znaddanz

Odd book, this one. It's a "classic", although whether this became true before or after it became famous for being in the pocket of American serial killers whilst they were on gun rampages I am not certain. Despite the fact ...

"Hundreds of professional and amateur scientists actually believe the Bible pretends to teach science. This is a good deal like assuming that there must be authentic religious dogma in the binomial theorum." "What's really remarkable about science," I interjected to my flatmate whilst r ...

" title="memoirs of a geisha"> I've always been very wary of cross-gendered authorship. Not that I'm against it, I mean, I read cross-species books sometimes, and I don't have a problem with them. It's just that ...

The scene I had just witnessed brought back a lot of memories - not of things I had done but of things I had failed to do, wasted hours and frustrated moments and opportunities forever lost because time had eaten up so much of my life and I would never get it back. I envied Yeamon and felt sorry for myself at the same time, because I had seen him in a moment that made all my happiness seem dull. Sometimes I go into a bookstore and start browsing and realize there are ...

A Confederacy of Dunces is an absolute joy. I had an enormous, goofy grin on my face the entire time. This is the funniest book I've read since <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0446693812/102-0908 ...

So I was heading off to Croatia and I realized that I knew next to nothing about the war there. I knew it had something to do with Serbia and Bosnia or Bosno-Serbi-Cromagnon or something, but really didn't have the foggiest idea what it was all about, ho ...

"So far, so average." says the narrator about two-thirds into T ...

How much do I love the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brien? If you're not familiar with them, the film Master & Commander was based on book ten (The Far Side of the World) of a twenty-book cycle that follows the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey, a brutis ...

Infinite Jest is huge. That's the first thing you need to know. If you are the sort of person who goes to sleep with a book balanced on their chest and wakes up when it falls on their nose, Infinite Jest will fall over and give you a black eye. That's ...

The arrival of a new Chuck Palahniuk novel, while an event that usually happens without any huge PR budget or fanfare, is, to me, an occurance to dwarfs the largest film premiere. Ever since writing the book that more or less defined my generation, Chuck's batting average has been more or less perfect. Yes, he has a tendancy to wander off into the implausible a ...

I read this bad boy on the plane, in one sitting, and considering it's a book that relies heavily on quoting various facts and figures, that is a good reflection on how the author (Eric Schlosser) manages to keep a handle on your attention. <p ...

Heckler: You suck! [pause] Bill: You suck? [long pause, deep breath, seems to be considering something] You fucking cunt, get the fuck out of here RIGHT NOW! Get out! Fuck you! FUCK YO ...

The most impressive thing about Vernon God Little, I found, was the narrative voice, which was first person- nothing special about that (although I am finding, more and more, that it's my favourite kind of narrative perspective and third person voice-of-god nar ...

The first thing you should know is: I'm really scared of dying. Not of being dead. I'm sure that whatever's next, be it nothing (which, based on my experiences with unconciousness, I'm sure it will be), or anything else, I'll probably rapidly adjust ...

I kind of went off short stories, ah, about fifteen years ago, actually. I'm just a novel kind of guy, I think. I really like that feeling you get, when you finish a novel, like you've been transported somewhere, and you take a journey with the characters, and when it en ...

The first thing you need to know about this book is that it's not that funny. I mention this specifically because the publishers seem to have gone out of thier way to make it appear as though it will be. I think they were did this to give the book a broader appeal- someone who would be unlikely to pick up this book w ...

I cried the day I finished Robertson Davies’ last novel. The man himself had died some years before, but I had postponed my grief temporarily because, well, there were still books of his to read and that was, after all, what he was to me- his books. A friend had introduced him to me in 95 ...