Cameron's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 14 Apr 2025 06:47:11 -0700 60 Cameron's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Going For a Beer: Selected Short Fictions]]> 36365222 A collection of the best short fictions from the grandmaster of postmodernism.


Robert Coover has been playing by his own rules for more than half a century, earning the 1987 Rea Award for the Short Story as “a writer who has managed, willfully and even perversely, to remain his own man while offering his generous vision and versions of America.� Coover finds inspiration in everything from painting, cinema, theater, and dance to slapstick, magic acts, puzzles, and riddles. His 1969 story, “The Babysitter,� has alone inspired generations of innovative young writers. Here, in this selection of thirty of his best stories, you will find an invisible man tragically obsessed by an invisible woman; a cartoon man in a cartoon car who runs over a real man who is arrested by a real policeman with cartoon eyes; a stick man who reinvents the universe. Going for a Beer confirms Coover’s reputation as “one of America’s greatest literary geniuses� (Alan Moore).]]> 429 Robert Coover 0393608476 Cameron 0 3.44 2018 Going For a Beer: Selected Short Fictions
author: Robert Coover
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: fiction, postmodern-literature, short-stories
review:

]]> Beasts of a Little Land 57151981
In the aftermath, a young girl named Jade is sold by her family to Miss Silver’s courtesan school, an act of desperation that will cement her place in the lowest social status. When she befriends an orphan boy named JungHo, who scrapes together a living begging on the streets of Seoul, they form a deep friendship. As they come of age, JungHo is swept up in the revolutionary fight for independence, and Jade becomes a sought-after performer with a new romantic prospect of noble birth. Soon Jade must decide whether she will risk everything for the one who would do the same for her.

From the perfumed chambers of a courtesan school in Pyongyang to the glamorous cafes of a modernizing Seoul and the boreal forests of Manchuria, where battles rage, Juhea Kim’s unforgettable characters forge their own destinies as they wager their nation’s. Immersive and elegant, Beasts of a Little Land unveils a world where friends become enemies, enemies become saviors, heroes are persecuted, and beasts take many shapes.]]> 416 Juhea Kim 006309357X Cameron 0 to-read 4.00 2021 Beasts of a Little Land
author: Juhea Kim
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[From Al Qaeda to Atheism:The Girl Who Would Not Submit]]> 89885929 0 Yasmine Mohammed 1724790803 Cameron 0 to-read 4.00 From Al Qaeda to Atheism:The Girl Who Would Not Submit
author: Yasmine Mohammed
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> BLAME! 6 37457833 312 Tsutomu Nihei 1682339939 Cameron 5 4.26 2015 BLAME! 6
author: Tsutomu Nihei
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: cyberpunk, fiction, graphic-novel, japanese-lit, manga, sci-fi
review:

]]> BLAME! 5 36272651 340 Tsutomu Nihei 1682338568 Cameron 5 4.28 2015 BLAME! 5
author: Tsutomu Nihei
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: cyberpunk, fiction, japanese-lit, manga, sci-fi
review:

]]> BLAME! Vol. 4 35061941 364 Tsutomu Nihei 1682336247 Cameron 5 4.36 BLAME! Vol. 4
author: Tsutomu Nihei
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.36
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/12
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves: cyberpunk, fiction, japanese-lit, manga, sci-fi
review:

]]> BLAME! Vol. 2 32998990 365 Tsutomu Nihei 168233497X Cameron 5 4.41 2015 BLAME! Vol. 2
author: Tsutomu Nihei
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: cyberpunk, fiction, japanese-lit, manga, sci-fi
review:

]]> BLAME! Vol. 3 34656016 340 Tsutomu Nihei 1682336123 Cameron 5 4.30 2015 BLAME! Vol. 3
author: Tsutomu Nihei
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/07
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: cyberpunk, fiction, japanese-lit, manga, sci-fi
review:

]]> Pricksongs and Descants 24177979 258 Robert Coover 1941088864 Cameron 4 3.81 1969 Pricksongs and Descants
author: Robert Coover
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1969
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: fiction, postmodern-literature, short-stories
review:

]]> BLAME! MASTER EDITION 1 29236462 408 Tsutomu Nihei 1942993773 Cameron 5 4.16 2015 BLAME! MASTER EDITION 1
author: Tsutomu Nihei
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: cyberpunk, fiction, graphic-novel, japanese-lit, manga, post-apocalyptic, sci-fi
review:

]]> Beautiful Star 57951419
But Father, Juichiro, is worried about the bomb. He writes letters to Krushev, trying to warn everyone he can of the terrible threat. After all, humans may be terribly flawed, but aren't they worth saving? He sends out a coded message in the newspaper to find other aliens. But there are other extra-terrestrials out there, ones who do not look so kindly on the flaws and foibles of humans. And a charming young man, who claims to be from Venus too, tempts the daughter Akiko away from the family...]]> 234 Yukio Mishima 0241545560 Cameron 2 fiction, japanese-lit 3.18 1962 Beautiful Star
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.18
book published: 1962
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/06
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: fiction, japanese-lit
review:

]]> Hollywood 38505 320 Charles Bukowski 843391426X Cameron 3 fiction 3.82 1989 Hollywood
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1989
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> The Daily Stoic 56508712 405 Ryan Holiday 0578687577 Cameron 0 to-read 4.93 2016 The Daily Stoic
author: Ryan Holiday
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.93
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lectures on Don Quixote 31587605 One of the twentieth century’s greatest novelists offers his take on the Spanish classic. The author of Lolita and Pale Fire was not only a master of fiction but a distinguished literary critic as well. In this collection of lectures, which he delivered at Harvard in the early 1950s, Vladimir Nabokov shares insights based on a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the seventeenth-century novel by Miguel de Cervantes, a timeless classic and one of the most deeply influential works in all of Western literature. Rejecting the common interpretation of Don Quixote as a warm satire, Nabokov perceives the work as a catalog of cruelty through which the gaunt knight passes. Edited and with a preface by Fredson Bowers, this volume offers “a powerful, critical, and dramatic elaboration of the theme of illusion� (V. S. Pritchett, The New York Review of Books). ]]> 242 Vladimir Nabokov 0544998081 Cameron 3
Collected here are Nabokov's Harvard lectures on Don Quixote, as well as a lengthy chapter summary and commentary. I was surprised to learn that Nabokov wasn't very impressed with Cervantes's epic farce at first and only began to appreciate the book after a careful re-reading while preparing his lesson plans. Die-hard Don Quixote fans might take issue with Nabokov's constant literary criticism but I enjoyed his honesty and agreed with 99 percent of his takes.

The biggest revelation of the book is Nabokov's alternate ending to the story, which is far superior to Cervantes's version. I wrote at greater length about that

I enjoyed the book but can only recommend it in good faith to fans of both Don Quixote and Nabokov. If hate one or the other, skip this one.
___________________________________
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author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1983
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: literary-criticism, nonfiction, essays
review:
| |

Collected here are Nabokov's Harvard lectures on Don Quixote, as well as a lengthy chapter summary and commentary. I was surprised to learn that Nabokov wasn't very impressed with Cervantes's epic farce at first and only began to appreciate the book after a careful re-reading while preparing his lesson plans. Die-hard Don Quixote fans might take issue with Nabokov's constant literary criticism but I enjoyed his honesty and agreed with 99 percent of his takes.

The biggest revelation of the book is Nabokov's alternate ending to the story, which is far superior to Cervantes's version. I wrote at greater length about that

I enjoyed the book but can only recommend it in good faith to fans of both Don Quixote and Nabokov. If hate one or the other, skip this one.
___________________________________
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]]> Money 18825 Time Magazine included the book in its list of the 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. The story of John Self and his insatiable appetite for money, alcohol, fast food, drugs, pornography, and more, Money is ceaselessly inventive and thrillingly savage; a tale of life lived without restraint, of money and the disasters it can precipitate.]]> 394 Martin Amis 0099461889 Cameron 5 reread, fiction
I’ve read this book three times now, and it’s still hilarious. It’s worth noting that each of those “readings� was in fact an audiobook recording. In other words, I need to get a physical copy of this book and read it…again. If you only ever read one Martin Amis book in your life, pick this one, which is about a director of commercials named John Self, who is “addicted to the 20th century� (fast food, hookers, porn—the basest and most shallow of entertainment). Here’s John Self, ruminating on his unfaithful girlfriend, Selina:

“In my experience, the thing about girls is—you never know. No, you never do. Even if you actually catch them, red-handed—bent triple upside down in mid-air over the headboard, say, and brushing their teeth with your best friend’s dick—you never know. She’ll deny it, indignantly. She’ll believe it, too. She’ll hold the dick there, like a mike, and tell you that it isn’t so. I have been faithful to Selina Street for over a year, God damn it. Yes I have. I keep trying not to be, but it never works out. I can’t find anyone to be unfaithful to her with. They don’t want what I have to offer. They want commitment and candour and sympathy and trust and all the other things I seem to be really short of. They are past the point where they’ll go to bed with somebody just for the hell of it. Selina is past that point also, long past. She used to be a well-known goer, true, but now she has her future security to think about. She has money to think about.�
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 3.72 1984 Money
author: Martin Amis
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1984
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/20
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: reread, fiction
review:
| |

I’ve read this book three times now, and it’s still hilarious. It’s worth noting that each of those “readings� was in fact an audiobook recording. In other words, I need to get a physical copy of this book and read it…again. If you only ever read one Martin Amis book in your life, pick this one, which is about a director of commercials named John Self, who is “addicted to the 20th century� (fast food, hookers, porn—the basest and most shallow of entertainment). Here’s John Self, ruminating on his unfaithful girlfriend, Selina:

“In my experience, the thing about girls is—you never know. No, you never do. Even if you actually catch them, red-handed—bent triple upside down in mid-air over the headboard, say, and brushing their teeth with your best friend’s dick—you never know. She’ll deny it, indignantly. She’ll believe it, too. She’ll hold the dick there, like a mike, and tell you that it isn’t so. I have been faithful to Selina Street for over a year, God damn it. Yes I have. I keep trying not to be, but it never works out. I can’t find anyone to be unfaithful to her with. They don’t want what I have to offer. They want commitment and candour and sympathy and trust and all the other things I seem to be really short of. They are past the point where they’ll go to bed with somebody just for the hell of it. Selina is past that point also, long past. She used to be a well-known goer, true, but now she has her future security to think about. She has money to think about.�
___________________________________
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]]> Time's Arrow 23031 Time's Arrow the doctor Tod T. Friendly dies and then feels markedly better, breaks up with his lovers as a prelude to seducing them, and mangles his patients before he sends them home. And all the while Tod's life races backward in time toward the one appalling moment in modern history when such reversals make sense.

]]> 165 Martin Amis 0679735720 Cameron 5 holocaust, fiction
This novel tells the story of a former Nazi doctor—in reverse. Literally in reverse: the narrator is watching the events of the story unfold as if time were flowing backwards. The prose is absolutely astounding:

“It’s all strange to me. I know I live on a fierce and magical planet, which sheds or surrenders rain or even flings it off in whipstroke after whipstroke, which fires out bolts of electric gold into the firmament at 186,000 miles per second, which with a single shrug of its tectonic plates can erect a city in half an hour. Creation � is easy, is quick.�
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 3.78 1991 Time's Arrow
author: Martin Amis
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1991
rating: 5
read at: 2014/01/01
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: holocaust, fiction
review:
| |

This novel tells the story of a former Nazi doctor—in reverse. Literally in reverse: the narrator is watching the events of the story unfold as if time were flowing backwards. The prose is absolutely astounding:

“It’s all strange to me. I know I live on a fierce and magical planet, which sheds or surrenders rain or even flings it off in whipstroke after whipstroke, which fires out bolts of electric gold into the firmament at 186,000 miles per second, which with a single shrug of its tectonic plates can erect a city in half an hour. Creation � is easy, is quick.�
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]]> London Fields 18830 This is an alternative cover edition. The main entry for ISBN 9780099748618 can be found here.

London Fields is Amis's murder story for the end of the millennium. The murderee is Nicola Six, a "black hole" of sex and self-loathing intent on orchestrating her own extinction. The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts. Or is the killer the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch?]]> 526 Martin Amis Cameron 5 fiction
Amis’s longest novel. I actually listened to this on audiobook about ten years ago and I still remember laughing out loud while toiling away at my warehouse job. I saw the “twist� at the end of the book coming from a mile away but sometimes it’s more about the journey than the destination. Great read.
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 3.70 1989 London Fields
author: Martin Amis
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at: 2014/01/01
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction
review:
| |

Amis’s longest novel. I actually listened to this on audiobook about ten years ago and I still remember laughing out loud while toiling away at my warehouse job. I saw the “twist� at the end of the book coming from a mile away but sometimes it’s more about the journey than the destination. Great read.
___________________________________
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]]> Success 18831 Success Martin Amis pens a mismatched pair of foster brothers--one "a quivering condom of neurosis and ineptitude," the other a "bundle of contempt, vanity and stock-response"--in a single London flat. He binds them with ties of class hatred, sexual rivalry, and disappointed love, and throws in a disloyal girlfriend and a spectacularly unstable sister to create a modern-day Jacobean revenge comedy that soars with malicious poetry.]]> 224 Martin Amis 0679734481 Cameron 5 fiction
Described as a “Jacobian revenge comedy�, Success tells the story of two foster brothers and the rise and fall of their respective fortunes. The point of view alternates between each chapter and the same scenes are interpreted wildly differently depending on who is narrating the story. This is one of the few books to make me laugh out loud.
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 3.67 1978 Success
author: Martin Amis
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/20
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction
review:
| |

Described as a “Jacobian revenge comedy�, Success tells the story of two foster brothers and the rise and fall of their respective fortunes. The point of view alternates between each chapter and the same scenes are interpreted wildly differently depending on who is narrating the story. This is one of the few books to make me laugh out loud.
___________________________________
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]]> Inside Story 51199459
His most intimate and epic work to date, Inside Story is the unseen portrait of Martin Amis� extraordinary life, as a man and a writer. This novel had its birth in a death � that of the author's closest friend, Christopher Hitchens. We also encounter the vibrant characters who have helped define Martin Amis, from his father Kingsley, to his hero Saul Bellow, from Philip Larkin to Iris Murdoch and Elizabeth Jane Howard, and to the person who captivated his twenties, the alluringly amoral Phoebe Phelps. What begins as a thrilling tale of romantic entanglements, family and friendship, evolves into a tender, witty exploration of the hardest questions: how to live, how to grieve, and how to die? In his search for answers, Amis surveys the great horrors of the twentieth century, and the still unfolding impact of the 9/11 attacks on the twenty-first � and what all this has taught him about how to be a writer. The result is one of Amis� greatest achievements: a love letter to life that is at once exuberant, meditative, heartbreaking and ebullient, to be savoured and cherished for many years to come.]]> 560 Martin Amis Cameron 5 creative-nonfiction, memoir
Inside Story is a masterful Martin Amis novel, but I can't recommend it to everyone. If you're not at least quasi knowledgeable of certain literary figures, chiefly: Christopher Hitchens, Saul Bellow, Philip Larkin, or Kingley Amis; or, if you're not already a Martin Amis fan, then I feel this novel isn't going to have the impact that it does for someone like me.

I highly recommend starting with a novel like Amis's Money or at least becoming aquainted with the aforementioned authors before tackling this book, which concerns itself with the respective deaths of each of the real-life characters, as well as the end of life in general, while providing insight into writing and literature by one of England's (in my opinion) finest writers.
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 3.96 2020 Inside Story
author: Martin Amis
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2023/02/04
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: creative-nonfiction, memoir
review:
| |

Inside Story is a masterful Martin Amis novel, but I can't recommend it to everyone. If you're not at least quasi knowledgeable of certain literary figures, chiefly: Christopher Hitchens, Saul Bellow, Philip Larkin, or Kingley Amis; or, if you're not already a Martin Amis fan, then I feel this novel isn't going to have the impact that it does for someone like me.

I highly recommend starting with a novel like Amis's Money or at least becoming aquainted with the aforementioned authors before tackling this book, which concerns itself with the respective deaths of each of the real-life characters, as well as the end of life in general, while providing insight into writing and literature by one of England's (in my opinion) finest writers.
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]]> <![CDATA[The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump: Essays and Reportage, 1994-2017 (Vintage International)]]> 40987896
“Amis throws off more provocative ideas and images in a single paragraph than most writers get into complete novels.”� The Seattle Times

As a journalist, critic, and novelist, Amis has always turned his keen intellect and unrivaled prose loose on an astonishing range of topics—politics, sports, celebrity, America, and, of course, literature.

He writes about finally confronting the effects of aging on his athletic prowess. He revisits the worlds of Bellow and Nabokov, his “twin peaks,� masters who have obsessed and inspired him. And he turns his piercingly observant eye on Donald Trump, whom he finds “scowling out from under an omelette of makeup� in the run-up to the 2016 Republican Convention, and at a post-election rally, regarding his crowd of supporters with a “flat sneer of Ozymandian hauteur.�

Overflowing with startling and singular turns of phrase, and complete with new commentary by the author, The Rub of Time is a vital addition to any bookshelf, and the perfect primer for readers discovering Amis’s fierce talents for the first time.]]> 416 Martin Amis 1400095999 Cameron 5
Throughout the 2000’s Amis mostly published nonfiction. This collection is the only nonfiction of his I’ve read so far but I found his essays and reportage captivating, erudite, and insightful. Fantastic book.
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 3.77 2017 The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump: Essays and Reportage, 1994-2017 (Vintage International)
author: Martin Amis
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/23
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: essays, literary-criticism, nonfiction
review:
| |

Throughout the 2000’s Amis mostly published nonfiction. This collection is the only nonfiction of his I’ve read so far but I found his essays and reportage captivating, erudite, and insightful. Fantastic book.
___________________________________
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]]> <![CDATA[Lionel Asbo: State of England (Vintage International)]]> 16041841
“One of Amis’s funniest novels.”� The New Yorker

Des Pepperdine is a boy out of place. He lives on the thirty-third floor of a London housing project; while his peers pick fights, Des retreats to the public library. What’s more, Des’s uncle and guardian, Lionel Asbo, is one of the most notorious petty criminals in the city.

Yet Lionel, full of inept devotion to his nephew, dutifully teaches Des the essentials of becoming a man (always carry a knife; pornography is easier than dating; pit bulls should be fed Tabasco sauce). To survive these lessons, Des seeks solace in a covert romantic union that would fill Lionel with rage. But just as Des begins to lead a healthier life, Lionel wins £140 million in the lottery. The money ushers in a public-relations firm for Lionel, along with a cannily ambitious topless model–poet.

Through it all, Lionel remains his vicious, oddly loyal self, and his problems, as well as Des’s, only seem to multiply.]]> 272 Martin Amis 0307948080 Cameron 5 fiction
A black comedy, but there is some redemption at the heart of it. It’s about an orphaned adolescent named Desmond Pepperdine and his loutish, menacing, and occasionally downright evil uncle, Lionel Asbo, who wins the national lottery during one of his prison sentences. A common theme among Amis’s novels involves the pairing of two diametrically opposite characters who act as foils. As Lionel (somehow) descends further into a black hole of tabloid notoriety, porn, and abuse, Desmond struggles to grow. Great read, despite the mixed reviews.

If Money is your favorite Martin Amis novel, then there's a good chance you'll like this one. It's dark, twisted...and often hilarious. I laughed out loud more than once. I also grimaced and had to reread a few lines just to make sure what I read was actually as fucked-up as I thought it was. And yeah, the eponymous Lionel Asbo does some bad, bad stuff.

Overall a great read if you like dark comedy. Or if you just like good writing--Martin Amis is clearly one of the master prose stylists working today. If that's not your cup of tea though, well, you're probably not going to like this book one bit.
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 3.33 2012 Lionel Asbo: State of England (Vintage International)
author: Martin Amis
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2021/07/15
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction
review:
| |

A black comedy, but there is some redemption at the heart of it. It’s about an orphaned adolescent named Desmond Pepperdine and his loutish, menacing, and occasionally downright evil uncle, Lionel Asbo, who wins the national lottery during one of his prison sentences. A common theme among Amis’s novels involves the pairing of two diametrically opposite characters who act as foils. As Lionel (somehow) descends further into a black hole of tabloid notoriety, porn, and abuse, Desmond struggles to grow. Great read, despite the mixed reviews.

If Money is your favorite Martin Amis novel, then there's a good chance you'll like this one. It's dark, twisted...and often hilarious. I laughed out loud more than once. I also grimaced and had to reread a few lines just to make sure what I read was actually as fucked-up as I thought it was. And yeah, the eponymous Lionel Asbo does some bad, bad stuff.

Overall a great read if you like dark comedy. Or if you just like good writing--Martin Amis is clearly one of the master prose stylists working today. If that's not your cup of tea though, well, you're probably not going to like this book one bit.
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]]> Dead Babies 18833 London Fields. The residents of Appleseed Rectory have primed themselves both for a visit from a triad of Americans and a weekend of copious drug taking and sexual gymnastics. There's even a heifer to be slugged and a pair of doddering tenants to be ingeniously harassed. But none of these variously bright and dull young things has counted on the intrusion of "dead babies" � dreary spasms of reality. Or on the uninvited presence of a mysterious prankster named Johnny, whose sinister idea of fun makes theirs look like a game of backgammon.

]]> 206 Martin Amis 067973449X Cameron 4
This is an EXTREMELY black comedy about a group of early 20-somethings which becomes increasingly debauched and depraved over the course of a single weekend. It's also something of a "whodunnit", because among the 8 revelers there appears to be a prankster by the name of "Johnny" who is willing to take the already-suicidal level of partygoing to heights the Marquis De Sade would approve of.

I may have given this book 5 stars in my early 20's but now than I'm getting a little older the laughs don't come as easily. Still...it's Martin Amis. Even when he's bad, he's still good. A hilarious (albeit nauseating) read.
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 3.39 1975 Dead Babies
author: Martin Amis
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.39
book published: 1975
rating: 4
read at: 2022/02/06
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction, postmodern-literature
review:
| |

This is an EXTREMELY black comedy about a group of early 20-somethings which becomes increasingly debauched and depraved over the course of a single weekend. It's also something of a "whodunnit", because among the 8 revelers there appears to be a prankster by the name of "Johnny" who is willing to take the already-suicidal level of partygoing to heights the Marquis De Sade would approve of.

I may have given this book 5 stars in my early 20's but now than I'm getting a little older the laughs don't come as easily. Still...it's Martin Amis. Even when he's bad, he's still good. A hilarious (albeit nauseating) read.
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]]> The Rachel Papers 19108696

From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 226 Martin Amis 0307777766 Cameron 5 fiction
Martin Amis’s first novel; clearly autobiographical and about a young egotistical man on the cusp of leaving for university and his fling with the eponymous Rachel. It’s one of those books that’s funnier in your early 20’s.
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[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 3.41 1973 The Rachel Papers
author: Martin Amis
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1973
rating: 5
read at: 2019/11/19
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction
review:
| |

Martin Amis’s first novel; clearly autobiographical and about a young egotistical man on the cusp of leaving for university and his fling with the eponymous Rachel. It’s one of those books that’s funnier in your early 20’s.
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]]> The Pregnant Widow 1456757 The Pregnant Widow, takes as his control experiment a long, hot summer holiday in a castle in Italy, where half a dozen young lives are afloat on the sea change of 1970. The result is a tragicomedy of manners, combining the wit of Money with the historical sense of Time's Arrow and House of Meetings.

It was summer 1970 - a long, hot summer. In a castle in Italy, half a dozen young lives are afloat on the sea of change, trapped inside the history of the sexual revolution. The girls are acting like boys, and the boys are going on acting like boys, and Keith Nearing - twenty years old, a literature student all clogged up with the English novel - is struggling to twist feminism and the rise of women towards his own ends. The sexual revolution may have been a velvet revolution (in at least two senses), but it wasn't bloodless - and now, in the twenty-first century, the year 1970 finally catches up with Keith Nearing. "The Pregnant Widow" is a comedy of manners and a nightmare, brilliant, haunting and gloriously risque. It is the most eagerly anticipated novel of the year and Martin Amis at his fearless best.

About the Author

Martin Amis is the author of ten novels, the memoir Experience, two collections of stories and six collections of non-fiction, most recently The Second Plane. He lives in London.]]> 480 Martin Amis 0224076124 Cameron 4 fiction
The Pregnant Widow is the story of Keith Nearing reminiscing about his youth during the sexual revolution of the 60’s. Most of the story is centered upon an old Italian castle where Keith, his girlfriend Lily, the blonde-haired beauty Scheherazade and some other characters are spending their summer vacation. This book is really a comedy—like a more intelligent version of American Pie—with more of a leaning towards “fratire� than traditional satire. I say this because based on several of the ratings and subsequent reviews I’m seeing elsewhere on this page, I’m assuming most women don’t find it as amusing.

Fans of Martin Amis who are accustomed to his writing style and the dark humor permeating the pages of his fiction won’t be surprised by the kinds of sentences rolling beneath their eyes:

As the fiftieth birthday approaches, you get that sense that your life is thinning out, and will continue to thin out, until it thins out into nothing. And you sometimes say to yourself; That went a bit quick. That went a bit quick. In certain moods you may want to put it a bit more forcefully. As in: OY!! That went a BIT FUCKING QUICK!!!.... Then fifty comes and goes, and fifty-one, and fifty-two. And life thickens out again. Because there is now an enormous and unsuspected presence within your being, like an undiscovered continent. This is the past.

Readers of Martin Amis’s father, Kinsley Amis, may also note how the The Pregnant Widow is like Kingsley’s novel Lucky Jim in reverse. One could say the comedy of Martin’s book stems from an onslaught of bad luck rather than unlikely success.

All in all, the book’s main weakness is that it beats the same kind of jokes into the reader’s head over and over again. Although I laughed out loud several times throughout, I also sighed at least half as many, waiting for the kind of cackles that came time and time again when reading books like Money and London Fields.

Nevertheless, Amis’s wit and turn of phrase, as well as those indelible laugh-lines made this a great book overall and I’m already antsy to pick up another volume.
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 3.07 2010 The Pregnant Widow
author: Martin Amis
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.07
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2017/03/22
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction
review:
| |

The Pregnant Widow is the story of Keith Nearing reminiscing about his youth during the sexual revolution of the 60’s. Most of the story is centered upon an old Italian castle where Keith, his girlfriend Lily, the blonde-haired beauty Scheherazade and some other characters are spending their summer vacation. This book is really a comedy—like a more intelligent version of American Pie—with more of a leaning towards “fratire� than traditional satire. I say this because based on several of the ratings and subsequent reviews I’m seeing elsewhere on this page, I’m assuming most women don’t find it as amusing.

Fans of Martin Amis who are accustomed to his writing style and the dark humor permeating the pages of his fiction won’t be surprised by the kinds of sentences rolling beneath their eyes:

As the fiftieth birthday approaches, you get that sense that your life is thinning out, and will continue to thin out, until it thins out into nothing. And you sometimes say to yourself; That went a bit quick. That went a bit quick. In certain moods you may want to put it a bit more forcefully. As in: OY!! That went a BIT FUCKING QUICK!!!.... Then fifty comes and goes, and fifty-one, and fifty-two. And life thickens out again. Because there is now an enormous and unsuspected presence within your being, like an undiscovered continent. This is the past.

Readers of Martin Amis’s father, Kinsley Amis, may also note how the The Pregnant Widow is like Kingsley’s novel Lucky Jim in reverse. One could say the comedy of Martin’s book stems from an onslaught of bad luck rather than unlikely success.

All in all, the book’s main weakness is that it beats the same kind of jokes into the reader’s head over and over again. Although I laughed out loud several times throughout, I also sighed at least half as many, waiting for the kind of cackles that came time and time again when reading books like Money and London Fields.

Nevertheless, Amis’s wit and turn of phrase, as well as those indelible laugh-lines made this a great book overall and I’m already antsy to pick up another volume.
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]]> Night Train 23040
When Jennifer Rockwell, darling of the community and daughter of a respected career cop--now top brass--takes her own life, no one is prepared to believe it. Especially her father, Colonel Tom. Homicide Detective Mike Hoolihan, longtime colleague and friend of Colonel Tom, is ready to "put the case down." Suicide. Closed. Until Colonel Tom asks her to do the one thing any grieving father would ask: take a second look.

Not since his celebrated novel Money has Amis turned his focus on America to such remarkable effect. Fusing brilliant wordplay with all the elements of the classic whodunit, Amis exposes a world where surfaces are suspect (no matter how perfect), where paranoia is justified (no matter how pervasive), and where power and pride are brought low by the hidden recesses of our humanity.]]> 176 Martin Amis 0375701141 Cameron 4
I’ll just give you the first paragraph:

"I am a police. That may sound like an unusual statement or an unusual construction. But it's a parlance we have. Among ourselves, we would never say I am a policeman or I am a policewoman or I am a police officer. We would just say I am a police. I am a police. I am a police and my name is Detective Mike Hoolihan. And I am a woman, also."
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author: Martin Amis
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.28
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/26
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: postmodern-literature, noir, fiction
review:
| |

I’ll just give you the first paragraph:

"I am a police. That may sound like an unusual statement or an unusual construction. But it's a parlance we have. Among ourselves, we would never say I am a policeman or I am a policewoman or I am a police officer. We would just say I am a police. I am a police. I am a police and my name is Detective Mike Hoolihan. And I am a woman, also."
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]]> The Zone of Interest 20447658 Once upon a time there was a king, and the king commissioned his favorite wizard to create a magic mirror. This mirror didn’t show you your reflection. It showed you your soul—it showed you who you really were.

The wizard couldn’t look at it without turning away. The king couldn’t look at it. The courtiers couldn’t look at it. A chestful of treasure was offered to anyone who could look at it for sixty seconds without turning away. And no one could.

The Zone of Interest is a love story with a violently unromantic setting. Can love survive the mirror? Can we even meet each other’s eye, after we have seen who we really are?

Powered by both wit and compassion, and in characteristically vivid prose, Martin Amis’s unforgettable new novel excavates the depths and contradictions of the human soul.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 306 Martin Amis 0385353499 Cameron 4
The title refers to the 40 kilometer area immediately surrounding the Auschwitz concentration camp; the plot concerns a Nazi officer named Angelus Thomsen who becomes infatuated with the wife of the camp commandant. The book is by turns grim, disturbing and darkly comic.
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author: Martin Amis
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2019/05/30
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction, holocaust, historical-fiction
review:
| |

The title refers to the 40 kilometer area immediately surrounding the Auschwitz concentration camp; the plot concerns a Nazi officer named Angelus Thomsen who becomes infatuated with the wife of the camp commandant. The book is by turns grim, disturbing and darkly comic.
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]]> <![CDATA[Runaway Horses (The Sea of Fertility, #2)]]> 781506 Librarian note: An alternative cover for this ISBN can be found here.

Yukio Mishima’s Runaway Horses is the second novel in his masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility . Again we encounter Shigekuni Honda, who narrates this epic tale of what he believes are the successive reincarnations of his childhood friend Kiyoaki Matsugae.

In 1932, Shigeuki Honda has become a judge in Osaka. Convinced that a young rightist revolutionary, Isao, is the reincarnation of his friend Kiyoaki , Honda commits himself to saving the youth from an untimely death. Isao, driven to patriotic fanaticism by a father who instilled in him the ethos of the ancient samurai, organizes a violent plot against the new industrialists who he believes are usurping the Emperor’s rightful power and threatening the very integrity of the nation. Runaway Horses is the chronicle of a conspiracy � a novel about the roots and nature of Japanese fanaticism in the years that led to war.]]> 421 Yukio Mishima 0679722408 Cameron 4 fiction, japanese-lit
Spring Snow, the first book in the Sea of Fertility tetralogy was an absolute gem of a novel. Runaway Horses, for me, was...okay. There are two more books in the series, and although I plan on reading them, my expectations are not so high.

The story of this novel concerns a young man named Isao who is coming of age in Japan in the early 30's during the time of the Great Depression. Rice is being imported, corporate fatcats are making the big bucks, and farmers and factory workers are screwed.

Shit's bad.

Isao, a kendo prodigy, has been radicalized by a novella called The League of the Divine Wind, which has instilled in him an overwhelming desire to die a hero, i.e.: instigate an insurrection, kill the capitalists profiting from Japan's poverty, and then commit seppuku (ritual suicide).

Most Western readers (myself included) will have trouble getting into Isao's head and understanding the sense of loyalty, honor, and--shall I say---manliness associated with committing seppuku. It just doesn't compute, which is the main reason why I struggled with Isao's logic (or lack thereof).

As frustrating as Isao is as a character, at least his political extremism is interesting in a foreboding, menacing way. Far more annoying is the character Honda, who in Spring Snow was the logical and pragmatic foil to his romantic friend Kiyoaki, but in this book he has his own superstitious foibles which I can't get into without ruining the ending to Spring Snow; and unlike some other literary "series" (John Updike's Rabbit novels, for example), this book (and I suspect the books that follow) don't make much sense without reading the previous installments.

I will say this though: this book, like George Eliot's Middlemarch, is a slow burn; there are parts in the final third of the book that had me gripped. And some incredible and beautiful language is sprinkled throughout the novel as a whole. I give it 3.5 stars.
___________________________________
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author: Yukio Mishima
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1969
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/20
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction, japanese-lit
review:
| |

Spring Snow, the first book in the Sea of Fertility tetralogy was an absolute gem of a novel. Runaway Horses, for me, was...okay. There are two more books in the series, and although I plan on reading them, my expectations are not so high.

The story of this novel concerns a young man named Isao who is coming of age in Japan in the early 30's during the time of the Great Depression. Rice is being imported, corporate fatcats are making the big bucks, and farmers and factory workers are screwed.

Shit's bad.

Isao, a kendo prodigy, has been radicalized by a novella called The League of the Divine Wind, which has instilled in him an overwhelming desire to die a hero, i.e.: instigate an insurrection, kill the capitalists profiting from Japan's poverty, and then commit seppuku (ritual suicide).

Most Western readers (myself included) will have trouble getting into Isao's head and understanding the sense of loyalty, honor, and--shall I say---manliness associated with committing seppuku. It just doesn't compute, which is the main reason why I struggled with Isao's logic (or lack thereof).

As frustrating as Isao is as a character, at least his political extremism is interesting in a foreboding, menacing way. Far more annoying is the character Honda, who in Spring Snow was the logical and pragmatic foil to his romantic friend Kiyoaki, but in this book he has his own superstitious foibles which I can't get into without ruining the ending to Spring Snow; and unlike some other literary "series" (John Updike's Rabbit novels, for example), this book (and I suspect the books that follow) don't make much sense without reading the previous installments.

I will say this though: this book, like George Eliot's Middlemarch, is a slow burn; there are parts in the final third of the book that had me gripped. And some incredible and beautiful language is sprinkled throughout the novel as a whole. I give it 3.5 stars.
___________________________________
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]]> Native Speaker 298664 In Native Speaker, author Chang-rae Lee introduces readers to Henry Park. Park has spent his entire life trying to become a true American—a native speaker. But even as the essence of his adopted country continues to elude him, his Korean heritage seems to drift further and further away.

Park's harsh Korean upbringing has taught him to hide his emotions, to remember everything he learns, and most of all to feel an overwhelming sense of alienation. In other words, it has shaped him as a natural spy.

But the very attributes that help him to excel in his profession put a strain on his marriage to his American wife and stand in the way of his coming to terms with his young son's death. When he is assigned to spy on a rising Korean-American politician, his very identity is tested, and he must figure out who he is amid not only the conflicts within himself but also within the ethnic and political tensions of the New York City streets.

Native Speakeris a story of cultural alienation. It is about fathers and sons, about the desire to connect with the world rather than stand apart from it, about loyalty and betrayal, about the alien in all of us and who we finally are.
]]> 349 Chang-rae Lee 1573225312 Cameron 3 fiction
Native Speaker is a lot of things: a spy thriller, a portrayal of the immigrant experience, a marriage drama, and a personal tragedy tale. If you're wondering whether all those elements merge and crackle into a fusion bomb of excitement and awe...they, disappointingly, do not.

Not that this is a bad book per se. In fact, it's an extroardinarly ambitious first novel by Chang-rae Lee, which was published when he was only 29. The prose is mostly excellent, and I devoured the first fifty or so pages in a single sitting.

In a nutshell, Henry Park, the novel's first-generation Korean-American protagonist, is left with nothing but a note after his wife leaves him. In meandering patches, we catch glimpses of his rough upbringing in a traditional household, his ingratiation into the political campaign of an upstart Korean politician named John Kwang, his foray into the world of industrial spywork, the tragic fate of his child, his....yeah...there's a lot going on; and the lens through which the reader watches the story unfold is shaky and unfocused.

The plot suffers as a result, and although my copy of the book is only roughly 350 pages, it took me nearly three months to get around to finishing it. (To put that in perspective, I typically read about fifty books a year [a book a week]).

Yet as I finished the last page, I got chills thinking about how powerful this book could've been: Henry Park, torn between two worlds, forever feeling himself to be an outcast, is pressured to betray a rising politician who stands for everything he should be aligned with, yet his numbness to his Korean heritage and his somnabulant devotion to a country that seems to view him as an outcast bends him into a shape unrecognizable to everyone, including—it seems—himself.

If only the journey was as satisfying as the destination.
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 3.74 1995 Native Speaker
author: Chang-rae Lee
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/17
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction
review:
| |

Native Speaker is a lot of things: a spy thriller, a portrayal of the immigrant experience, a marriage drama, and a personal tragedy tale. If you're wondering whether all those elements merge and crackle into a fusion bomb of excitement and awe...they, disappointingly, do not.

Not that this is a bad book per se. In fact, it's an extroardinarly ambitious first novel by Chang-rae Lee, which was published when he was only 29. The prose is mostly excellent, and I devoured the first fifty or so pages in a single sitting.

In a nutshell, Henry Park, the novel's first-generation Korean-American protagonist, is left with nothing but a note after his wife leaves him. In meandering patches, we catch glimpses of his rough upbringing in a traditional household, his ingratiation into the political campaign of an upstart Korean politician named John Kwang, his foray into the world of industrial spywork, the tragic fate of his child, his....yeah...there's a lot going on; and the lens through which the reader watches the story unfold is shaky and unfocused.

The plot suffers as a result, and although my copy of the book is only roughly 350 pages, it took me nearly three months to get around to finishing it. (To put that in perspective, I typically read about fifty books a year [a book a week]).

Yet as I finished the last page, I got chills thinking about how powerful this book could've been: Henry Park, torn between two worlds, forever feeling himself to be an outcast, is pressured to betray a rising politician who stands for everything he should be aligned with, yet his numbness to his Korean heritage and his somnabulant devotion to a country that seems to view him as an outcast bends him into a shape unrecognizable to everyone, including—it seems—himself.

If only the journey was as satisfying as the destination.
___________________________________
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]]> Jonathan Livingston Seagull 71728
Jonathan Livingston Seagull is no ordinary bird. He believes it is every gull's right to fly, to reach the ultimate freedom of challenge and discovery, finding his greatest reward in teaching younger gulls the joy of flight and the power of dreams. The special 20th anniversary release of this spiritual classic!]]> 112 Richard Bach 0743278909 Cameron 1 fiction, young-adult
Utterly baffling to me why this book sold so many copies. I mean it was shockingly bad. This tiny book (under 10,000 words) has sold a million+ copies and I wonder what percentage of those readers were left scratching their heads at how such an unprofound and nonsensical story could have been published in the first place.
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 3.87 1970 Jonathan Livingston Seagull
author: Richard Bach
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1970
rating: 1
read at: 2023/07/02
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction, young-adult
review:
| |

Utterly baffling to me why this book sold so many copies. I mean it was shockingly bad. This tiny book (under 10,000 words) has sold a million+ copies and I wonder what percentage of those readers were left scratching their heads at how such an unprofound and nonsensical story could have been published in the first place.
___________________________________
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]]> At Dusk 40545368 In the evening of his life, a wealthy man begins to wonder if he might have missed the point.

Park Minwoo is, by every measure, a success story. Born into poverty in a miserable neighbourhood of Seoul, he has ridden the wave of development in a rapidly modernising society. Now the director of a large architectural firm, his hard work and ambition have brought him triumph and satisfaction. But when his company is investigated for corruption, he’s forced to reconsider his role in the transformation of his country.

At the same time, he receives an unexpected message from an old friend, Cha Soona, a woman that he had once loved, and then betrayed. As memories return unbidden, Minwoo recalls a world he thought had been left behind � a world he now understands that he has helped to destroy.

In At Dusk, one of Korea's most renowned and respected authors continues his gentle yet urgent project of evaluating Korea’s past, and examining the things, and the people, that have been given up in a never-ending quest to move forward.]]> 192 Hwang Sok-yong 1911617230 Cameron 2 fiction, korean-lit
At Dusk by Hwang Sok-Yong was…ok. It’s a slim novel (under 200 pages) but it probably should have been longer—not because I wanted the boredom to last but because the characters were so underdeveloped there needed be something extra to make me feel anything about them. It’s not worth rehashing the vague plot: just read the book description on ŷ.
Rating: 2/5 stars.
___________________________________
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author: Hwang Sok-yong
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2023/07/01
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction, korean-lit
review:
| |

At Dusk by Hwang Sok-Yong was…ok. It’s a slim novel (under 200 pages) but it probably should have been longer—not because I wanted the boredom to last but because the characters were so underdeveloped there needed be something extra to make me feel anything about them. It’s not worth rehashing the vague plot: just read the book description on ŷ.
Rating: 2/5 stars.
___________________________________
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]]> Mortality 18487100 113 Christopher Hitchens Cameron 5 autobiography, nonfiction
From the book jacket: “Throughout the course of his ordeal battling esophageal cancer, Hitchens adamantly and bravely refused the solace of religion, preferring to confront death with both eyes open. In this riveting account of his affliction, Hitchens poignantly describes the torments of illness, discusses its taboos, and explores how disease transforms experience and changes our relationship to the world around us.�

I've had some serious health struggles over the past month. I was already a Hitchens fan, but as my weight plummeted my awareness of the human condition began to gnaw at my mind (which made this an easy purchase for me). Even as he lay dying, Hitchen’s razor-sharp wit and erudition stamped its indelible footprint onto the pages of this indelible (albeit unfinished) work of nonfiction. Incredible read.
___________________________________
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author: Christopher Hitchens
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/13
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: autobiography, nonfiction
review:
| |

From the book jacket: “Throughout the course of his ordeal battling esophageal cancer, Hitchens adamantly and bravely refused the solace of religion, preferring to confront death with both eyes open. In this riveting account of his affliction, Hitchens poignantly describes the torments of illness, discusses its taboos, and explores how disease transforms experience and changes our relationship to the world around us.�

I've had some serious health struggles over the past month. I was already a Hitchens fan, but as my weight plummeted my awareness of the human condition began to gnaw at my mind (which made this an easy purchase for me). Even as he lay dying, Hitchen’s razor-sharp wit and erudition stamped its indelible footprint onto the pages of this indelible (albeit unfinished) work of nonfiction. Incredible read.
___________________________________
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]]> Greek Lessons 61686012 “Now and then, language would thrust its way into her sleep like a skewer through meat, startling her awake several times a night.�

In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight.

Soon the two discover a deeper pain binds them together. For her, in the space of just a few months, she has lost both her mother and the custody battle for her nine-year-old son. For him, it’s the pain of growing up between Korea and Germany, being torn between two cultures and languages, and the fear of losing his independence.

Greek Lessons tells the story of two ordinary people brought together at a moment of private anguish—the fading light of a man losing his vision meeting the silence of a woman who has lost her language. Yet these are the very things that draw them to each other. Slowly the two discover a profound sense of unity—their voices intersecting with startling beauty, as they move from darkness to light, from silence to breath and expression.

Greek Lessons is the story of the unlikely bond between this pair and a tender love letter to human intimacy and connection—a novel to awaken the senses, one that vividly conjures the essence of what it means to be alive.]]> 192 Han Kang 0593595270 Cameron 2 fiction, korean-lit
From the book jacket: “In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight.�

This seemed like the perfect recipe for a doomed romance story but I found myself falling asleep through this mercifully short read. I suspect the prose is far more beautiful in the the original Korean but in English it just didn’t work for me. This is the third Han Kang book I’ve read so far and possibly my least favorite of the three. If you’re going to read one of her books, start with The Vegetarian.
___________________________________
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author: Han Kang
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2023/07/17
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction, korean-lit
review:
| |

From the book jacket: “In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight.�

This seemed like the perfect recipe for a doomed romance story but I found myself falling asleep through this mercifully short read. I suspect the prose is far more beautiful in the the original Korean but in English it just didn’t work for me. This is the third Han Kang book I’ve read so far and possibly my least favorite of the three. If you’re going to read one of her books, start with The Vegetarian.
___________________________________
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]]> Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 46041199 A fierce international bestseller that launched Korea’s new feminist movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman’s psychic deterioration in the face of rigid misogyny.

Truly, flawlessly, completely, she became that person.

In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul lives Kim Jiyoung. A thirtysomething-year-old “millennial everywoman,� she has recently left her white-collar desk job—in order to care for her newborn daughter full-time—as so many Korean women are expected to do. But she quickly begins to exhibit strange symptoms that alarm her husband, parents, and in-laws: Jiyoung impersonates the voices of other women—alive and even dead, both known and unknown to her. As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, her discomfited husband sends her to a male psychiatrist.

In a chilling, eerily truncated third-person voice, Jiyoung’s entire life is recounted to the psychiatrist—a narrative infused with disparate elements of frustration, perseverance, and submission. Born in 1982 and given the most common name for Korean baby girls, Jiyoung quickly becomes the unfavored sister to her princeling little brother. Always, her behavior is policed by the male figures around her—from the elementary school teachers who enforce strict uniforms for girls, to the coworkers who install a hidden camera in the women’s restroom and post their photos online. In her father’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s fault that men harass her late at night; in her husband’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s duty to forsake her career to take care of him and their child—to put them first.

Jiyoung’s painfully common life is juxtaposed against a backdrop of an advancing Korea, as it abandons “family planning� birth control policies and passes new legislation against gender discrimination. But can her doctor flawlessly, completely cure her, or even discover what truly ails her?

Rendered in minimalist yet lacerating prose, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 sits at the center of our global #MeToo movement and announces the arrival of writer of international significance]]> 163 Cho Nam-Joo 1631496700 Cameron 3 fiction, korean-lit
This short novel opens with the eponymous Kim Jiyoung, a thirty-something-year-old woman with a young daughter, who starts behaving very strangely one day—seeming to be possessed by a variety of women from her life. Her husband, alarmed by her deranged episodes grows concerned and contacts a psychiatrist. The rest of the novel is a spare, minimalist recounting of Jiyoung’s life story.

The novel starts off strong, with notes of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. The rest of the novel is, quite frankly, a victim narrative, wherein Jiyoung suffers relentless and systemic misogyny from her school days until adulthood, with actual statistics peppered throughout the text. (For example South Korea’s ranking on the glass ceiling index).

Beyond that first chapter, we never once return to Jiyoung’s strange behavior—the most interesting thing about the plot in my opinion. Instead we are treated to what I acknowledge is minimalist, lacerating prose with a harrowing plot that could make a misandrist out of anyone—but what we’re left with is a #MeToo style manifesto in the form of fiction, which makes an otherwise poignant novel feel annoyingly contrived.
___________________________________
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author: Cho Nam-Joo
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/06
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction, korean-lit
review:
| |

This short novel opens with the eponymous Kim Jiyoung, a thirty-something-year-old woman with a young daughter, who starts behaving very strangely one day—seeming to be possessed by a variety of women from her life. Her husband, alarmed by her deranged episodes grows concerned and contacts a psychiatrist. The rest of the novel is a spare, minimalist recounting of Jiyoung’s life story.

The novel starts off strong, with notes of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. The rest of the novel is, quite frankly, a victim narrative, wherein Jiyoung suffers relentless and systemic misogyny from her school days until adulthood, with actual statistics peppered throughout the text. (For example South Korea’s ranking on the glass ceiling index).

Beyond that first chapter, we never once return to Jiyoung’s strange behavior—the most interesting thing about the plot in my opinion. Instead we are treated to what I acknowledge is minimalist, lacerating prose with a harrowing plot that could make a misandrist out of anyone—but what we’re left with is a #MeToo style manifesto in the form of fiction, which makes an otherwise poignant novel feel annoyingly contrived.
___________________________________
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]]> frank: sonnets 56943651 A resplendent life in sonnets from the author of Four-Legged Girl, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

“The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do / without,� Diane Seuss writes in this brilliant, candid work, her most personal collection to date. These poems tell the story of a life at risk of spilling over the edge of the page, from Seuss’s working-class childhood in rural Michigan to the dangerous allures of New York City and back again. With sheer virtuosity, Seuss moves nimbly across thought and time, poetry and punk, AIDS and addiction, Christ and motherhood, showing us what we can do, what we can do without, and what we offer to one another when we have nothing left to spare. Like a series of cels on a filmstrip, frank: sonnets captures the magnitude of a life lived honestly, a restless search for some kind of “beauty or relief.� Seuss is at the height of her powers, devastatingly astute, austere, and—in a word—frank.]]> 131 Diane Seuss 1644451417 Cameron 5
The sonnets filling her excellent Pulitzer Prize-winning collection are not the Shakespearean kind. (There's no iambic pentameter or rhyme.) But man are they good: I haven’t burned through a book of poems so quickly since reading Bukowski’s The Pleasures of the Damned (which I relished). What a read.
___________________________________
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author: Diane Seuss
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2023/08/15
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves:
review:
| |

The sonnets filling her excellent Pulitzer Prize-winning collection are not the Shakespearean kind. (There's no iambic pentameter or rhyme.) But man are they good: I haven’t burned through a book of poems so quickly since reading Bukowski’s The Pleasures of the Damned (which I relished). What a read.
___________________________________
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]]> <![CDATA[The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories]]> 56587384 The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories captures a hundred years of vivid story-telling.

Here are peddlers and donkeys travelling across moonlit fields; artists drinking and debating in the tea-houses of Seoul; soldiers fighting for survival; exiles from the war who can never go home again; and lonely men and women searching for connection in the dizzying modern city. The collection features stories by some of Korea's greatest writers, including Hwang Sun-wŏn, Pak Wansŏ, O Chŏnghŭi and Cho Chŏngnae, as well as many brilliant contemporary voices, such as P'yŏn Hyeyŏng, Han Yujoo and Kim Aeran. Curated by Bruce Fulton, and introduced by Kwon Youngmin, this is a volume that will surprise, unsettle and delight.]]> 512 Bruce Fulton 0241448484 Cameron 2
I have to admit I was a little disappointed. This collection features 25 stories from some of Korea’s most renowned authors—including Yi Munyol and Kyung-sook Shin—which spans a century’s worth of publications. The works were carefully curated from thousands of potential stories and the resulting collection paints an exquisite portrait of South Korea from the beginning of Japanese colonization through the Korean War to the new millennium…and I found it extremely boring. There were perhaps three out of twenty five titles that I enjoyed (“The Old Hatter� by Yi Munyol; “Seoul: Winter 1964� by Kim Sungok; and “House on the Prairie� by Kyung-sook Shin). My quest for fantastic Korean literature continues.

Rating: 2.5/5 Stars
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 3.79 2023 The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories
author: Bruce Fulton
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2023/09/01
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction, korean-lit, short-stories
review:
| |

I have to admit I was a little disappointed. This collection features 25 stories from some of Korea’s most renowned authors—including Yi Munyol and Kyung-sook Shin—which spans a century’s worth of publications. The works were carefully curated from thousands of potential stories and the resulting collection paints an exquisite portrait of South Korea from the beginning of Japanese colonization through the Korean War to the new millennium…and I found it extremely boring. There were perhaps three out of twenty five titles that I enjoyed (“The Old Hatter� by Yi Munyol; “Seoul: Winter 1964� by Kim Sungok; and “House on the Prairie� by Kyung-sook Shin). My quest for fantastic Korean literature continues.

Rating: 2.5/5 Stars
___________________________________
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]]> <![CDATA[The Temple of Dawn: The Sea of Fertility, 3 (Vintage International)]]> 19222845 The Temple of Dawn is the third novel in his masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility. Here, Shigekuni Honda continues his pursuit of the successive reincarnations of Kiyoaki Matsugae, his childhood friend.

Travelling in Thailand in the early 1940s, Shigekuni Honda, now a brilliant lawyer, is granted an audience with a young Thai princess—an encounter that radically alters the course of his life. In spite of all reason, he is convinced she is the reincarnated spirit of his friend Kiyoaki. As Honda goes to great lengths to discover for certain if his theory is correct, The Temple of Dawn becomes the story of one man’s obsessive pursuit of a beautiful woman and his equally passionate search for enlightenment.


From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 338 Yukio Mishima 0307834328 Cameron 4 fiction, japanese-lit
The Temple of Dawn is the third book in The Sea of Fertility tetrology by Yukio Mishima. Honda, who was a periphery character in Spring Snow and a secondary character in Runaway Horses, finally takes center stage in book three, where he is now a successful middle-aged attorney settling a corporate dispute in Siam (now Thailand). The first half of the book is part travelogue/part rumination on the theory of reincarnation—and to be honest it was basically white noise to me. The second half, however, is essentially Mishima writing in Philip Roth mode, as Honda obsesses over the body of a 19-year-old Thai princess and does everything in his power to see her naked—and it’s far more weird and interesting.
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 4.07 1970 The Temple of Dawn: The Sea of Fertility, 3 (Vintage International)
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1970
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/09
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction, japanese-lit
review:
| |

The Temple of Dawn is the third book in The Sea of Fertility tetrology by Yukio Mishima. Honda, who was a periphery character in Spring Snow and a secondary character in Runaway Horses, finally takes center stage in book three, where he is now a successful middle-aged attorney settling a corporate dispute in Siam (now Thailand). The first half of the book is part travelogue/part rumination on the theory of reincarnation—and to be honest it was basically white noise to me. The second half, however, is essentially Mishima writing in Philip Roth mode, as Honda obsesses over the body of a 19-year-old Thai princess and does everything in his power to see her naked—and it’s far more weird and interesting.
___________________________________
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]]> Leaves of Grass 27494 624 Walt Whitman Cameron 5 poetry
What can I say about the book that hasn’t already been repeated ad nauseam for the past 100+ years? It’s a masterwork of humanism, an epic cry of solidarity for one’s fellow man. I read somewhere that Whitman has been called the father of free-verse poetry, and he very well may be. I love it.
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 4.12 1855 Leaves of Grass
author: Walt Whitman
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1855
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/11
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: poetry
review:
| |

What can I say about the book that hasn’t already been repeated ad nauseam for the past 100+ years? It’s a masterwork of humanism, an epic cry of solidarity for one’s fellow man. I read somewhere that Whitman has been called the father of free-verse poetry, and he very well may be. I love it.
___________________________________
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]]> <![CDATA[The Decay of the Angel: The Sea of Fertility, 4 (Vintage International)]]> 19041448 The Decay of the Angel is the final novel in his masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility. It is the last installment of Shigekuni Honda’s pursuit of the successive reincarnations of his childhood friend Kiyoaki Matsugae.

It is the late 1960s and Honda, now an aged and wealthy man, once more encounters a person he believes to be a reincarnation of his friend, Kiyoaki � this time restored to life as a teenage orphan, Tōru. Adopting the boy as his heir, Honda quickly finds that Tōru is a force to be reckoned with. The final novel of this celebrated tetralogy weaves together the dominant themes of the previous three novels in the series: the decay of Japan’s courtly tradition; the essence and value of Buddhist philosophy and aesthetics; and, underlying all, Mishima’s apocalyptic vision of the modern era.


From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 258 Yukio Mishima 0307834336 Cameron 4 fiction, japanese-lit
This novel, book 4 of The Sea of Fertility Tetralogy was completed the day before Mishima’s shocking suicide by seppuku after a failed coup. (His Wikipedia page makes for excellent reading.)

As for The Decay of the Angel…it was perhaps the weakest of the four books in the series. The story concerns Honda—who is now a wealthy old man—and the teenage boy Tōru, whom Honda is convinced is yet another reincarnation of his childhood friend. Honda, rich but childless, adopts Tōru and watches over him, waiting to see if he dies at the age of 20 like the other youths in the previous books.

I found The Sea of Tetralogy to be, for the most part, absolutely masterful. But none of the sequels match the power of the first book, Spring Snow.
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 4.28 1970 The Decay of the Angel: The Sea of Fertility, 4 (Vintage International)
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1970
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/15
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction, japanese-lit
review:
| |

This novel, book 4 of The Sea of Fertility Tetralogy was completed the day before Mishima’s shocking suicide by seppuku after a failed coup. (His Wikipedia page makes for excellent reading.)

As for The Decay of the Angel…it was perhaps the weakest of the four books in the series. The story concerns Honda—who is now a wealthy old man—and the teenage boy Tōru, whom Honda is convinced is yet another reincarnation of his childhood friend. Honda, rich but childless, adopts Tōru and watches over him, waiting to see if he dies at the age of 20 like the other youths in the previous books.

I found The Sea of Tetralogy to be, for the most part, absolutely masterful. But none of the sequels match the power of the first book, Spring Snow.
___________________________________
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]]> <![CDATA[The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome]]> 225947
Susan Wise Bauer provides both sweeping scope and vivid attention to the individual lives that give flesh to abstract assertions about human history.

Dozens of maps provide a clear geography of great events, while timelines give the reader an ongoing sense of the passage of years and cultural interconnection. This narrative history employs the methods of “history from beneath”—literature, epic traditions, private letters and accounts—to connect kings and leaders with the lives of those they ruled. The result is an engrossing tapestry of human behavior from which we may draw conclusions about the direction of world events and the causes behind them.]]> 896 Susan Wise Bauer 039305974X Cameron 2
I’ve had this book on my TBR list for a couple of years. I decided to use my final Audible credit to purchase the audiobook before canceling my subscription and…I kinda regret the purchase.

The audiobook is read by the usually-excellent John Lee, who has narrated several of the books in my library. But this book, as chock-full as it is with military history, was so boring I fell asleep at least a dozen times while listening. And—here’s the kicker—Susan Wise Bauer uses biblical scripture as source text for what I assumed to be an actual history book. No self-respecting historian would dare speak about biblical events as facts without stating some obvious caveats. And, as it turns out, Bauer isn’t really a bonafide historian—her degrees are in literature.
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 4.11 2007 The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome
author: Susan Wise Bauer
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2007
rating: 2
read at: 2023/09/28
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: history, nonfiction, world-history
review:
| |

I’ve had this book on my TBR list for a couple of years. I decided to use my final Audible credit to purchase the audiobook before canceling my subscription and…I kinda regret the purchase.

The audiobook is read by the usually-excellent John Lee, who has narrated several of the books in my library. But this book, as chock-full as it is with military history, was so boring I fell asleep at least a dozen times while listening. And—here’s the kicker—Susan Wise Bauer uses biblical scripture as source text for what I assumed to be an actual history book. No self-respecting historian would dare speak about biblical events as facts without stating some obvious caveats. And, as it turns out, Bauer isn’t really a bonafide historian—her degrees are in literature.
___________________________________
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]]> Family Values 11030292 66 Wendy Cope 0571274218 Cameron 3 poetry
I read Wendy Cope’s charming poetry collection Family Values in about 45 minutes. Not because I was rushing through it. It was just good.

Many of the commissioned poems near the end of the book didn’t do much for me though. In fact, most of the book is what’s considered “light verse.� But several of the poems at the start were indelible. There’s a stanza—the first of the poem “Differences of Opinion”—that goes like this:

He tells her that the earth is flat�
He knows the facts, and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.
But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.
The planet goes on being round.
___________________________________
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author: Wendy Cope
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/29
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: poetry
review:
| |

I read Wendy Cope’s charming poetry collection Family Values in about 45 minutes. Not because I was rushing through it. It was just good.

Many of the commissioned poems near the end of the book didn’t do much for me though. In fact, most of the book is what’s considered “light verse.� But several of the poems at the start were indelible. There’s a stanza—the first of the poem “Differences of Opinion”—that goes like this:

He tells her that the earth is flat�
He knows the facts, and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.
But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.
The planet goes on being round.
___________________________________
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]]> Four-Legged Girl: Poems 27812032 "Diane Seuss writes with the intensity of a soothsayer." —Laura KasischkeFor, having imagined your body one way I found it to be another way, it was yielding, but only as the Destroying Angel mushroom yields, its softness allied with its poison, and your legs were not petals or tendrils as I'd believed, but brazen, the deviant tentacles beneath the underskirt of a secret queen —from "Oh four-legged girl, it's either you or the ossuary"In Diane Seuss's Four-Legged Girl, her audacious, hothouse language swerves into pain and rapture, as she recounts a life lived at the edges of containment. Ghostly, sexy, and plaintive, these poems skip to the tune of a jump rope, fill a wishing well with desire and other trinkets, and they remember past lush lives in New York City, in rural Michigan, and in love. In the final poem, she sings of the four-legged girl, the body made strange to itself and to others. This collection establishes Seuss's poetic voice, as rich and emotional as any in contemporary poetry.]]> 88 Diane Seuss 1555979114 Cameron 5
Diane Seuss’s poetry collection Four-legged Girl showcases her signature blend of high- and low-culture verse about family, addiction issues, and beauty in the mundane. Really just one of my favorite poets working today.
___________________________________
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]]> 4.16 2015 Four-Legged Girl: Poems
author: Diane Seuss
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves:
review:
| |

Diane Seuss’s poetry collection Four-legged Girl showcases her signature blend of high- and low-culture verse about family, addiction issues, and beauty in the mundane. Really just one of my favorite poets working today.
___________________________________
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]]> Flowers for Algernon 18373 Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.

Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence � a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?]]> 311 Daniel Keyes 015603008X Cameron 5 fiction, sci-fi
It’s been some time since I read any sci-fi, but I lucked out when I bought a paperback copy of Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes for about 5 bucks at a used bookstore a few weeks back. I’ve had the book on my radar since I was 18 but it look another 17 years before I finally got around to reading it.

What surprised me about the book was not the plot—basically the entirety of the story is given away in the description on the back of the book—but how emotionally charged the it is despite the reader basically knowing everything that’s going to happen from the first page.

In a nutshell, the book is about a mentally challenged man named Charlie who is selected for an intelligence-boosting experiment that has already been proven successful on the titular mouse, Algernon. The novel, which is written in the first person, starts off riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes. As the story progresses, so does the language of the book, until Charlie is the smartest man in the world. Then one day, Algernon’s mental capacity crumples and fades until he dies. And now Charlie is facing down the same fate. That’s it—I’ve spoiled nothing that the book’s dust jacket doesn’t already spoil for you. And yet I found myself moved by the last page. Truly a sci-fi gem.
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 4.19 1966 Flowers for Algernon
author: Daniel Keyes
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1966
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: fiction, sci-fi
review:
| |

It’s been some time since I read any sci-fi, but I lucked out when I bought a paperback copy of Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes for about 5 bucks at a used bookstore a few weeks back. I’ve had the book on my radar since I was 18 but it look another 17 years before I finally got around to reading it.

What surprised me about the book was not the plot—basically the entirety of the story is given away in the description on the back of the book—but how emotionally charged the it is despite the reader basically knowing everything that’s going to happen from the first page.

In a nutshell, the book is about a mentally challenged man named Charlie who is selected for an intelligence-boosting experiment that has already been proven successful on the titular mouse, Algernon. The novel, which is written in the first person, starts off riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes. As the story progresses, so does the language of the book, until Charlie is the smartest man in the world. Then one day, Algernon’s mental capacity crumples and fades until he dies. And now Charlie is facing down the same fate. That’s it—I’ve spoiled nothing that the book’s dust jacket doesn’t already spoil for you. And yet I found myself moved by the last page. Truly a sci-fi gem.
___________________________________
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]]> The Hatred of Poetry 28682747 98 Ben Lerner 0374712336 Cameron 2 essays, literary-criticism
Lerner is best known as the author of the novels The Topeka School and Leaving the Atocha Station, but he is a talented poet as well. The thing is…he’s also very…academic. He writes with great erudition about the disdain and/or dismissal of poetry in a historic context—to a fault. My favorite part was about (arguably) the worst poet of all time—William McGonagall—who wrote shit like this:

"Beautiful railway bridge of the silv'ry Tay
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last sabbath day of 1879
Which will be remember'd for a very long time."

However, by the end of the book, Lerner was jumping between topics and his original thesis was all but forgotten. I mostly enjoyed the book but I can only recommend it to a fan of both poetry and Ben Lerner, which is a rare Pokemon indeed.
___________________________________
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]]> 3.70 2016 The Hatred of Poetry
author: Ben Lerner
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: essays, literary-criticism
review:
| |

Lerner is best known as the author of the novels The Topeka School and Leaving the Atocha Station, but he is a talented poet as well. The thing is…he’s also very…academic. He writes with great erudition about the disdain and/or dismissal of poetry in a historic context—to a fault. My favorite part was about (arguably) the worst poet of all time—William McGonagall—who wrote shit like this:

"Beautiful railway bridge of the silv'ry Tay
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last sabbath day of 1879
Which will be remember'd for a very long time."

However, by the end of the book, Lerner was jumping between topics and his original thesis was all but forgotten. I mostly enjoyed the book but I can only recommend it to a fan of both poetry and Ben Lerner, which is a rare Pokemon indeed.
___________________________________
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]]> Invisible Monsters 36236125
Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from being a real woman, who will teach her that reinventing yourself means erasing your past and making up something better, and that salvation hides in the last place you'll ever want to look.

The narrator must exact revenge upon Evie, her best friend and fellow model; kidnap Manus, her two-timing ex-boyfriend; and hit the road with Brandy in search of a brand-new past, present and future.]]> 304 Chuck Palahniuk 0393355950 Cameron 0 to-read 4.02 1999 Invisible Monsters
author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature]]> 5752 The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. He shows how many intellectuals have denied the existence of human nature by embracing three linked dogmas: the Blank Slate (the mind has no innate traits), the Noble Savage (people are born good and corrupted by society), and the Ghost in the Machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology). Each dogma carries a moral burden, so their defenders have engaged in desperate tactics to discredit the scientists who are now challenging them.

Pinker injects calm and rationality into these debates by showing that equality, progress, responsibility, and purpose have nothing to fear from discoveries about a rich human nature. He disarms even the most menacing threats with clear thinking, common sense, and pertinent facts from science and history.

Despite its popularity among intellectuals during much of the twentieth century, he argues, the doctrine of the Blank Slate may have done more harm than good. It denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces hardheaded analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of government, violence, parenting, and the arts.

Pinker shows that an acknowledgement of human nature that is grounded in science and common sense, far from being dangerous, can complement insights about the human condition made by millennia of artists and philosophers. All this is done in the style that earned his previous books many prizes and worldwide acclaim: wit, lucidity, and insight into matters great and small.]]> 560 Steven Pinker 0142003344 Cameron 5
This is the book that convinced me that there's a lot more evidence supporting the "nature" side of the "nature vs nurture" debate that has been going on since humans started thinking seriously about the topic. Steven Pinker writes very clearly and explains concepts that a layman like me can understand. Highly researched and well produced. Excellent book.

___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 4.08 2002 The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
author: Steven Pinker
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at: 2018/04/23
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: cultural-criticism, nonfiction
review:
| |

This is the book that convinced me that there's a lot more evidence supporting the "nature" side of the "nature vs nurture" debate that has been going on since humans started thinking seriously about the topic. Steven Pinker writes very clearly and explains concepts that a layman like me can understand. Highly researched and well produced. Excellent book.

___________________________________
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]]> <![CDATA[Korean Grammar in Use - Beginning]]> 10290055 This is a textbook for foreign language learners who want to study Korean grammar systematically and intensively.

Korean Language Teachers Three Korean language teachers who teach Korean language to foreign students are gathered in the educational field. It is a full-scale grammar book that will lead you to easy and fun learning of complicated and difficult grammar of Korean grammar by covering the grammar in the first and second grade of the textbooks taught at Korean university institutions and institutes.]]> 376 Ahn Jean-myung 8959951986 Cameron 5
Based on personal experience (as well as the opinion of my first Korean language tutor), Korean Grammar in Use is the best all-around grammar book for beginners. It covers everything from days of the week and past-present-future tense to conditions and suppositions and irregular conjugations.

There are 24 Units, organized into helpful categories like "Changes in Parts of Speech" and "Making Requests and Assisting". Each unit consists of sample sentences followed by grammar grids with details on conjugation, including irregular forms. There is also an accompanying "In conversation" section that can be read or listened to with the CD included in the book (or downloaded from the company website).

The only thing a complete beginner will need beside this book to get started is a working knowledge on how to read Korean. There are other books out there that can teach you how to read and write Korean, as well as plenty of free websites and videos on YouTube (which is how I learned how to read Korean), but, aside from that, this is the perfect starter book.
___________________________________
[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 4.46 2010 Korean Grammar in Use - Beginning
author: Ahn Jean-myung
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/15
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: 한글, nonfiction, language-learning-korean
review:
| |

Based on personal experience (as well as the opinion of my first Korean language tutor), Korean Grammar in Use is the best all-around grammar book for beginners. It covers everything from days of the week and past-present-future tense to conditions and suppositions and irregular conjugations.

There are 24 Units, organized into helpful categories like "Changes in Parts of Speech" and "Making Requests and Assisting". Each unit consists of sample sentences followed by grammar grids with details on conjugation, including irregular forms. There is also an accompanying "In conversation" section that can be read or listened to with the CD included in the book (or downloaded from the company website).

The only thing a complete beginner will need beside this book to get started is a working knowledge on how to read Korean. There are other books out there that can teach you how to read and write Korean, as well as plenty of free websites and videos on YouTube (which is how I learned how to read Korean), but, aside from that, this is the perfect starter book.
___________________________________
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]]> Oh, the Places You’ll Go! 191139 For out-starting upstarts of all ages, here is a wonderfully wise and blessedly brief graduation speech from the one and only Dr. Seuss!

In his inimitable, humorous verse and pictures, he addresses the Great Balancing Act (life itself, and the ups and downs it presents) while encouraging us to find the success that lies within us.

"And will you succeed?
Yes! You will indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)"

A modern classic, Oh, the Places You'll Go! was first published one year before Dr. Seuss's death at the age of eighty-seven. In a mere fifty-six pages, Dr, Seuss managed to impart a lifetime of wisdom. It is the perfect send-off for children starting out in the maze of life, be they nursery school grads or newly-minted PhD's. Everyone will find it inspired good fun.

With his unique combination of hilarious stories, zany pictures and riotous rhymes, Dr. Seuss has been delighting young children and helping them learn to read for over fifty years. Creator of the wonderfully anarchic 'Cat in the Hat', and ranked among the world's top children's authors, Dr. Seuss is a global best-seller, with nearly half a billion books sold worldwide.]]> 44 Dr. Seuss 0679805273 Cameron 5 fiction, children-s-book
I received a hardcover of this book when I was perhaps 8 or 9 years old. It was a gift from my aunt, who passed in late 2016. I remember feeling like I was a little too old for Dr. Seuss books, but I read it anyway and was captivated by the illustrations as much as the story itself. Some of his artwork is so fantastical and indelible that I remember the feeling I got from those glossy pages over 25 years ago.

[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]]]> 4.37 1990 Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
author: Dr. Seuss
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at: 1998/01/01
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: fiction, children-s-book
review:
| |

I received a hardcover of this book when I was perhaps 8 or 9 years old. It was a gift from my aunt, who passed in late 2016. I remember feeling like I was a little too old for Dr. Seuss books, but I read it anyway and was captivated by the illustrations as much as the story itself. Some of his artwork is so fantastical and indelible that I remember the feeling I got from those glossy pages over 25 years ago.

[Subscribe to my free newsletter and receive curated links to poems, books, and literary knicknacks, as well as short essays and writing process notes directly into your inbox.]
]]> Human Acts 30091914 A riveting, poetic, and fearless portrait of political unrest and the universal struggle for justice by the acclaimed author of The Vegetarian.

In the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed.

The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho’s best friend, who meets his own fateful end, to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, both suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother, their collective heartbreak and acts of hope tell the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.

An award-winning, controversial bestseller, Human Acts is a timeless, pointillist portrait of a historic event with reverberations still being felt today, by turns tracing the harsh reality of oppression and the resounding, extraordinary poetry of humanity.]]> 218 Han Kang 1101906723 Cameron 3 4.26 2014 Human Acts
author: Han Kang
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, korean-lit
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lost Souls: Stories (Weatherhead Books on Asia)]]> 6584143 These captivating short stories portray three major periods in modern Korean history: the forces of colonial modernity during the late 1930s; the postcolonial struggle to rebuild society after four decades of oppression, emasculation, and cultural exile (1945 to 1950); and the attempt to reconstruct a shattered land and a traumatized nation after the Korean War.

"Lost Souls" echoes the exceptional work of China's Shen Congwen and Japan's Kawabata Yasunari. Modernist narratives set in the metropolises of Tokyo and Pyongyang alternate with starkly realistic portraits of rural life. Surrealist tales suggest the unsettling sensation of colonial domination, while stories of the outcast embody the thrill and terror of independence and survival in a land dominated by tradition and devastated by war.

Written during the chaos of 1945, "Booze" recounts a fight between Koreans for control of a former Japanese-owned distillery. "Toad" relates the suffering created by hundreds of thousands of returning refugees, and stories from the 1950s confront the catastrophes of the Korean War and the problematic desire for autonomy. Visceral and versatile, "Lost Souls" is a classic work on the possibilities of transition that showcases the innovation and craftsmanship of a consummate--and widely celebrated--storyteller.

]]> 360 Hwang Sun-won 0231149689 Cameron 0 to-read 4.00 1956 Lost Souls: Stories (Weatherhead Books on Asia)
author: Hwang Sun-won
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1956
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Gerald's Party 268338 320 Robert Coover 0802135285 Cameron 4 3.56 1986 Gerald's Party
author: Robert Coover
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1986
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/29
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: fiction, postmodern-literature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Death in Midsummer and Other Stories]]> 574927
In the title story, "Death in Midsummer," which is set at a beach resort, a triple tragedy becomes a cloud of doom that requires exorcising. In another, "Patriotism," a young army officer and his wife choose a way of vindicating their belief in ancient values that is as violent as it is traditional; it prefigured his own death by seppuku in November 1970. There is a story in which the sad truth of the relationship between a businessman and his former mistress is revealed through a suggestion of the unknown, and another in which a working-class couple, touching in their simple love for each other, pursue financial security by rather shocking means.

Also included is one of Mishima's "modern Nō plays," remarkable for the impact which its brevity and uncanny intensity achieve. The English versions have been done by four outstanding translators: Donald Keene, Ivan Morris, Geoffrey Sargent, and Edward Seidensticker.

Photograph on back cover by T. Kamiya; cover design by David Ford]]> 192 Yukio Mishima Cameron 4 4.09 1953 Death in Midsummer and Other Stories
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1953
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: fiction, japanese-lit, short-stories
review:

]]> Neonomicon 11036352 176 Alan Moore 1592911307 Cameron 0 to-read 3.44 2011 Neonomicon
author: Alan Moore
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> No Longer Human 194746 No Longer Human, this leading postwar Japanese writer's second novel, tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. In consequence, he feels himself "disqualified from being human" (a literal translation of the Japanese title).

Donald Keene, who translated this and Dazai's first novel, The Setting Sun, has said of the author's work: "His world � suggests Chekhov or possibly postwar France, � but there is a Japanese sensibility in the choice and presentation of the material. A Dazai novel is at once immediately intelligible in Western terms and quite unlike any Western book." His writing is in some ways reminiscent of Rimbaud, while he himself has often been called a forerunner of Yukio Mishima.

Cover painting by Noe Nojechowiz, from the collection of John and Barbara Duncan; design by Gertrude Huston]]> 176 Osamu Dazai Cameron 5 fiction, japanese-lit 3.99 1948 No Longer Human
author: Osamu Dazai
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1948
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/28
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: fiction, japanese-lit
review:

]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Cameron 0 to-read 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Faust 406373 Faust reworks the late medieval myth of a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract with Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seeks to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last forever. But if Faust does bid the moment stay, he falls to Mephistopheles and must serve him after death. In this first part of Goethe’s great work, the embittered thinker and Mephistopheles enter into their agreement, and soon Faust is living a rejuvenated life and winning the love of the beautiful Gretchen. But in this compelling tragedy of arrogance, unfulfilled desire, and self-delusion, Faust heads inexorably toward an infernal destruction.]]> 503 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0385031149 Cameron 5 german-lit, play 3.90 1808 Faust
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1808
rating: 5
read at: 2014/01/01
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves: german-lit, play
review:

]]> On Such a Full Sea 17707526
On Such a Full Sea takes Chang-rae Lee's elegance of prose, his masterly storytelling, and his long-standing interests in identity, culture, work, and love, and lifts them to a new plane. Stepping from the realistic and historical territories of his previous work, Lee brings us into a world created from scratch. Against a vividly imagined future America, Lee tells a stunning, surprising, and riveting story that will change the way readers think about the world they live in.

In a future, long-declining America, society is strictly stratified by class. Long-abandoned urban neighborhoods have been repurposed as highwalled, self-contained labor colonies. And the members of the labor class - descendants of those brought over en masse many years earlier from environmentally ruined provincial China - find purpose and identity in their work to provide pristine produce and fish to the small, elite, satellite charter villages that ring the labor settlement.

In this world lives Fan, a female fish-tank diver, who leaves her home in the B-Mor settlement (once known as Baltimore), when the man she loves mysteriously disappears. Fan's journey to find him takes her out of the safety of B-Mor, through the anarchic Open Counties, where crime is rampant with scant governmental oversight, and to a faraway charter village, in a quest that will soon become legend to those she left behind.]]> 407 Chang-rae Lee 1594486107 Cameron 1 fiction, post-apocalyptic 3.48 2014 On Such a Full Sea
author: Chang-rae Lee
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2014
rating: 1
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: fiction, post-apocalyptic
review:

]]> We Do Not Part 61121126 Han Kang’s most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter of Korean history.

One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama.

A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend's house.

Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades—bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.]]> 256 Han Kang Cameron 0 to-read 4.04 2021 We Do Not Part
author: Han Kang
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sweet Potato: Collected Short Stories]]> 36427173
Translated by Grace Jung and introduced by Youngmin Kwon, Adjunct Professor of Korean Literature at the University of California, Berkley.]]> 288 Kim Dong-in Cameron 4 3.41 2017 Sweet Potato: Collected Short Stories
author: Kim Dong-in
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/27
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: fiction, korean-lit, short-stories
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly]]> 33313 A deluxe, annotated edition of Kitchen Confidential to celebrate the life of Anthony Bourdain, featuring new photo inserts

Over two decades ago, the New Yorker published a now infamous article, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,� by then little-known chef Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain spared no one’s appetite as he revealed what happens behind the kitchen door. The article was a sensation, and the book it spawned, the now iconic Kitchen Confidential, became an even bigger sensation and megabestseller. Frankly confessional, addictively acerbic, and utterly unsparing, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business.

Fans will love to return to this deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade, laying out Bourdain’s more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine. Including a handwritten introduction and annotations done by Bourdain about a decade after the book was originally published, this edition also features previously unpublished photos to accompany the now-classic text.]]> 312 Anthony Bourdain 0060899220 Cameron 5 memoir, nonfiction 4.17 2000 Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
author: Anthony Bourdain
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/19
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves: memoir, nonfiction
review:

]]> Poems, 1962-2012 13538874
Even when collected, Louise Glück’s poetry resists collection. With each successive book her drive to leave behind what came before has grown more fierce, the force of her gaze fixed on what has yet to be imagined. She invented a form to accommodate this need, the book-length sequence of poems, like a landscape seen from above, a novel with lacunae opening onto the unspeakable. The reiterated yet endlessly transfigured elements in this landscape—Persephone, a copper beech, a mother and father and sister, a garden, a husband and son, a horse, a dog, a field on fire, a mountain—persistently emerge and reappear with the dark energy of the inevitable, while at the same time are shot through with the bright aspect of things new-made.
From the outset (�Come here / Come here, little one�), Gluck’s voice has addressed us with deceptive simplicity, the poems in lines so clear we “do not see the intervening fathoms.”�

From within the earth’s
bitter disgrace, coldness and barrenness

my friend the moon rises:
she is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful?

To read these books together is to understand the governing paradox of a life lived in the body and of the work wrested from it, the one fated to die and the other to endure.]]> 656 Louise Glück 0374126089 Cameron 2 poetry 4.47 2012 Poems, 1962-2012
author: Louise Glück
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/02
date added: 2024/09/04
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> The Yage Letters 63885 66 William S. Burroughs 0872860043 Cameron 2 letters, creative-nonfiction 3.71 1963 The Yage Letters
author: William S. Burroughs
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1963
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/16
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves: letters, creative-nonfiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, 1768-1800]]> 34356265 Memoirs, spanning the years 1768 to 1800, Chateaubriand looks back on the already bygone world of his youth. He recounts the history of his aristocratic family and the first rumblings of the French Revolution. He recalls playing games on the beaches of Saint-Malo, wandering in the woods near his father’s castle in Combourg, hunting with King Louis XVI at Versailles, witnessing the first heads carried on pikes through the streets of Paris, meeting with George Washington in Philadelphia, and falling hopelessly in love with a young woman named Charlotte in the small Suffolk town of Bungay. The volume ends with Chateaubriand’s return to France after eight years of exile in England.

In this new edition (the first unabridged translation of any portion of the Memoirs to be published in more than a century), Chateaubriand emerges as a writer of great wit and clarity, a self-deprecating egoist whose meditations on the meaning of history, memory, and morality are leavened with a mixture of high whimsy and memorable gloom.]]> 584 1681371294 Cameron 0 to-read 4.31 1849 Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, 1768-1800
author: François-René de Chateaubriand
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1849
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Sonnets and Poems]]> 42051 768 William Shakespeare 019281933X Cameron 0 to-read 4.42 The Complete Sonnets and Poems
author: William Shakespeare
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.42
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Doors of Perception 3188964 The Doors of Perception is a philosophical essay, released as a book, by Aldous Huxley. First published in 1954, it details his experiences when taking mescaline.

The book takes the form of Huxley's recollection of a mescaline trip that took place over the course of an afternoon in May 1953. The book takes its title from a phrase in William Blake's 1793 poem 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'.

Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, which range from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision". He also incorporates later reflections on the experience and its meaning for art and religion.]]> 208 Aldous Huxley Cameron 2 memoir, nonfiction The Doors of Perception has been sitting on my to-read list since my late teens/early 20's. That was 10-15 years ago now and now that I've finally read this book I realize I've simply grown out of caring what Aldous Huxley's drug experience was like. Reading this book is more like listening to a drunk friend ramble about nonsense for hours than a deep dive into the incredible subjective experiences halluninogenics can offer you. If you've never tried acid, shrooms, peyote, etc, then sadly this book will get you no closer to understanding what it's like. I give Huxley props for the attempt though, hence the 2 stars rather than one.]]> 3.91 1956 The Doors of Perception
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1956
rating: 2
read at: 2022/11/13
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: memoir, nonfiction
review:
The Doors of Perception has been sitting on my to-read list since my late teens/early 20's. That was 10-15 years ago now and now that I've finally read this book I realize I've simply grown out of caring what Aldous Huxley's drug experience was like. Reading this book is more like listening to a drunk friend ramble about nonsense for hours than a deep dive into the incredible subjective experiences halluninogenics can offer you. If you've never tried acid, shrooms, peyote, etc, then sadly this book will get you no closer to understanding what it's like. I give Huxley props for the attempt though, hence the 2 stars rather than one.
]]> Lysistrata and Other Plays 1567 Achanians is a plea for peace set against the background of the long war with Sparta. In Lysistrata a band of women tap into the awesome power of sex in order to end a war. The darker comedy of The Clouds satirizes Athenian philosophers, Socrates in particular, and reflects the uncertainties of a generation in which all traditional religious and ethical beliefs were being challenged.

For this edition Alan Sommerstein has completely revised his translation of these three plays, bringing out the full nuances of Aristophanes� ribald humour and intricate word play, with a new introduction explaining the historical and cultural background to the plays.]]> 241 Aristophanes Cameron 0 to-read 3.94 -423 Lysistrata and Other Plays
author: Aristophanes
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.94
book published: -423
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lysistrata / The Acharnians / The Clouds]]> 1565 256 Aristophanes 0140442871 Cameron 0 to-read 4.15 -423 Lysistrata / The Acharnians / The Clouds
author: Aristophanes
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.15
book published: -423
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Fevre Dream 10644600 256 Daniel Abraham 1592911196 Cameron 0 to-read 3.78 1982 Fevre Dream
author: Daniel Abraham
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What This Comedian Said Will Shock You]]> 203426608 The hilarious and controversial host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher has written his funniest, most opinionated, and most necessary book ever—a brilliantly astute and acerbically funny vivisection of American life, politics, and culture.

Some of the smartest commentary about what’s happening in America is coming from a comedian—this comedian being Bill Maher. If you want to understand what’s wrong with this country, it turns out that one of the best-informed and most thought-provoking analysts is this very funny pothead.

The book was inspired by the “editorial� Bill delivers at the end of each episode of Real Time. These editorials are direct-to-camera sermons about culture, politics, and what’s happening in the world. To put this book together, Maher reviewed more than a decade of his editorials, rewriting, reimagining, and updating them, and adding new material to speak exactly to the moment we’re in. Free speech, cops, drugs, race, religion, the generations, cancel culture, the parties, the media, show biz, romance, health—Maher covers it all. The result is a hugely entertaining work of commentary about American culture in the tradition of Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and H. L. Mencken.]]> 400 Bill Maher 1668051354 Cameron 3 4.14 What This Comedian Said Will Shock You
author: Bill Maher
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.14
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/20
date added: 2024/07/20
shelves: comedy, cultural-criticism, nonfiction, political-correctness
review:

]]> Both Flesh and Not: Essays 13528351 Brilliant, dazzling, never-before-collected nonfiction writings by "one of America's most daring and talented writers." (Los Angeles Times Book Review).

Both Flesh and Not gathers fifteen of Wallace's seminal essays, all published in book form for the first time.

Never has Wallace's seemingly endless curiosity been more evident than in this compilation of work spanning nearly 20 years of writing. Here, Wallace turns his critical eye with equal enthusiasm toward Roger Federer and Jorge Luis Borges; Terminator 2 and The Best of the Prose Poem; the nature of being a fiction writer and the quandary of defining the essay; the best underappreciated novels and the English language's most irksome misused words; and much more.

Both Flesh and Not restores Wallace's essays as originally written, and it includes a selection from his personal vocabulary list, an assembly of unusual words and definitions.]]> 328 David Foster Wallace 0316182370 Cameron 3 essays, nonfiction 3.86 2012 Both Flesh and Not: Essays
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: essays, nonfiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dream of the Red Chamber (Selection)]]> 243878 96 Cao Xueqin 0146001761 Cameron 0 to-read 3.64 The Dream of the Red Chamber (Selection)
author: Cao Xueqin
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.64
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Testament of Youth 374388 Testament of Youth is both a record of what she lived through and an elegy for a vanished generation. Hailed by the Times Literary Supplement as a book that helped “both form and define the mood of its time,� it speaks to any generation that has been irrevocably changed by war.]]> 688 Vera Brittain 0143039237 Cameron 0 to-read 4.09 1933 Testament of Youth
author: Vera Brittain
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1933
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sun & Steel 62804
At one level, it may be read as an account of how a puny, bookish boy discovered the importance of his own physical being; the "sun and steel" of the title are themselves symbols respectively of the cult of the open air and the weights used in bodybuilding. At another level, it is a discussion by a major novelist of the relation between action and art, and his own highly polished art in particular. More personally, it is an account of one individual's search for identity and self-integration. Or again, the work could be seen as a demonstration of how an intensely individual preoccupation can be developed into a profound philosophy of life.

All these elements are woven together by Mishima's complex yet polished and supple style. The confession and the self-analysis, the philosophy and the poetry combine in the end to create something that is in itself perfect and self-sufficient. It is a piece of literature that is as carefully fashioned as Mishima's novels, and at the same time provides an indispensable key to the understanding of them as art.

The road Mishima took to salvation is a highly personal one. Yet here, ultimately, one detects the unmistakable tones of a self transcending the particular and attaining to a poetic vision of the universal. The book is therefore a moving document, and is highly significant as a pointer to the future development of one of the most interesting novelists of modern times.]]> 108 Yukio Mishima 4770029039 Cameron 2 japanese-lit, nonfiction 3.90 1968 Sun & Steel
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1968
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/06/16
shelves: japanese-lit, nonfiction
review:

]]> Hot Water Music 50453 With his characteristic raw and minimalist style, Charles Bukowski takes us on a walk through his side of town in Hot Water Music.He gives us little vignettes of depravity and lasciviousness, bite-sized pieces of what is both beautiful and grotesque.

The stories in Hot Water Music dash around the worst parts of town -- a motel room stinking of sick, a decrepit apartment housing a perpetually arguing couple, a bar tended by a skeleton -- and depict the darkest parts of human existence. Bukowski talks simply and profoundly about the underbelly of the working class without raising judgement.

In the way he writes about sex, relationships, writing, and inebriation, Bukowski sets the bar for irreverent art -- his work inhabits the basest part of the mind and the most extreme absurdity of the everyday.]]> 221 Charles Bukowski 0876855966 Cameron 3 fiction, short-stories 3.95 1983 Hot Water Music
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1983
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/04
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves: fiction, short-stories
review:

]]> <![CDATA[All of Us: The Collected Poems]]> 25596545 San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle

This prodigiously rich collection suggests that Raymond Carver was not only America's finest writer of short fiction, but also one of its most large-hearted and affecting poets.Like Carver's stories, the more than 300 poems in All of Us are marked by a keen attention to the physical world; an uncanny ability to compress vast feeling into discreet moments; a voice of conversational intimacy, and an unstinting sympathy.

This complete edition brings together all the poems of Carver's five previous books, from Fires to the posthumously published No Heroics, Please.It also contains bibliographical and textual notes on individual poems; a chronology of Carver's life and work; and a moving introduction by Carver's widow, the poet Tess Gallagher.]]> 716 Raymond Carver 1101970537 Cameron 5 poetry 4.44 1996 All of Us: The Collected Poems
author: Raymond Carver
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/04
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America]]> 150246196
As one of the few black students in his philosophy program at Columbia University years ago, Coleman Hughes wondered why his peers seemed more pessimistic about the state of American race relations than his own grandparents–who lived through segregation. The End of Race Politics is the culmination of his years-long search for an answer.

Contemplative yet audacious, The End of Race Politics is necessary reading for anyone who questions the race orthodoxies of our time. Hughes argues for a return to the ideals that inspired the American Civil Rights movement, showing how our departure from the colorblind ideal has ushered in a new era of fear, paranoia, and resentment marked by draconian interpersonal etiquette, failed corporate diversity and inclusion efforts, and poisonous race-based policies that hurt the very people they intend to help. Hughes exposes the harmful side effects of Kendi-DiAngelo style antiracism, from programs that distribute emergency aid on the basis of race to revisionist versions of American history that hide the truth from the public.

Through careful argument, Hughes dismantles harmful beliefs about race, proving that reverse racism will not atone for past wrongs and showing why race-based policies will lead only to the illusion of racial equity. By fixating on race, we lose sight of what it really means to be anti-racist. A racially just, colorblind society is possible. Hughes gives us the intellectual tools to make it happen.]]> 256 Coleman Hughes 0593332458 Cameron 5 4.38 2024 The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America
author: Coleman Hughes
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/26
date added: 2024/05/26
shelves: cultural-criticism, nonfiction, political-correctness
review:

]]> <![CDATA[On the Origin of Species and Other Stories]]> 55528293 The debut English-language collection of one of South Korea's most distinctive and accomplished sci-fi authors

Straddling science fiction, fantasy and myth, the writings of award-winning author Bo-Young Kim have garnered a cult following in South Korea, where she is widely acknowledged as a pioneer and inspiration. On the Origin of Species makes available for the first time in English some of Kim's most acclaimed stories, as well as an essay on science fiction. Her strikingly original, thought-provoking work teems with human and non-human beings, all of whom are striving to survive through evolution, whether biologically, technologically or socially. Kim's literature of ideas offers some of the most rigorous and surprisingly poignant reflections on posthuman existence being written today.]]> 224 Kim Bo-young 1885030711 Cameron 3 4.39 2021 On the Origin of Species and Other Stories
author: Kim Bo-young
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/26
date added: 2024/05/26
shelves: fiction, korean-lit, sci-fi, short-stories
review:

]]> Everything Flows 6646257 'Everything Flows is as important a novel as anything written by Solzhenitsyn, and Robert Chandler's superb translation makes it a joy to read'
Antony Beevor

Ivan Grigoryevich has been in the Gulag for thirty years. Released after Stalin's death, he finds that the years of terror have imposed a collective moral slavery. He must struggle to find a place for himself in an unfamiliar world. Grossman tells the stories of those people entwined with Ivan's fate: his cousin Nikolay, a scientist who never let his conscience interfere with his career, Pinegin, the informer who had Ivan sent to the camps and Anna Sergeyevna, Ivan's lover, who tells of her involvement as an activist in the Terror famine of 1932-3.

Everything Flows is Vasily Grossman's final testament, written after the Soviet authorities suppressed Life and Fate.

'Vasily Grossman is the Tolstoy of the USSR' Martin Amis]]> 253 Vasily Grossman 1590173287 Cameron 0 to-read 4.29 1972 Everything Flows
author: Vasily Grossman
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pulp 141526 208 Charles Bukowski 0876859260 Cameron 0 to-read 3.71 1994 Pulp
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Brief Interviews with Hideous Men]]> 6753
Among the stories are 'The Depressed Person', a dazzling and blackly humorous portrayal of a woman's mental state; 'Adult World', which reveals a woman's agonised consideration of her confusing sexual relationship with her husband; and 'Brief Interviews with Hideous Men', a dark, hilarious series of portraits of men whose fear of women renders them grotesque. Wallace's stories present a world where the bizarre and the banal are interwoven and where hideous men appear in many different guises. Thought-provoking and playful, this collection confirms David Foster Wallace as one of the most imaginative young writers around. Wallace delights in leftfield observation, mining the ironic, the surprising and the illuminating from every situation. This collection will delight his growing number of fans, and provide a perfect introduction for new readers.]]> 273 David Foster Wallace 034911188X Cameron 2 3.88 1999 Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1999
rating: 2
read at: 2024/04/17
date added: 2024/04/17
shelves: fiction, postmodern-literature, short-stories
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The War Against Cliche: Essays and Reviews 1971�2000]]> 829036 528 Martin Amis 0099422220 Cameron 0 to-read 4.04 2001 The War Against Cliche: Essays and Reviews 1971–2000
author: Martin Amis
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice]]> 43372 The Missionary Position, Christopher Hitchens's meticulous study of the life and deeds of Mother Teresa.

A Nobel Peace Prize recipient beatified by the Catholic Church in 2003, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was celebrated by heads of state and adored by millions for her work on behalf of the poor. In his measured critique, Hitchens asks only that Mother Teresa's reputation be judged by her actions-not the other way around.

With characteristic elan and rhetorical dexterity, Hitchens eviscerates the fawning cult of Teresa, recasting the Albanian missionary as a spurious, despotic, and megalomaniacal operative of the wealthy who long opposed measures to end poverty, and fraternized, for financial gain, with tyrants and white-collar criminals throughout the world.]]> 98 Christopher Hitchens 185984054X Cameron 4 4.05 1995 The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice
author: Christopher Hitchens
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/30
date added: 2024/03/29
shelves: cultural-criticism, history, nonfiction, religion
review:

]]> Cursed Bunny 56648660 Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society.

Anton Hur’s translation skilfully captures the way Chung’s prose effortlessly glides from being terrifying to wryly humorous. Winner of a PEN/Heim Grant.]]> 251 Bora Chung 1916277187 Cameron 1 3.77 2017 Cursed Bunny
author: Bora Chung
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2017
rating: 1
read at: 2024/03/26
date added: 2024/03/26
shelves: fantasy, fiction, horror, korean-lit, magical-realism, short-stories
review:

]]> Lenin's Kisses 13590741
Yan Lianke, one of China’s most distinguished writers—whose works often push the envelope of his country’s censorship system—delivers a humorous, daring, and riveting portrait of the trappings and consequences of greed and corruption at the heart of humanity.]]> 500 Yan Lianke 0802120377 Cameron 0 to-read 3.72 2003 Lenin's Kisses
author: Yan Lianke
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Heart Sutra 61302415 Multi-prizewinning and internationally acclaimed Yan Lianke -- 'China's most controversial novelist' (New Yorker) -- returns with a campus novel like no other following a young Buddhist as she journeys through worldly temptationTo tell the truth, religious faith is really just a matter of believing stories. The world is governed by stories, and it is for the sake of stories that everyone lives on this earth.Yahui is a young Buddhist at university. But this is no ordinary university. It is populated by every faith in Buddhists, Daoists, Catholics, Protestants and Muslims who jostle alongside one another in the corridors of learning, and whose deities are never far from the classroom.Her days are measured out making elaborate religious papercuts, taking part in highly charged tug-of-war competitions between the faiths and trying to resist the daily temptation to return to secular life and abandon the ascetic ideals that are her calling. Everything seems to dangle by a thread. But when she meets a Daoist student called Mingzheng, an inexorable romance of mythic proportions takes hold of her.In this profoundly otherworldly novel, Chinese master Yan Lianke remakes the campus novel in typically visionary fashion, dropping readers into an allegorical world ostensibly far from our own, but which reflects our own questions and struggles right back at us.** Beautiful edition illustrated throughout with beautiful original papercuts **'One of China's greatest living authors' Guardian'His talent cannot be ignored' New York Times'China's foremost literary satirist' Financial Times]]> 416 Yan Lianke 1784744662 Cameron 0 to-read 2.99 2020 Heart Sutra
author: Yan Lianke
name: Cameron
average rating: 2.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse (Girl Genius, #10)]]> 11310597 Adventure! Romance! Mad Science! Deep in the heart of the damaged machine that is Castle Heterodyne, Agatha discovers her mother's long-abandoned secret laboratory. But waiting inside is a relentless guardian that is not what it seems!]]> 152 Phil Foglio 1890856533 Cameron 4 4.43 2011 Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse (Girl Genius, #10)
author: Phil Foglio
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2018/05/16
date added: 2024/03/19
shelves: reread, fiction, graphic-novel, sci-fi, steampunk
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly: Poems Collected and New]]> 6666077 0 Denis Johnson 0061869546 Cameron 3 poetry 3.45 1995 The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly: Poems Collected and New
author: Denis Johnson
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/17
date added: 2024/03/17
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]> 17125 The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most extraordinary literary documents to have emerged from the Soviet Union and confirms Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dosotevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy"--Harrison Salisbury

This unexpurgated 1991 translation by H. T. Willetts is the only authorized edition available, and fully captures the power and beauty of the original Russian.]]> 182 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Cameron 4 3.98 1962 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/09
date added: 2024/03/15
shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, russian-lit
review:

]]> Headshot 174156218 An electrifying debut novel from an “unusually gifted writer� (Lorrie Moore) about the radical intimacy of physical competition

An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country. Through a series of face-offs that are raw, ecstatic, and punctuated by flashes of humor and tenderness, prizewinning writer Rita Bullwinkel animates the competitors� pasts and futures as they summon the emotion, imagination, and force of will required to win.

Frenetic, surprising, and strikingly original, Headshot is a portrait of the desire, envy, perfectionism, madness, and sheer physical pleasure that motivates young women to fight—even, and perhaps especially, when no one else is watching.]]> 224 Rita Bullwinkel 0593654102 Cameron 0 to-read 3.50 2024 Headshot
author: Rita Bullwinkel
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Modern Poetry: Poems 144743795 Modern Poetry, from the first textbook Seuss encountered as a child and the first poetry course she took in college, as an enrapt but ill-equipped student, one who felt poetry was beyond her reach. Many of the poems make use of the forms and terms of musical and poetic craft—ballad, fugue, aria, refrain, coda—and contend with the works of writers overrepresented in textbooks and anthologies and those too often underrepresented. Seuss provides a moving account of her picaresque years and their uncertainties, and in the process, she enters the realm between Modernism and Romanticism, between romance and objectivity, with Keats as ghost, lover, and interlocutor.

In poems of rangy curiosity, sharp humor, and illuminating self-scrutiny, Modern Poetry investigates our time’s deep isolation and divisiveness and What can poetry be now? Do poems still have the capacity to mean? “It seems wrong / to curl now within the confines / of a poem,� Seuss writes. “You can’t hide / from what you made / inside what you made.� What she finds there, finally, is a surprising but unmistakable love.]]> 127 Diane Seuss 1644452766 Cameron 4 poetry 4.32 Modern Poetry: Poems
author: Diane Seuss
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.32
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/09
date added: 2024/03/11
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> Angle of Yaw 19203185
The man observes the action on the field with the tiny television he brought to the stadium. He is topless, painted gold, bewigged. His exaggerated foam index finger indicates the giant screen upon which his own image is now displayed, a model of fanaticism. He watches the image of his watching the image on his portable TV on his portable TV. He suddenly stands with arms upraised and initiates the wave that will consume him.

Haunted by our current “war on terror,� much of the book was written while Lerner was living in Madrid (at the time of the Atocha bombings and their political aftermath), as the author steeped himself in the history of Franco and fascism. Regardless of when or where it was written, Angle of Yaw will further establish Ben Lerner as one of our most intriguing and least predictable poets.]]> 144 Ben Lerner Cameron 4 4.40 2006 Angle of Yaw
author: Ben Lerner
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/29
date added: 2024/03/03
shelves:
review:

]]> Sentimental Education 2183 460 Gustave Flaubert 0140447970 Cameron 4 fiction, french-lit 3.86 1869 Sentimental Education
author: Gustave Flaubert
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1869
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/03
date added: 2024/03/03
shelves: fiction, french-lit
review:

]]> Poems of William Blake 18299542 45 William Blake Cameron 2 poetry 3.97 1893 Poems of William Blake
author: William Blake
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1893
rating: 2
read at: 2019/07/31
date added: 2024/03/01
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Pinocchio in Venice (Coover, Robert)]]> 774784 330 Robert Coover 0802134858 Cameron 0 to-read 3.24 1991 Pinocchio in Venice (Coover, Robert)
author: Robert Coover
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.24
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Jill 111890
"Jill is, in a sense, a kind of cryptic manifesto. It is a novel about writing, about discovering a literary personality, and about the sorts of consolation that art can provide." -Andrew Motion]]> 230 Philip Larkin Cameron 0 to-read 3.56 1946 Jill
author: Philip Larkin
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1946
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Gulag 406148 675 Anne Applebaum 1400034094 Cameron 0 to-read 4.27 2003 Gulag
author: Anne Applebaum
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Gesture Life 273986
Courteous, honest, hardworking, and impenetrable, Franklin Hata, a Japanese man of Korean birth, is careful never to overstep his bounds. He makes his neighbors feel comfortable in his presence, keeps his garden well tended, bids his customers good-bye at the doorway to his medical supply shop, and ignores the taunts of local boys. Now facing his retirement years alone, Hata begins to reflect on the price he's had to pay for living this quiet "gesture life."

After suffering minor injuries in an accidental fire, he remembers the painful, failed relationships of his past; with Mary Burns, a widow with whom he had an affair, and with Sunny, a Korean girl he adopted when she was seven, who is now a grown woman he hasn't spoken to or seen in years. As Hata recalls the strained, troubled relationship with Sunny, he begins to understand why his daughter, unlike himself, "felt no more at home in this town, or in this house of mine, or perhaps even with me, than when she first arrived at Kennedy Airport."

Unknown to Sunny, there is a secret that has shaped the core of Hata's being; his terrible, forbidden love for a young Korean woman from his past. Serving as a medic in the Japanese army during World War II, Hata was assigned the task of overseeing the female "volunteers; women taken against their will to provide sexual favors for the men in the battalion. One of these "comfort women" he came to love. These remembrances, tinged with grief and regret, ultimately draw Hata once again to his daughter; and help him begin to attain a more truthful understanding of himself.]]> 376 Chang-rae Lee 1573228281 Cameron 0 to-read 3.79 1999 A Gesture Life
author: Chang-rae Lee
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Stars at Noon 9908 192 Denis Johnson 0060976101 Cameron 0 to-read 3.56 1986 The Stars at Noon
author: Denis Johnson
name: Cameron
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Tennis Court Oath 11586638 95 John Ashbery Cameron 2 poetry 4.00 1962 The Tennis Court Oath
author: John Ashbery
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1962
rating: 2
read at: 2024/02/19
date added: 2024/02/19
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Consider the Lobster and Other Essays]]> 6751
Contains: "Big Red Son," "Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think," "Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed," "Authority and American Usage," "The View from Mrs. Thompson's," "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart," "Up, Simba," "Consider the Lobster," "Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky" and "Host."]]> 343 David Foster Wallace 0316156116 Cameron 5 essays, nonfiction 4.19 2005 Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/17
date added: 2024/02/16
shelves: essays, nonfiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl]]> 39927992 Four-Legged Girl, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl takes its title from Rembrandt’s painting, a dark emblem of femininity, violence, and the viewer’s own troubled gaze. In Diane Seuss’s new collection, the notion of the still life is shattered and Rembrandt’s painting is presented across the book in pieces―details that hide more than they reveal until they’re assembled into a whole. With invention and irreverence, these poems escape gilded frames and overturn traditional representations of gender, class, and luxury. Instead, Seuss invites in the alienated, the washed-up, the ugly, and the freakish―the overlooked many of us who might more often stand in a Walmart parking lot than before the canvases of Pollock, O’Keeffe, and Rothko. Rendered with precision and profound empathy, this extraordinary gallery of lives in shards shows us that “our memories are local, acute, and unrelenting.”]]> 120 Diane Seuss 1555979963 Cameron 5 poetry 4.40 2018 Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl
author: Diane Seuss
name: Cameron
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/09
date added: 2024/02/16
shelves: poetry
review:

]]>