Fiction Archives |
2182 Kilohertz, David Masiel - I've just read a stunning news item: So much of the Arctic ice cover has disappeared “that a ship could sail unhindered from Europe's most n
A Million Little Pieces, James Frey - I am old enough to have lost friends to drugs and alcohol addiction.
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, Peter Handke - The Sunday edition of the Kärnter Volkszeitung carried the following item under 'Local News': 'In the village of A. (G.
After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, Jean Rhys - The favorite writer of Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis is rumored to be Jean Rhys (1890-1979).
Alan Furst: Blood of Victory - Countries need oil for blood, steel for bone, rubber for feet. And in wartime, even more so. Think back to your American History courses.
Alan Furst: Dark Voyage, Alan Furst - I spent my free moments this week reading my favorite kind of book --- one you can't put down.
Alan Furst: Spies of the Balkans - It’s a bittersweet day around here when a new Alan Furst novel arrives.
On the plus side: I get to spend an entire day reading about 1939 or 194
Alan Furst: The Foreign Correspondent - The reason I have avoided thrillers all my reading life is sex.
The heroes of these books are usually manly men, built on the John Wayne model.
Alan Furst: The Spies of Warsaw - The “spy” is “an ordinary-looking man, who led a rather ordinary life” --- he's a mid-level engineer at a German ironworks, m
All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque - I'm trying to recall a novel about war that makes it sound like a good thing.
All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren - The 1946 novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Robert Penn Warren and is generally considered the greatest of all American political novels.
It asks
Antonya Nelson: Female Trouble - Both her parents were English professors, so it wasn’t entirely surprising that Antonya Nelson grew up writing stories.
Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis - Sinclair Lewis is the bookend to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Both were born in Minnesota. Fitzgerald went to Princeton, Lewis to Yale.
Badenheim 1939, Aharon Appelfeld - Aharon Appelfeld, one of Israel's greatest writers, has had only a handful of his 40 books translated into English. It's too bad.
Beach Reading - In Ye Olde Days, I used to do all my heavy reading in the summer and, if possible, on the beach. This made sense --- to me, anyway.
Before and After, Rosellen Brown - Rather than endure the dreadful and marginally accurate televised news in the morning, I watch a few minutes of a dreadful and fake movie on Lifetime.
Bel-Ami, Guy de Maupassant - George --- the kind of handsome guy from the country who, for lack of a better thing to do, joins the Army --- finshes his military ser
Birds in Fall, Brad Kessler - The novel starts inside the plane.
Black & White, Dani Shapiro - There's a long tradition of turning kids into money.
Blame: A Novel, Michelle Huneven - I saw nothing in The Shriver Report about female alcoholism, yet it’s estimated that a third of America’s 18 million alcoholics are women.