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Arukiyomi
Walk and read. Live and learn.

good books

0709 | The Triune God | Fred Sanders
non-fiction

0709 | The Triune God | Fred Sanders

Completed16 December, 202012 January, 2021

Having completed The Deep Things of God by Sanders only recently, I was encouraged by that to continue with The Triune God, a book I was having a hard time…

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fiction

0705 | Baltasar and Blimunda | Jose Saramago

Completed17 October, 202028 December, 2020

The last effort from Portugal I endeavoured to read through was the utterly futile Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. It is with great thankfulness that I can report Saramago…

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0703 | No One Writes to the Colonel | Gabriel Garcia Marquez
fiction

0703 | No One Writes to the Colonel | Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Completed17 October, 202012 January, 2021

A book of short stories which is far, far more satisfying than ploughing your way through the tedium that is One Hundred Years of Solitude. What Garcia Marquez has done…

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fiction

0696 | Amongst Women | John McGahern

Completed15 May, 202029 November, 2020

Lyrically written as so many Irish novels are, this centres around the inscrutable patriarch of a rural family. Moran rules his family with an iron fist. He’s an old freedom…

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fiction

0695 | The Sound and the Fury | William Faulkner

Completed28 April, 202027 November, 2020

That said, no one should be harsh on you if you reach the end and still aren’t quite sure what just happened.In fact, Faulkner admitted as such at least obliquely…

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fiction

0688 | Invisible Cities | Italo Calvino

Completed29 March, 20201 September, 2020

Such a little book for so much metaphor. Calvino writes prose that, on the surface of it, is deceptively simple. It’s a lot easier to read than much of Borges…

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fiction

0686 | Inside Mr Enderby | Anthony Burgess

Completed21 March, 202028 August, 2020

Enderby is a poet who parps a lot. He’s basically the early British prototype for Ignatius J. Reilly. He has no love except that of poetry which he composes on…

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fiction

0678 | The Drowned World | J. G. Ballard

Completed6 August, 201920 August, 2020

As one of Ballard’s early works, this is pretty readable, esp. if you’ve ever tried the atrocious witterings of the likes of Crash. It’s sci-fi, and the basic premise is…

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fiction

0677 | The Driver’s Seat | Muriel Spark

Completed4 July, 201916 August, 2020

Strange little book this one at just over 100 pages. In this very short space of time Spark creates Lise, a very memorable character who I was never quite sure…

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fiction

0670 | The Violent Bear it Away | Flannery O’Connor

Completed15 June, 20195 July, 2020

Reads very much like Wharton but with religion as its theme rather than morality. Stark, grim and dark all the way through, a great caution for anyone involved in religion….

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fiction

0657 | Miss Lonelyhearts | Nathanael West

Completed30 April, 20191 April, 2020

A tiny novella which reminded me of The Postman Always Rings Twice or pretty much anything by Raymond Chandler. The protagonist hides behind the pseudonym Miss Lonelyhearts as he writes…

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fiction

0654 | The Museum of Unconditional Surrender | Dubravka Ugresic

Completed13 April, 201931 March, 2020

I can see how this book is important. It appears to be mostly autobiographical and shares memories of a woman which coalesce around the Balkan War and exile from. The…

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0635 | House of Leaves | Mark Danielewski
fiction

0635 | House of Leaves | Mark Danielewski

Completed12 January, 20191 March, 2019

One of the weirdest books you’ll ever read and it looks like he put a tremendous effort into pulling it off. Does he succeed? Not for me, he doesn’t. This…

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fiction

0626 | Eclipse of the Crescent Moon | Geza Gardonyi

Completed22 November, 201825 January, 2019

This is on the 1001 Books list simply because it is a Hungarian classic chronicling the successful defence of Eger Castle from the Ottoman Turks by a vastly outnumbered army….

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fiction

0621 | Rabbit Redux | John Updike

Completed9 October, 201810 November, 2018

After Rabbit, Run comes this. Rabbit’s now settled down but he’s definitely not put the past behind him. He’s in a real dead end job instead of a pretend one,…

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fiction

0617 | The Secret History | Donna Tartt

Completed11 September, 201826 October, 2018

Tartt’s debut novel of a small college clique deciding to knock off one of their own rambles on a bit but is generally an easy read. It suffers from readers…

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1001 | fiction

0614 | Hunger | Knut Hamsen

Completed23 August, 201815 September, 2018

If you’ve not read Crime and Punishment, then this is a good place to start. Far, far shorter, it is nevertheless cram packed with the fevered wanderings of a protagonist…

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fiction

0610 | Fall on Your Knees | Ann-Marie MacDonald

Completed6 June, 201826 August, 2018

About as uplifting as digging out a mass grave, MacDonald’s portrayal of an immigrant family shattered from within by abuse isn’t going to win anyone’s most-loved novel awards. It’s memorable,…

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