Notes and reflections on reading.
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) is the debut novel by the American author Carson McCullers. She was 23 at the time of publication. The novel is about a deaf man, John Singer, and the people he encounters in a depression-era town in Georgia. Among the characters who gravitate towards Singer is Mick Kelly, a young girl with a passion for music and a longing for a more meaningful existence. Mick finds solace in her interactions with Singer, who...
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John W. Campbell Jr. wrote Who Goes There? was published in 1938. The story revolves around a group of scientists in Antarctica. They discover an alien life form trapped in the ice and struggle to survive as the alien threatens to infiltrate and take over their bodies. The scientists, stationed at an isolated research outpost, uncover a crashed spacecraft buried beneath the ice. Within it, they find a frozen alien creature. As they thaw it out, they realize that it...
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Alfred Kazin’s classic portrait of immigrant life in the early decades of the twentieth century, A Walker in the City is a tour of tenements, subways, and synagogues—but also a universal story of the desires and fears we experience as we try to leave our small, familiar neighborhoods for something new. With vivid imagery and sensual detail—the smell of half-sour pickles, the dry rattle of newspapers, the women in their shapeless flowered housedresses—Alfred Kazin recounts his boyhood walks through this...
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via Thomas Pynchon’s intro: "Oakley Hall’s legendary Warlock revisits and reworks the traditional conventions of the Western to present a raw, funny, hypnotic, ultimately devastating picture of American unreality. First published in the 1950s, at the height of the McCarthy era, Warlock is not only one of the most original and entertaining of modern American novels but a lasting contribution to American fiction. "Tombstone, Arizona, during the 1880’s is, in ways, our national Camelot: a never-never land where American virtues...
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Chinese author Liu Cixin wrote The Three-Body Problem , which was published in 2008. It is the first book in the “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” trilogy. The story weaves together elements of physics, politics, and human nature, taking readers on a journey that spans both time and space. The novel begins during the Cultural Revolution in China, where a young astrophysicist named Ye Wenjie witnesses her father’s death at the hands of Red Guards. This traumatic event sets the stage...
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Foucault’s Pendulum is Umberto Eco’s novel of a few Milanese book editors who are bored with their work. To pass the time they cook up an elaborate hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with occult groups across the centuries. Becoming obsessed with their creation, they produce a map. The map indicates the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled. It’s a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum. But in a fateful...
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Jonathan Letham wrote Motherless Brooklyn , which was published in 1999. The novel tells the story of Lionel Essrog, a private detective with Tourette’s syndrome. Lionel works for a small detective agency in Brooklyn, New York, run by Frank Minna. Minna serves as a mentor and father figure to him. When Frank is fatally shot during a routine investigation, Lionel becomes determined to find his killer. As Lionel delves deeper into the investigation, he navigates the gritty streets of Brooklyn,...
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Bras Cubas is one of the weirdest books I’ve read in a while and it doesn’t feel like it was written in the 19th century. Published in 1881, the novel has a unique style of short, erratic chapters shifting in tone and style. Instead of the clear and logical construction of a normal nineteenth-century realist novel, The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (full title) makes use of surreal devices of metaphor and playful narrative construction. It is considered the first...
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Now in a third edition, Robert M. Sapolsky’s acclaimed and successful Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers features new chapters on how stress affects sleep and addiction. It also includes new insights into anxiety and personality disorder and the impact of spirituality on managing stress. As Sapolsky explains, most of us do not lie awake at night worrying about whether we have leprosy or malaria. Instead, the diseases we fear are illnesses brought on by the slow accumulation of damage. Such...
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A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel by American novelist John Kennedy Toole which reached publication in 1980. It took eleven years after Toole’s suicide to find an audience. Toole’s mother brought the work to Walker Percy and then he to his publisher. The book became first a cult classic, then a mainstream success. A Confederacy of Dunces earned Toole a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981 external link . The novel chronicles Ignatius’ misadventures as he navigates...
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A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller Jr., first published in 1959. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the book spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz preserve the surviving remnants of man’s scientific knowledge until the world is again ready for it. (wikipedia)
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19th century Russian writer Anton Chekhov wrote the drama Uncle Vanya . Set in rural Russia during the late 19th century, the story revolves around the lives of an extended family & friends. The central character is Uncle Vanya. He is a middle-aged professor who feels disillusioned with his life and bitter about his wasted potential. The play explores themes of unfulfilled dreams, unrequited love, and the human capacity for self-deception. Uncle Vanya is infatuated with Yelena, the young and...
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Kazuo Ishiguro sets Klara and the Sun in a dystopian future when some children are genetically engineered for enhanced academic ability. On-screen tutors provide educations. Society limits socialization so parents who can afford it often buy their children androids as companions. Klara, one such android companion, is the narrator of the book. A teenage girl named Josie picks out Klara and has her mother purchase her. Josie suffers from an unspecified illness, and her mother hopes that Klara will provide...
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Black Rain (黒い雨, Kuroi Ame) is a novel by Japanese author Masuji Ibuse. Ibuse began serializing Black Rain in the magazine Shincho in January 1965. The novel is based on historical records of the devastation caused by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The book alternates between Shizuma Shigematsu’s journal entries and other characters from August 6–15, 1945, Hiroshima, and the present. The present time in the novel takes place several years later. At this time Shigematsu and his wife Shigeko...
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Harlan Ellison wrote City on the Edge of Forever for Star Trek, which was never used in its original form. It took more than ten months for Gene Roddenberry to rewrite Ellison’s work. Steven W. Carabatsos and D. C. Fontana, both story editors on the show, undertook re-writes of the teleplay, and changes have also been attributed to producer Gene L. Coon. The experience led to animosity between Ellison and Roddenberry for the rest of the latter’s life, in particular...
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Cowboy Graves: Three Novellas is a collection of three short works by the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. It was posthumously published by Alfaguara in September 2017. An English translation by Natasha Wimmer was published by Penguin Press on 16 February 2021. The book collects three short pieces, Cowboy Graves , French Comedy of Horrors , and Fatherland . It is accompanied by an afterword by Juan Antonio Masoliver Ródenas as well as a note on the text by Bolaño’s widow,...
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Eudora Welty wrote the short story “Why I Live at the PO”. It is a first-person narrative that revolves around the character known as Sister. She recounts the events leading up to her decision to leave her family home. She moves to the local post office instead (P.O.). Welty narrates “Why I Live at the PO” with Sister’s somewhat unreliable voice. Sister describes her family dynamics. They are filled with conflict and dysfunction. She feels overshadowed and mistreated by her...
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The Cyberiad are the stories of Trurl and Klapaucius, master inventors and engineers known as “constructors,” who have created marvels for kingdoms. Friends and rivals, they are constantly outdoing and challenging each other to reveal the next great evolution in cybernetics, and the exploits of these brilliant men are nothing short of incredible. From tales of love, in which a robotic prince must woo a robotic princess enchanted by pleasures of true flesh, to epics of battle, in which the...
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E.L. Doctorow authored Ragtime, a historical novel, and it was published in 1975 . Set in the early 20th century, the story weaves together the lives of fictional and historical figures, capturing the spirit of an era marked by rapid social and cultural changes.The narrative follows three primary storylines that converge throughout the novel. The first revolves around an upper-class white family living in New Rochelle, New York. The family consists of the Father, Mother, and their Younger Brother. One...
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Zadie Smith authored Intimations , which was published in 2020 amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic. The book reflects on the unprecedented times and offers Smith’s observations and reflections on various aspects of life during this period. The essays in “Intimations” touch on a range of topics, including the impact of the pandemic, racial injustice, social inequality, and the role of art in times of crisis. Smith explores the ways in which the pandemic has exposed and exacerbated existing societal issues,...
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Brazilian author Paulo Coelho wrote The Alchemist to make himself a legend. Just my guess. We follow an Andalusian shepherd named Santiago who embarks on a quest to discover his personal legend. Or his ultimate purpose or destiny in life. Whatever, right? Santiago’s journey takes him from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a hidden treasure. Along the way, he encounters a series of characters who serve as mentors and guides. Melchizedek, the king of...
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Rasselas, the fourth son of the King of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia), is shut up in a beautiful valley called The Happy Valley, “till the order of succession should call him to the throne”. Rasselas enlists the help of an artist who is also known as an engineer to help with his escape from the Valley by plunging out through the air, though they are unsuccessful in this attempt. Rasselas grows weary of the factitious entertainments of the place and, after...
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The Silmarillion is the tale of the creation of the world. In the First Age, is the ancient drama to which the characters in The Lord of the Rings look back and in whose events some of them, such as Elrond and Galadriel, took part. The three Silmarils were jewels created by Fëanor, the most gifted of the Elves. Within them was imprisoned the Light of the Two Trees of Valinor before the Trees themselves were destroyed by Morgoth, the...
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Known to millions as the preeminent swashbuckler of the silver screen, Errol Flynn was a complex man who lived a life far more adventurous than any of his films. In My Wicked, Wicked Ways , Flynn reveals himself to be a self-aware and cosmopolitan devotee of excitement and pleasure. With gusto, he recalls his years as a soldier of fortune in the South Seas, his trip to war-torn Spain, his battles in Hollywood with studio honchos (Jack Warner was a...
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The novel follows Professor Jack Gladney, who teaches Hitler studies at a small liberal arts college in rural New York. He lives there with his fourth wife Babette and their blended family. Jack is obsessed with avoiding death and stockpiles iodine tablets in case of a chemical spill from a nearby plant. One day while shopping at the local mall with his family, a strange toxic cloud appears and they have to evacuate. This event sparks an existential crisis in...
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With a career that spanned more than half a century, William Trevor is regarded as one of the best anglophone writers. Now, in William Trevor’s Last Stories , the master storyteller delivers ten exquisitely rendered tales. Nine have never been published in book form before. The stories illuminate the human condition. Subtle yet powerful, Trevor gives us insights into the lives of ordinary people. We encounter a tutor and his pupil, whose lives are thrown into turmoil when they meet...
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Year of the Monkey is a collection of reality-blended fictional picaresque essays that only Patti Smith can write. Following a run of New Year’s concerts at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, in which she debates intellectual grifters and spars with the likes of a postmodern Cheshire Cat. Then, in February...
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Humboldt’s Gift , which Saul Bellow initially intended to be a short story, is a roman à clef about Bellow’s friendship with the poet Delmore Schwartz. It explores the changing relationship between art and power in a materialist America. This theme is addressed through the contrasting careers of two writers, Von Humboldt Fleisher (to some degree a version of Schwartz) and his protégé Charlie Citrine (to some degree a version of Bellow himself). Fleisher yearns to lift American society through...
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In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, Saunders shares a version of his writing class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. In the introduction of A Swim in a Pond in...
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Doctor Friendly has just died, but he moves “out of blackest sleep” to find himself surrounded by doctors and on the deathbed of a man in whose body he is imprisoned. After weeks of improving in the hospital, he is sent home to his affable, melting-pot, primary-colors existence in suburban America. As Friendly breaks up with his lovers in a prelude to seducing them and mangles his patients before he sends them home, his life races backward toward the one...
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