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New Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
February 27, 2007 (2:56 AM) ( link ) ADDED a review of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.
What an astonishing book. Of course, I'm late to this party: better reviews than mine have already effused, and properly so. Suffice it to say that I read this book while (rather uncharacteristically) on a cruise ship steaming through some gorgeous mountain ranges in Alaska, and I barely looked outside until I had read the last page.
I would also be remiss if I didn't point to and heartily recommend this wonderful essay by Clarke, which was posted, of all places, on Crooked Timber.
Writing this review reminded me of how powerful a spell a good book can cast upon the reader. Unfortunately, Black Swan Green, David Mitchell's latest, is pretty awful so far, and I have little hope that it'll pick up.
New Review: The Dress Lodger
February 15, 2007 (4:15 AM) ( link ) ADDED a review of Sheri Holman's The Dress Lodger.
What a book. I'm less thrilled about the review -- I deliberately wrote it in a slightly more formal (some might say overwritten) style, just to see what tone I eventually want to use here. The lesson: not quite this one.
I'm about halfway through The Echo Maker right now. It's good, although the doctor's story is significantly more interesting than the sister's. I'm still not entirely sure what Powers intends to do with the story. Right now everybody appears to be treading water, but I sense vast forces aligning.
On my list after The Echo Maker -- assuming that I stay with fiction -- is David Mitchell's latest, Black Swan Green. If I go with nonfiction I might read Jan Crawford Greenburg's new expose on the Supreme Court, Supreme Conflict, although given my job I'm unlikely to write a review of that.
New Reviews: Viriconium, Cloud Atlas, The Intuitionist
February 9, 2007 (2:53 AM) ( 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 (3:09 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 8, 2007 (2:32 AM) ( 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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