Borges‘s Labyrinths is not an easy read, and I’m having a hard time finishing it. That said, the end is in sight: I’m about three-quarters into it. It’s a collection of short stories, essays, and parables. I haven’t hit...
I really liked Popular Hits of the Showa Era. It’s short and a very quick read, and that’s exactly what I was looking for. It’s also fast-paced and seemed more like a long short-story than a book. Murakami doesn’t waste time...
I jumped into This Side of Paradise right out of The Hunger Games, and I liked it at first. Then it got tedious. It reminds me of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but without a cohesive plot. It’s a series of little vignettes about a kid...
Well, The Hunger Games is certainly a quick read. It’s the first kids’ book I’ve read in a while, and I liked it well enough. Suzanne Collins isn’t an especially good writer – it’s purely pop fiction like Dan...
Well, I finished it. I guess all it took was my public realization that I might not finish it to get me reading again. Note that I wrote that post yesterday and still had about halfway to go. I’ve done a good bit of reading over the past...
So it’s been over a week, and I still haven’t finished The Satanic Verses. I’m having a really hard time getting through it, and I’ve seriously considered making it the base of my Fail Pile for this year. The funny thing is...
I really enjoyed Oryx and Crake . It’s a dystopian, post-apocalyptic-type novel about one of the few men left on Earth. He calls himself Snowman, and the plot bounces back and forth between him and the man he used to be, before the...
I have a history with Things Fall Apart: I was forced to read it when I was a sophomore in high school. I’m actually not entirely sure I read it because I didn’t remember one thing about it – except, of course, that it’s...
I’ve been wanting to read Good Morning, Midnight for a long time. Years ago, I randomly picked up another Jean Rhys novel, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (which doesn’t have a Wikipedia page!), and I really liked it. Later, I was assigned...
I should probably start by saying I’m not a fan of historical fiction. I guess The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is an example of historical magical realism, though it’s relatively skimpy on the magical part. It has echoes of Cloud...