Thus far, I have read two Barbara Vine books, the other being Anna’s Book, and I have liked them both very much. But then I read three books she wrote as Ruth Rendell, and they were meh reads at best, with some weird stuff about women having nervous conditions, and I decided Ruth Rendell / Barbara Vine was just not for me. However, I bought A Dark-Adapted Eye at the book sale last year, in the faint hope that Barbara Vine would pull through after all, and then, because the hope was quite faint, I ignored the book I had…
47 CommentsCategory: 4 Stars
If you liked A Game of Thrones for its tight plotting and political machinations, you should like the sequels also. That is what I say. Martin’s writing does not make my heart sing, nor do his characters possess the depth and intricacy of, say, Chaim Potok’s. But my stars, the man can handle the plot. How his brain can contain all these plot strands is beyond me. I sometimes went slightly into character overload — the Dornishmen and the Iron Islands guys and particularly the gangs of scavengers were too many for me. When they get removed from their natural…
27 CommentsI have now read two of Brian Friel’s plays (this one on the recommendation of my theater-savvy coworker) and I have determined that I am strongly in favor of him. Ordinarily I do not seek out the Lit’rature of Ireland, ancestral home though it is.1 Because the Lit’rature of Ireland seems terribly depressing, and even when it is Breakfast on Pluto and produced both that darling little film with Cillian Murphy and the excellent line about “his disagreeing face, disagreeing because it is as if he is saying ‘you can say this is happening but I don’t agree with you’”…
19 CommentsI meant to sneak this post in under the wire for National Poetry Month, but April came to a rapid and surprising end before I was able to. Never mind. The Anthologist is a book for all seasons. The Anthologist follows the slightly scattered thoughts of poet Paul Chowder about poetry and life as he struggles to produce an introduction to an anthology of poetry he’s editing. Historically I have not been a fan of books with thin plots, or books about alienated writers who have scared off their significant others by being impossible and now need to mope about…
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