Category: Books
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Book Review: Kurson’s Shadow Divers
Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II Robert Kurson The story of how a group of amateur divers discovered the wreck of a German U-boat off the coast of New Jersey in 1991. Yes, that’s right, 1991. It’s a pretty…
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Book Review: Cline’s The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction
The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction Eric H. Cline The title says it all. This introduction is focused on the history of the war itself, and the changing nature of our knowledge of it, and doesn’t spend much time on the literary aspects of the works (Iliad, et al) which have arisen around the…
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Book Review – Diaz’s Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Diaz I’m late to the Diaz game, so probably you’ve already read this. If not, here goes: this is the story of awkward overweight SF fan Oscar Wao and his family. Its also a lot more than that. Diaz uses the Wao family to tell the story of modern Dominican…
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“I needed to focus on running for the love of running” Boston Bound Author Elizabeth Clor on Anxiety, Running Performance, and Qualifying for Boston
Early this year I received a Boston Qualifier Questionnaire from a Elizabeth Clor. In her write up she mentioned that there’d been some ups and downs on her road to a BQ, including some performance anxiety in trying to get to the race. Well now, Elizabeth has written a book, Boston Bound, about her…
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Review: Carson’s Red Doc>
Red Doc> Anne Carson A bit too much. As deeply as I loved Autobiography of Red, and as badly as I wanted to like this this, Red’s kinda sorta sequel, Red Doc> was too avant garde for me. Ostensibly, this is the story of what happened to Geryon, the protagonist of the Autobiography, when he…
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Review: Carson’s Autobiography of Red
Autobiography of Red Anne Carson Carson’s masterpiece of dysfunctional families, adolescent angst, love, and heart break as told (kinda, sorta) through an interpretation of the missing fragments of Stesichorus’ Geryoneïs and an imagining of was lost to history. It’s a strange book. There is a daring translation of some of what remains of Stesichorus’s work,…
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Review: Stesichorus’s Complete works in Greek Lyric
Complete Works of Stesichorus Stesichorus A Greek poet of whom no complete work survives, Stesichorus isn’t someone I’d read if Anne Carson hadn’t used his work for her stunning Autobiography of Red. This complete edition of the poets work has some beautiful parts, and, as all that survives are fragments, it reads like a work…
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Review: Delany’s The Mad Man
The Mad Man The first Delany book I read, and what an introduction. There’s no point in starting this review off with anything other than the obvious – this book is full of detailed sexual adventures of men with other men. It is graphic, and there are portions (including accounts of corporphila and more) that…
Milo and the Calf 