-
"Don't you read the newspapers?" -- a review of Elmore Leonard's Bandits.
From Wednesday, 11 March to Sunday, 15 March, I read Elmore Leonard's Bandits (NY: Arbor House Publishing Company, 1987; ISBN: 0-87795-841-6; 345 pps.).
( Read more... ) -
Reelin' in the fears: a consideration of P.T. Anderson's Inherent Vice.
Saw Inherent Vice last weekend; this is P.T. Anderson's two-and-a-half-hour long adaptation of the eponymous novel by Thomas Pynchon, which is set in So-Cal in 1970, and follows the half-hearted, half-awake ex-cop turned hippie PI Larry "Doc" Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) as he somnambulantly pursues several different cases that he apparently takes ( Read more... ) -
When legend overtakes reality: a review of Widowmakers by Mike Resnick.
From Monday, 12 January 2015 through Sunday, 18 January 2015, I read Mike Resnick's Widowmakers (Science Fiction Book Club omnibus edition of The Widowmaker, The Widowmaker Reborn, and The Widowmaker Unleashed, published by arrangement with Bantam Spectra [a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.], November 1998; ISBN: 1-56865-950 ( Read more... ) -
Dead as Dillinger? -- a review of True Crime by Max Allan Colllins.
From Sunday, 28 December 2014 to Friday, 2 January 2015, I read Max Allan Collins' True Crime (originally published in 1984, but republished by AmazonEncore [Las Vegas, NV] in 2011; ISBN: 978-1-61218-093-9; 481 pps.), on my Kindle.
( Read more... ) -
His omnivorous loyalty: a review of A Perfect Spy by John le Carré.
From Sunday, 19 October 2014 through Sunday, 28 December 2014, I read A Perfect Spy by John le Carré (NY: Scribner [a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.], 2008 [copyright 1986; author introduction copyright 2000]; ISBN: 978-0-7434-5792-7; 600 pps.).
( Read more... ) -
A perfect spy -- or a perfect bore?
I've been intermittently reading John le Carré's 1986 novel A Perfect Spy since October; I'm up to p. 458 (almost to the end of Chapter 13) in the trade paperback edition (which has eighteen chapters and 590 pgs.), and I am more than ready to be finished with it.
Despite the big-love blurbs from the New York Times and Philip Roth (whose work I' ( Read more... ) -
Technical difficulties.
My laptop went down in late June / early July; haven't been able to resurrect it, have no access to another computer. Don't really want to post to LJ from my Kindle, pecking away at the electronic keyboard one character at a time with a gooshy stylus ( Read more... ) -
Hey JC, JC, would you please bite me? -- First reactions to Jerry Cornelius.
Really not feelin' the love for Jerry Cornelius.
I've an ambivalent relationship with Michael Moorcock's work: yes, I recognize how fraggin' seminal it is to science fiction and fantasy, I realize that he's a prime exponent of the British New Wave in science fiction, and any self-respecting, self-described geek, especially one with even a casual ( Read more... ) -
Things that man was not meant to know: a review of Somerset Maugham's The Magician.
From Saturday, 10 May through Thursday, 14 May, I read W. Somerset Maugham's The Magician (originally published in 1908 by Heinemann (London) and in 1909 by Duffield and Company; but I read it in a Project Gutenberg edition in OverDrive Media Console on my Kindle Fire [the Project Gutenberg edition included Maugham's introductory "A Fragment of ( Read more... ) -
I suppose I shouldn't have laughed at this as much as I did.
I've written previously about my ambivalence for the writing of Garth Ennis: while I mostly enjoy his superhero satire / takedown, The Boys, he managed to make his "Boys-verse" nearly as convoluted and contradictory as any decades-long superhero continuity from Marvel and DC, which pretty much defeats the purpose of his satire; and, while I think ( Read more... )