Poor Jim Crace. Almost every review I’ve read of this book compares it to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and I’m going to do the same. I can’t help it. They’re both novels set in post-apocalyptic America with two people struggling to get to the coast, and they both came out at about the same time too. And to me, The… Read More
Date Archives March 2011
Books vs. nuclear submarines
I paid a visit to the excellent Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green recently. The owners put out an appeal to everyone to buy an extra book from the shop to help them survive and pay off their bank loan. So I went along, and bought a couple of books, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by… Read More
“Long Time, No See” by Dermot Healy
Have you ever read a book all the way through and felt that you missed something really big? You get that unsettling feeling that perhaps the whole thing is one big allegory that you failed to get. Or maybe you were daydreaming through the crucial paragraph that knits the whole book together. That’s the feeling I had after reading Long… Read More
“Edgelands” event at the London Review Bookshop
Went to an interesting event this evening at the London Review Bookshop: Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts reading from their new book Edgelands: Journeys into England’s True Wilderness. Edgelands are those ignored, marginal spaces that are neither city nor countryside, neither completely wild nor completely controlled. Think gravel pits, drainage ditches, abandoned retail parks. Manmade, mostly, but often abandoned… Read More
“Brick Lane” by Monica Ali
Not sure what to write about this. I enjoyed the story and it was well-written, but to me nothing special. Hated the ending – don’t worry, I won’t give it away, but the last line just sounded so corny I was quite shocked. The book as a whole is not simplistic, but the ending made it seem that way. I… Read More
“About Canada: Animal Rights” by John Sorenson
Despite the title, this is not really a book about Canada. It is Canada-focused, but it is more of a general introduction to animal rights. That was good for me, because it’s the animal rights part that I was interested in, and I think I might have missed the “About Canada” part when requesting the book from LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer… Read More