Category: book reviews

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I Think, Therefore Who Am I?: Memoir of a Psychedelic Year, by Peter Weissman

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In the film The Limey (Steven Soderbergh, 1999), the record producer Terry Valentine offers his girlfriend an evocative speech describing the Sixties. “Did you ever dream about a place you never really recall being to before?  A place that maybe only exists in your imagination?  Some place far away, half remembered when you wake up.  When you were there, though, you knew the language.  You knew your way around.  That was the sixties.” After a pause, he continues.  “No.  It wasn’t that either.  It was just ’66 and early ’67.  That’s all there was.”  Peter Weissman’s memoir I Think, Therefore … Continue reading I Think, Therefore Who Am I?: Memoir of a Psychedelic Year, by Peter Weissman

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Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes by Will Self

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A Review with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes 1. A Culinary Introduction Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes by Will Self explores and revels in decay and degeneration, gushing with bile and blood.  The quartet of interconnected short stories focus on the liver, a bodily organ with interconnected lobes. The liver functions by processing toxins and connects to the gall bladder.  People also consume liver as a delicacy.  The dish “liver and onions” is a classic in American cuisine.  I have eaten deer liver with onions and I enjoy the taste.  Prior to preparing … Continue reading Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes by Will Self

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Journey to the End of the Night (1932), by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

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In the black heart of the Great Depression, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler rose to power, Louis-Ferdinand Cèline set the French literary scene afire with Journey to the End of the Night.  By turns darkly comical, hallucinatory, and picaresque, the novel charts the misadventures of Bardamu.  From the trenches of the First World War to French colonial Africa to New York City and Detroit, Bardamu experiences each place with his own jaundiced eyes.  Eventually he returns back to suburban Paris, a small-time doctor working with impoverished patients.  Bardamu is not alone.  His friend, one Robinson, accompanies him as … Continue reading Journey to the End of the Night (1932), by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

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The Temptation of St. Anthony by Gustave Flaubert

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A work of singular genius.  The plot is simple: Anthony, a monk, goes out to the desert to meditate, gets tempted.  But what temptations!  Flaubert pulls out all the stops in a decadent, phantasmagorical, hallucinatory, excessively brilliant novel.  While the book is written like a play, it is clearly a novel, since staging this would be impossible. (Maybe Terry Gilliam or Michel Gondry could film it?) Our benighted monk gets tempted by all manner of beasts, demons, and sexy ladies, while the reader is treated to a panoply of cults, heresies, and sects, fighting for his attention. While a literary … Continue reading The Temptation of St. Anthony by Gustave Flaubert

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Hard Times by Charles Dickens

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Yuck! Soot, coal, suffering. Rinse, lather, repeat. Even by the standards of Dickens’ classic sentimentality for the underdog, this novel is a dud. Probably not the best introduction to Charles Dickens unless you want your child to enjoy the pleasures of never reading again. This novel makes Zola’s Germinal, also about downtrodden coal miners, seem like a work of candy-colored upbeat positivity. Dickens’s advice to coal miners getting steamrolled by the Man. Continue reading Hard Times by Charles Dickens

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Sex Scandal America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming, by David Rosen

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“Americans love sex scandals, and nothing better tells the story of American than sex scandals.”  So begins David Rosen’s Sex Scandal America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming.  Sensational title aside, Rosen charts the hidden history of America from the erotic shenanigans of the Puritans to the erotic shenanigans of Eliot Spitzer, Larry Craig, and Ted Haggard.  Rosen does a magnificent job of placing sex scandals into a historical context.  Each era derived specific things from the sex scandals.  These sex scandals found use as either cautionary tales or political fodder or entertainment. Rosen remains even-handed on a topic … Continue reading Sex Scandal America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming, by David Rosen

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Battle for the Abyss (The Horus Heresy, Book 8) by Ben Counter

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Battle for the Abyss by Ben Counter begins with the construction of the gigantic battleship, the Furious Abyss, within the hollow center of Thule, a moon of Saturn.  The Mechanicum construct the ship using the ancient technologies they preserve.  Unbeknownst to the Emperor, the Mechanicum build the massive warship for the Word Bearer Traitor Legion.  Those familiar with the Cylon basestars of Battlestar Galactica will recognize the Furious Abyss.  Heavily armed and holding a contingent of fighters, the Furious Abyss is an intimidating force.  Unlike the sleek basestars, the Furious Abyss resembles a giant battlestar with Chartres Cathedral sitting on … Continue reading Battle for the Abyss (The Horus Heresy, Book 8) by Ben Counter

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Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder (1945) by Evelyn Waugh

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In Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot, Pozzo remarks, “They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.”  Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh represents one of those lights gleaming in the darkness between the grave of the First World War and the impending night of the Second.  The novel, published in 1945, is the reminiscence of Captain Charles Ryder.  The story opens with Captain Ryder’s Army Company transferring to Castle Marchmain, an estate all too familiar to him.  Since he looks back on the past, a heady mix of nostalgia and satire … Continue reading Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder (1945) by Evelyn Waugh

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The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: a history of Nazi Germany (Thirtieth Anniversary Edition) by William Shirer

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Nazi Germany.  Hitler.  The SS.  The names bring up connotations ranging from the cinema of Steven Spielberg and Mel Brooks to tasteless political posters at town hall meetings and anti-war protests.  In the eternal words of stand-up comic Bill Hicks: “We’re going in for God and country and democracy and here’s a fetus and he’s a Hitler.”  In our modern age, we have called whatever enemy of convenience a Hitler.  The same phenomenon throughout history with different groups of people thinking the Antichrist was Nero, the Pope, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, FDR, Ronald Wilson Reagan, Ayatollah Khomeini, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bill Clinton, … Continue reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: a history of Nazi Germany (Thirtieth Anniversary Edition) by William Shirer

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