What I've Finished Reading

In the end I decided to keep A Confederacy of Dunces, though I don't know why I should. The beginning is good and the last two or three pages are good and in between there are a lot of almost unbearably tedious set pieces, but I like Mrs. Reilly and Santa and the hapless old John Bircher and Darlene's boffo bird act. And ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

Not much! Uninteresting circumstances have made it hard for me to concentrate this week, so I didn't get far with any books that aren't super easy to read. I finished Mort, in which Death takes a human apprentice and tries to get a more relaxing job "maybe something nice with cats or flowers." The apprentice screws ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

The Adventures of Sally by P. G. Wodehouse was delightful, unexpectedly sweet (even for Wodehouse) and a much more successful use of Comedy American tropes than poor old Psmith Journalist. Sally is a young American heiress who has just come into a large fortune and hopes to use it to benefit her friends and family. ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading
“What the hell?” growled Swoozie. “Get up, you stupid bastard ( Read more... )

What I've Just Finished Reading

Strangers and Brothers, which I spent a long time dreading due to its being the start of an 11-novel series snuck into Burgess' 99 novels as a single work, was not bad at all. The prose is curiously transparent, like a YA novel, or like what you might expect fanfiction for a TV show to be like -- all dialogue, ( Read more... )