It’s hard to right a ~900 page book that can keep a reader’s interest throughout the entire book. Robert Jordan lost this ability about five books ago in the Wheel of Time series. Neal Stephenson managed it with Cryptonomicon, but not with the Baroque Cycle. Susanna Clarke manages it admirably with her debut brick novel.
I […]
I Know This Much Is True has been sitting in my pile for a few months now — my mom sent it to me to read after she got it from my aunt. My expectations weren’t particulalrly high, though I’m not sure why — but once I started reading I found it increasingly hard to […]
Better written than The DaVinci Code and Angels & Demons (a book which I read in one night only because I disliked it so much and wanted to finish the damn thing), to which it will certainly be compared. Really they don’t have much in common, The Dante Club is fairly straight literary historical fiction […]
Living in North Carolina has given me a new perspective on hurricanes (I was waiting for the bus when out first hit), which probably made this book all the more engrossing. When I first started reading Isaac’s Storm, I was mostly annoyed by the author’s constant recriminations against the hubris of the era (ca. 1900) […]
I avoided temptation once, but eventually I had to give in. It took me quite a while to finish, but I really enjoyed it in the end. Well, actually I didn’t quite like the end but I really enjoyed the rest of the book. I’m afraid that having completed this book has weakened my anti-McSweeney […]
A fascinating history of the Lincoln assasination. The only real problem is that the author’s ego gets in the way a few times. He doesn’t hesitate to criticize past histories and to congratulate himself for his ground breaking work. I don’t know enough about the subject to know one way or the other, but the […]
New reading list
Avoiding tempation at the book store
eighttothebar
soulmusic
onlinecommunities
I love books! So needless to say, I think All Consuming is great fun. You can see the books I’m reading over there on the right. The site has a SOAP API as well, so more entertainment may be forthcoming.
Then again, I always say that and I never do anything about […]
Finished.. Thoughts coming soon.
Review: The House of Sand and Fog
Verdict: Hated it
Absolutely annoying examination of the futility of life. Depressing and over the top.