Whenever I read a particularly good book of short stories, I think man, I really gotta do this more often!! I think I pledged that to myself back when I read and reviewed Vanilla Bright, Like Eminem by the always stellar Michel Faber last winter. Now it’s June and I’m just getting to Simon Van Booy’s Love Begins in Winter. Gah! Will it be autumn before I get around to China Mieville’s Looking For Jake? Sigh. But back to the task at hand. In this […]
There’s nothing like a war to bring down morals
This is a well-regarded novel concerning the occupation of Holland in WWII. I had never heard about the ariter or the book itself but a fellow Cannonballer did a review that grabbed my interest. Henri Osewoudt (O) is kind a hapless schlub, seemingly drifting into most things in his life. When he was 10 years old, his mother, who had previously been institutionalized, apprently went off her nut again and killed her husband in the tobacco shop they owned. O is taken in my his […]
The water wins in the end
“When Danglard was in a bad way, the Unsolved Question in the infinite cosmos returned to plague him, as well as the fact that the sun would explode in four billion years, and that humanity was but a miserable and desperate chance occurrence on a piece of matter whirling through space.” Deeper and deeper we go into the world of Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg and his Serious Crime squad with this, the 5th in the series. Other than Danglard’s pondering’s, this novel features two pivotal characters […]
Alot of things are like running way from lava in swim fins
I admit that I am so far behind the curve that the curve is a dot to me. Rather than whine on and on about how I didn’t know about this blog ( and subsequent book) by the fabulous and talented and bracingly honest Ms Brosh, I’m just going tell any and everyone I know that they must read this book. Like right now. I’ll wait. It’s less than ten bucks on Amazon fer crimney’s sake. You spent more on that disappointing Liane Moriarty novel. Every […]