Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
I think when I first this book, I was sort of in the haze of having read The Corrections a few times, and in the somewhat backlash to Franzen. Now, I feel like there’s been a kind of Franzennaisance. In this new world, his novels are a little more familiar and even with the middling reviews for Purity helped to create a stabilizing of the market, so to speak. Anyway, re-reading the novel now, I liked it a lot better. One of the elements that […]
Soldier's Pay by William Faulkner
William Faulkner wrote I think four novels that took place outside of his fictional Yoknapatawpha County. Others take place in other places but explicitly refer back to the county as well. This is one of those novels. It’s also his first novel, and it’s also one of his few works that takes on the idea of flying, this and his novel Pylon, and a handful of stories. He was fascinating by flying and tried to join the US Army’s flying corps, the British flying corps, […]
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
I am teaching Hamlet again this year, and so I reread it this weekend to remember it before I read it a few more time to build the unit for the students. Later I will let the students review it too. Rereading it it’s hard not to remember how funny, weird, and brilliant Hamlet is, how frustrating he is as a character, and how much he really needs to look at some of the many different foils the play offers up for ways to act. […]
Devil House by John Darnielle
If you thought this was a horror novel going forward, so be it, but don’t write an angry review about it. Admit your mistake and move on. That’s my advice to the Goodreads readers who are SO MAD that this was different than they imagined. And partly this is unfortunate because I think this is a very good novel and it’s beautifully written. The novel itself is broken into several long sections that circulate around a true crime writer who is taking on a murder […]
Four Hundred Souls A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 by Ibram X Kendi, editor; Keisha Blain, editor
This book is a solid companion piece to The 1619 Project, even though they are not expressly connected. I mentioned in a review for that book that it’s clearly positioned as part of a conversation, not the conversation itself. The structure of the book is to take big thematic historical essays about topics or concepts and trace them through history from the far past through time to the present. In addition, there are lots of interpolations of poetry and facts to supplement the essays. This book works […]
A Search for the King by Gore Vidal
This short early novel by Gore Vidal takes on the story of Blondel and Richard I. If you are like me and don’t or didn’t know the story, basically, Blondel is a famous French troubadour, who befriended Richard during one of his Crusades, and when Richard was captured and imprisoned by the Leopold, Emperor of Austria, and held for ransom. In the novel, Blondel helps to rescue Richard from this captivity and then proceeds to fight alongside him against King John in Nottingham, restoring his […]