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New Reviews: Viriconium, Cloud Atlas, The Intuitionist
February 8, 2007 (11:53 PM) ( link ) ADDED reviews of M John Harrison's Viriconium, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, and Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist.
I've begun reading Richard Powers's The Echo Maker, which recently won the National Book Award. This book seems much more mainstream than The Gold Bug Variations, which I had a hard time even starting.
The Echo Maker doesn't have an auspicious beginning. Like many books it tries to tug at your heartstrings by starting with a tragedy. But the more I read these openings, the more I think they're a mistake. We don't know enough about the characters to care that heartbreak has befallen them, and all the pretty language in the world won't persuade us otherwise. But I think I'll stick this one out. Because I was apprehensive after the first few pages, I read the jacket description, and the synopsis there sounds much more interesting than the first chapter would suggest.
Not counting The Echo Maker, there are only five more reviews that I plan to write before I'm caught up, including two books that I absolutely loved. (And two that I hated, but let's focus on the positive.) I might be able to finish the reviews in the next two weeks.
Capsule Reviews: Catching Up
February 8, 2007 (12:09 AM) ( link ) From the past year, here are the books I'm not going to review. I will, however, categorize them roughly according to my opinion of them.
Good
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
Stanislaw Lem, Tales of Pirx the Pilot
David Simon & Edward Burns, The Corner
Michael Lewis, Moneyball
Bob Woodward & Scott Armstrong, The Brethren
Jack Vance, The Dragon Masters
OK
James Tiptree, Jr., Ten Thousand Light Years from Home
Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander
Herman Wouk, City Boy
Iain M. Banks, The Algebraist
Michael Moorcock, Gloriana
Haruki Murakami, Underground
Tad Williams, The War of the Flowers
Elmore Leonard, Glitz
John Le Carre, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Philip Roth, The Human Stain
Bad
E.L. Doctorow, The Book of Daniel
Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian
Jeff VanderMeer, Shriek: An Afterword
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
China Mieville, King Rat
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang
Michael Swanwick, The Iron Dragon's Daughter
Short update
February 7, 2007 (11:32 PM) ( link ) I've been gone a little while, but I'm hoping to do some catch-up work on this site. First, a slight redesign, most of which is already in place. Second, completing reviews for a huge backlog of books. The reason I've been silent so long is that my todo list for this site became too daunting. So I'm ruthlessly slashing my conception of what needs to get done. Voila: instant progress.
I've been debating for some time whether I should continue writing reviews, now that I'm working. At the outset my concern was with the propriety of writing publicly while working for a law firm. But, on second thought, I don't think that working at a law firm should shut down my non-law life. So although my other site may be quiescent for now, while I figure out what to do with it, this one deserves to be restarted.
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