0702 | Did Muhammad Exist? | Robert Spencer
Oh, what a question? How could you even ask that? But, yes, this is exactly the kind of question Islam should be subjected to. For the last 200 years, beginning…
0697 | The Madness of Crowds | Douglas Murray
Boy, I needed this. A birthday present from my sister that really hit the spot. Murray is a gay Spectator magazine columnist so not exactly the kind of writer I…
0692 | The Professor’s House | Willa Cather
This is the moving story of a man reaching the end of himself. In many ways, it reminded me of Rosshalde. We have a man who has achieved much yet…
0660 | The War of the End of the World | Mario Vargas Llosa
A very good long read which has all the intensity of the most roasted Brazilian coffee you can imagine. There’s a lot of conflict here so steer clear if you’re…
0659 | Reasons to Live | Amy Hempel
A book of short stories that are very easy to read and very engaging. I would probably read this again if I came across it again. Sadly, I had no…
0647 | Labyrinths | Jorge Luis Borges
When you read, you bring something of yourself to the book so that you can interpret what you’re being told according to your previous reading, your life experience and your…
0637 | Rosshalde | Herman Hesse
This beautiful, sad and moving book is the story of a man at odds with life, himself, his wife and his sons. I enjoyed it very much. Living in luxury…
0629 | The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy | Lawrence Sterne
This is a novel that has, since it’s publication in 1759, divided opinion throughout the ages. It certainly divided mine as you can tell from the review radar below. While…
0628 | Slaughterhouse Five | Kurt Vonnegut
What a genius this man was to write a novel so short, so deceptively simple, so (frankly) bonkers and yet so very relevant not just for the age in which…
0627 | The Untouchable | John Banville
I last read Banville nearly a decade ago. The Sea and The Newton Letter didn’t impress me much. This one was better than both of those put together, I thought….
0623 | The Story of Lucy Gault | William Trevor
What a beautiful novel is Trevor’s paean to loss, regret and life itself. I can’t tell you how it cleansed the palate after the first three books of Updike’s Rabbit…
0620 | Pale Fire | Vladimir Nabokov
It is the mark of genius that most of the world doesn’t get what you are trying to do at all. Such is the case with Nabokov’s Pale Fire, a…
0618 | Rabbit, Run | John Updike
A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I was given a copy of Rabbit is Rich by mistake for a birthday present. I’d asked for Pulitzer Prize winning…
0612 | Portrait of a Lady | Henry James
Many regard Portrait as James’ greatest novel. What they mean by this, of course, is that it’s the easiest to read. Written before James went off on the subordinate clause…
0611 | Germinal | Emile Zola
Britain has The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. The US has The Jungle. France has Germinal. It falls somewhere between the two in terms of its readability, but it is far, far ahead in…
0599 | The Woodlanders | Thomas Hardy
Six down and one more to go of Hardy’s from the 1001 Books List. Unbeknown to me at the time, I actually finished it to within an hour of 80…
0598 | Everything is Illuminated | Jonathan Safran Foer
This is at once one of the funniest and also one of the most tragic novels I’ve experienced in a long time. Safran Foer’s tale of the history of his…
0591 | Buddenbrooks | Thomas Mann
Now this was a Mann novel I could get into. This masterfully told epic of generations of a German family shows their demise from a close family of business leaders…