by Louis L’Amour I was recently wandering a large antique shop in Duluth, perusing their small display of books for sale––including a sizeable collection of Westerns––when it occurred to me that I almost certainly have never read a genre Western. Eager to remedy this deficiency, (who am I to think myself broadly-read otherwise?) I picked…
Read more
by Meša Selimović Taking place in eighteenth century Bosnia, Death and the Dervish follows Sheikh Ahmed Nuruddin as he attempts to navigate the corrupt Turkish bureaucracy to free his brother Harun from their city’s foreboding dungeon and almost certain death. Most of the story involves Nuruddin’s paralyzing internal conflict between his morals and cowardice, and…
Read more
by Sean Penn Well, this one’s awkward. Awkward’s probably the best way to describe it succinctly, anyway, and here I thought I’d be leaning more toward “weird” after reading what it’s about. By day, Bob Honey’s a septic tank salesman whose business savvy apparently allowed him to corner the Jehovah’s Witness slice of that market….
Read more
by Michael Ondaatje Warlight is a story about a young teen’s formative years in England immediately after WWII, but it’s more complicated than that. Our narrator, Nathaniel, looks back to when his parents, sent to Asia for a work position, left his older sister and him in the care of their secretive lodger. They start…
Read more
by Denis Johnson Here’s another one I’ve been putting off for a while. I shouldn’t have. I mean, it came highly recommended by someone whose opinion I trust, but it’s a short story collection, and for reasons I recently touched on, I’ve been a bit reluctant to do short stories lately. That said, it’s nice…
Read more
by Michael Ondaatje I needed this. It’s easy to feel a bit low after coming away from a couple books disappointed when I originally approached them with high hopes. While I may be repeating myself here slightly, my mood turns around fairly quickly after reading something thoroughly enjoyable, and it becomes doubly satisfying when I…
Read more
by Liz Harmer I find it interesting to consider what influences your opinion of a book while reading. The big thing that spurred this thought along was a passage in The Amateurs where the protagonist, Marie, realizes how starkly unique she is just before discussing architecture influenced by architecture influenced by architecture. (I won’t directly…
Read more
by Chigozie Obioma Some time ago, I was discussing literature with a friend, when the topic turned to the comparison of Kevin Hardcastle’s writing to Cormac McCarthy’s in numerous blurbs and reviews, and how such an exercise usually sets him up for unreasonable expectations that tend to be crushed in due course. At the time,…
Read more
by Jonathan Safran Foer Everything is Illuminated is autobiographical, but only a touch, only superficially. It’s about a character named Jonathan Safran Foer travelling to Ukraine with only an old picture to help him find a woman who may have helped save his grandfather from the Nazis. This much actually happened, but I understand that…
Read more
by Gore Vidal In the final days of high school in small town Virginia, Jim Willard has a homosexual encounter with Bob Ford, and he falls for him hard. Unfortunately for Jim, this happens only days before Bob leaves to travel the world as a sailor. The City and the Pillar follows Jim’s journey in…
Read more