Writing about writing and reading
I discovered this book via an article in the New Yorker, and knew I had to read it. I quickly discovered it was out of print (1000$ for a tattered paperback on Amazon) but I was luckily able to find a PDF online. That was Wednesday night (today is Friday). Needless to say, I couldn't …
Continue reading "The Third Reich of Dreams, by Charlotte Beradt"
The opening page of this novella comes with a little hint as to what the contents will be like: “The characters and action in this story are purely fictitious. Should the description of certain journalistic practices result in a resemblance to the practices of Bild-Zeitung, such resemblance is neither intentional, nor fortuitous, but unavoidable.” Bild-Zeitung …
Continue reading "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, by Heinrich Böll"
Another stunning novel by Sebald, and this is the first of his to approach anything like a plot. As with all of Sebald's books, the themes are on memory, and the Holocaust. Of all his books I've read so far, this one most directly addresses the two. The narrator, who as usual is a maybe/maybe …
I finished this dystopian classic by Margaret Atwood and was both impressed and frustrated. I was impressed by how believable the story was. In the afterward the author talks about how she took great care to put nothing in the book that hadn't already happened somewhere in history, and no technology that didn't exist. She …
Continue reading "The Handmaid’s Tale: a negative side of human adaptability"
This was an interesting and entertaining, though not always very engaging read. Told from the point of view of Claudius, a stuttering, limping, nephew of the emperor Tiberius. I have no idea how much of this is historically accurate beyond the births and deaths of these people, but it painted a disgusting picture of the …
Jonas David 