Empire: A Very Short Introduction]]> 1358350
Stephen Howe interprets the meaning of the idea of "empire" through the ages, disentangling the multiple uses and abuses of the labels "empire" and "colonialism", etc., and examines the aftermath of imperialism on the contemporary world.]]> 160 Stephen Howe 0192802232 Darwin8u 4 3.50 2002 Empire: A Very Short Introduction
author: Stephen Howe
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: 2024, history, nonfiction, politics
review:
A good survey of the history and varieties of empire. Also contrasts and connects empire to colonialism, post-colonialism, Orientalism, etc. The lines between the previous are all quite muddied as is the very definition of empire and imperialism.
]]> <![CDATA[Die a Stranger (Alex McKnight, #9)]]> 13053242 New York Times Bestseller

Late one night, a plane lands on a deserted airstrip. Five dead bodies are found there the next morning. And now Vinnie LeBlanc is missing.

Vinnie is a member of the Ojibwa Indian tribe and he just might be Alex McKnight's best friend. So Alex can't help but be worried when he disappears. There's a deadly crime war creeping into Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and Alex never would have thought that his friend could be involved. But after an unexpected stranger arrives in town, Alex will soon find out that the stakes are higher than he ever could have imagined.

The latest in Steve Hamilton's Edgar Award–winning series, Die a Stranger just might be his boldest book yet.]]> 277 Steve Hamilton 0312640218 Darwin8u 4 4.01 2012 Die a Stranger (Alex McKnight, #9)
author: Steve Hamilton
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/13
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: 2024, american, crime, fiction
review:
An interesting side quest in the Alex McKnight series. The ending was a bit of a surprise and not the normal wrap for a crime novel. Sometimes it got pretty close to over-the-top on the native parts, but Hamilton kept it from going too far. Solid. Didn't throw me off wanting to read more of the series.
]]> Vengeance (Quirke, #5) 13167793 A bizarre suicide leads to a scandal and then still more blood, as one of our most brilliant crime novelists reveals a world where money and sex trump everything

It's a fine day for a sail, and Victor Delahaye, one of Ireland's most successful businessmen, takes his boat far out to sea. With him is his partner's son—who becomes the sole witness when Delahaye produces a pistol, points it at his own chest, and fires.

This mysterious death immediately engages the attention of Detective Inspector Hackett, who in turn calls upon the services of his sometime partner Quirke, consultant pathologist at the Hospital of the Holy Family. The stakes are high: Delahaye's prominence in business circles means that Hackett and Quirke must proceed very carefully. Among others, they interview Mona Delahaye, the dead man's young and very beautiful wife; James and Jonas Delahaye, his identical twin sons; and Jack Clancy, his ambitious, womanizing partner. But then a second death occurs, this one even more shocking than the first, and quickly it becomes apparent that a terrible secret threatens to destroy the lives and reputations of several members of Dublin's elite.

Why did Victor Delahaye kill himself, and who is intent upon wreaking vengeance on so many of those who knew him?]]> 304 Benjamin Black 0805094393 Darwin8u 4 3.59 2012 Vengeance (Quirke, #5)
author: Benjamin Black
name: Darwin8u
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: 2024, crime-noir, irish, fiction
review:
For the last few years I've been making my way though Benjamin Black's Quirke novels. I love John Banville's side project. I think he did this to write lowbrow crime novels, but you can't take the artist out of the man. I'm a fan of genre novels, and Banville can keep up with the best Noir/Crime novelists. His books are psychological and character driven, like a playful Patricia Highsmith.
]]>