I don’t believe I’ve ever read any book that I have more trouble reviewing than Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Though it’s classified as a novel, it is unlike any novel I had read before. In truth, as I read it, I thought of it more as an epic poem than a novel. It seems to… Continue reading Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Author: Keith
The Reserve by Russell Banks
As you read a novel, you do not need to like the protagonists; in fact, it’s possible to hate the main characters and still enjoy the novel. You can sympathize with them, understand their problems, relate to them, recognize their moral dilemmas, and even wish them success towards their goals. All while despising them. Such… Continue reading The Reserve by Russell Banks
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse tells the story about the titular character and his spiritual quest. Siddhartha is the son of a Brahmin, a Hindu priest, who realizes he wasn’t suited for the traditional path towards enlightenment. Along with his friend, Govinda, he joins the Samanas, a sect of ascetics, but even the life of voluntary… Continue reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
Though I have a lot of good things to say about Blonde, I must confess it’s the novel that broke me. I read it as part of my ill-advised feature-writer series about Joyce Carol Oates. The feature-writer series was a short-lived program I started in 2019, where I would focus on one writer a month… Continue reading Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
Dune by Frank Herbert
Is Dune the perfect novel? Of course, perfection is what every piece of art—be it a painting, a sculpture, a poem, a song, a film, or a novel—strives to be. But what does it mean to say something is perfect? I consider some things perfect. Michelangelo’s David is a perfect statue. I remember standing in… Continue reading Dune by Frank Herbert
Up at the Villa by W. Somerset Maugham
Deciding her future, Mary Panton spends the summer in a villa outside Florence, Italy. She’s in a contest between four men. One man, her husband, whom she deeply loved, has died. A gambler, he left her an income, but it’s insufficient for her to maintain her current lifestyle. A second man, Edgar Swift, intends to… Continue reading Up at the Villa by W. Somerset Maugham
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Of all the ghost stories I’ve read in my life, The Turn of the Screw is the one that seems most enigmatic, and therefore, it’s arguably the scariest. If the typical ghost story, for example Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, scares me on a physical or emotional level, Henry James’ novel scares me on a psychological… Continue reading The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Rhythm Section by Mark Burnell
The world will long remember the dramatic events from August to December 1991, when the Soviet Union—the great antagonists to Western Democracies—collapsed under its own weight. I was living in Denver at the time. Since I didn’t own a television and didn’t subscribe to the newspaper, I sheltered myself away from world events. But I… Continue reading The Rhythm Section by Mark Burnell
Coffee Sunday: The Invisible Man; Ad Astra
September has not been the month I wanted it to be. My feature writer this month was Sylvia Plath. Though it began well with a post about her biography and a second post about two of her most famous poems, my progress soon derailed. Why? On an emotional level, it derailed because, though I found… Continue reading Coffee Sunday: The Invisible Man; Ad Astra
Coffee Sunday: ItChapter Two, The Time Machine, Penny Dreadful
Last Sunday, I went to see It Chapter Two. This was my first movie outing in a month. I’m sure there have been some excellent movies released this summer, but I’ve been lukewarm about the choices at my local theater. Since the movies it’s been showing were movies I had decided to wait for home… Continue reading Coffee Sunday: ItChapter Two, The Time Machine, Penny Dreadful