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Book Reviews and CriticismNovels
An Accidental Family (The Adolescent) — Fyodor Dostoevsky. Powerful, underrated portrait of adolescence in crisis.
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare — Henry Miller. Henry Miller's On The Road.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland — Lewis Carroll.
The Celestine Prophecy — James Redfield. A fantasy validation of New Age beliefs.
A Clockwork Orange — Anthony Burgess. Interesting little book might have been forgotten but for Kubrick’s movie. < Cracking India — Bapsi Sidhwa. An engaging and extremely well-written story of a young girl growing up in Pakistan, at the time of the partition of India.
The Corrections. — Jonathan Franzen. A funny, convincing portrait of an American family at the end of the 20th century.
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues — Tom Robbins. Clever language shrouding a weak story with philosophical trappings.
The Crying of Lot 49 — Thomas Pynchon. Pynchon's short masterpiece on the distortion of communication leads to innumerable interpretations.
The Fourth Hand — John Irving. John Irving must have quickly dashed off and polished this funny, feather-light book.
Freedom — Jonathan Franzen. Franzen solidifies his reputation with a worthy follow-up to The Corrections
Gravity's Rainbow — Thomas Pynchon. "Gravity's Rainbow: The V-2 Rocket Cartel as Multinational Corporate Conspiracy". At its center, Pynchon's great novel shows us the nature of corporate power during World War II.
The Handmaid's Tale — Margaret Atwood.
Hapworth 16, 1924 — J.D. Salinger. Salinger's anticlimatic last published work on the Glass family.
Inherent Vice — Thomas Pynchon. Pynchon for the Masses! A funny, nostalgic surprise for Pynchon fans everywhere.
J.D. Salinger – In Memoriam. Future generations may never understand the unique affection Salinger's readers felt for Salinger and his characters.
Life After God — Douglas Coupland. Gen-X Fast Food
Look Homeward, Angel — Thomas Wolfe. Beautiful passages, pasted together by Scribners editor Max Perkins.
Outer Dark — Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy's vision is unrelentingly dark.
The Picture of Dorian Gray — Oscar Wilde.
The Prague Cemetery — Umberto Eco. A fascinating blend of history and fiction.
A Prayer for Owen Meany — John Irving. The Sorrow of American Sports. Another funny John Irving production.
A Son of the Circus — John Irving. As hilarious as anything he's written.
Swann's Way — Marcel Proust. I agree with the publisher who said: "I fail to see why it takes thirty pages to describe a man turning over in bed." Yet the Swann-Odette courtship is a profound meditation on desire.
Tyrannicide: The Story of the Second American Revolution (a novel) — Evan Keliher. Hilarious skewering of DC corruption.
Vineland — Thomas Pynchon. America as a "Scabland Garrison State"
A Widow for One Year — John Irving. Hilarious opening is not sustained.
Winesburg, Ohio — Sherwood Anderson. Novel or stories? Plays
The Cocktail Party — T.S. Eliot. A play with rhythmic dialogue and ponderous themes. Philosophy
The Genealogy of Morals — Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's greatest work, featuring sustained arguments rather than incisive fragments.
The Holographic Universe — Michael Talbot. Is the universe one big hologram?
Man's Search for Meaning — Viktor Frankl. Frankl's Logotherapy School (discovering our purpose heals us) was inspired by Frankl's own experience as a concentration camp survivor.
Parables of Kierkegaard — Soren Kierkegaard. More readable than most philosophy. Kierkegaard's fascinating, little stories illustrate his theories.
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature — Richard Rorty. For Rorty, philosophy is one part of a changing cultural dialogue that will always address the questions of one era, without having answered any previously asked philosophical questions.
The Psychoanalytic Movement — Ernest Gellner. Probing and hilarious critique of the West's embrace of psychoanalysis to describe behavior and emotion. Religion
The Book of J — Harold Bloom. Genesis is great literature, not the intended foundation of world religions.
The Four Noble Truths — The Dalai Lama. Excellent summary of Buddhist tenets
The Gnostic Gospels — Elaine Pagels. Controversial history of early Christianity
The Gospel According to Jesus — Stephen Mitchell. A noted translator's attempt to identify the authentic sayings of Jesus, and uncover their spiritual meaning.
The Kabbalah of Money — Rabbi Nilton Bonder. Money is an ineffable mystery. But it’s ok to make lots of it.
Omens of Millenium — Harold Bloom. Strange, fascinating work on Gnosticism, religious history
Zen At Work — Les Kaye. IBM was nice and let the author be a zen monk. So he wrote about it. Criticism
The Anxiety of Influence — Harold Bloom.
The Conquest of Cool — Thomas Frank. 60s Counterculture as unwitting shill for Madison Avenue
The Erotic Silence of the American Wife — Dalma Heyn. It's OK for women to cheat too.
New Close Readings of The Crying of Lot 49 — Robert E. Kohn
The Western Canon — Harold Bloom. After some anti-PC rants, 26 rich essays on some of the West's greatest books. Politics
The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot — Naomi Wolf. Wolf argues that The Bush Administration took steps toward achieving totalitarianism in America.
No Logo — Naomi Klein. This is THE book of the anti-corporate movement. History
The Dutch Republic - During this Golden Age, the Netherlands became the richest, most progressive, and technologically advanced country in Europe. Amsterdam became the financial capital and entrepôt of Western Europe.
The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution — Barbara Tuchman. Barbara Tuchman's compelling view on the American Revolution highlights the key role played by The Netherlands in the struggle, first as arms merchant via Saint Eustatius (Dutch Antilles), and later as creditor and ally.
The Island at the Centre of the World: The Untold Story of the Founding of New York — Russell Shorto. The Dutch impact on New York (New Amsterdam) was much greater than you think.
Nixonland — Rick Perlstein. Colorful, electric chronicle of the political history of 1964-72, and the Nixonian comeback (and repression).
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy — Jacob Burckhardt. Often hilarious account of political struggles in Renaissance Italy.
From Dawn to Decadence — Jacques Barzun. Masterful survey of western civilization since Renaissance finds 20th century to be without much decent art since Cubism.
Modern Times — Paul Johnson. An engaging portrait of the giant political figures during the 20th century, the age of moral relativism. Technology
Engines of Creation — K. Eric Drexler. Nanotechnology. How will it all turn out?
How Buildings Learn — Stewart Brand. Buildings should be designed for reuse, not for magazine covers. |
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