Autobiography of a Face by Lucy GrealyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars This searing autobiography, written with intense poetic grace, stands as a matchless memorial to a writer who was scarred deeply and whose life ended before she could produce … Continue reading →
The Instrumentality of Mankind by Cordwainer SmithMy rating: 4 of 5 stars The strangeness of Cordwainer Smith as a writer only deepens when one reads the story of Paul Linebarger, who is the person behind the pseudonym. The stories of … Continue reading →
The Female Man by Joanna RussMy rating: 5 of 5 stars This is one of the essential books in the world. Four women in parallel worlds intersect and collide, their views on their own sex unfolding: Jeannine, Janet, Jael, and … Continue reading →
So I am a cautious optimist at times within a framework of low expectations in general, and today I am thinking, well, white people expressing outrage about racism is not a new phenomenon. But it has never made any particular … Continue reading →
Memento Mori by Muriel SparkMy rating: 4 of 5 stars Muriel Spark is a master of the compact, taut novel that bites in many directions, and this is the work of hers that I have read most often. I did … Continue reading →
Dreams of Sleep by Josephine Humphreys My rating: 4 of 5 stars This was the second Josephine Humphreys book I read and the first that she wrote; this is sparely beautiful in tone and the prose flows so simply and … Continue reading →
Bleeder: A Memoir by Shelby SmoakMy rating: 4 of 5 stars I gave a blurb for this book when it was published, before I met Shelby at a meeting of a hemophilia support group in North Carolina. I suffer from … Continue reading →
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu My rating: 5 of 5 stars I have read the Seidensticker translation three times and this one by Royall Tyler once. The novel itself is superb and deserves its reputation in every way. … Continue reading →
The Golden Days by Xueqin CaoMy rating: 5 of 5 stars This book is also called Dream of the Red Chamber in English, with other variants like that. I have read several translations of this book, nearly all of them … Continue reading →
Parade’s End by Ford Madox FordMy rating: 3 of 5 stars Ford is a puzzle for me; he has such a sublime sentence gift, and he maintains it at such a level. The series of books here is masterful in … Continue reading →