50 Book Pledge #15: James Joyce—Finnegans Wake

Regular readers might remember my original plans to offer regular updates on my trek through Joyce's final and most abstruse work, Finne...

50 Book Pledge #16: Laurent Binet—HHhH: A Novel

If two things in this world have been done to death they are the WWII historical novel and glib, self-referential postmodernism that sideste...

50 Book Pledge #14: Simon Reynolds — Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984

The post-punk era of music charted in Simon Reynolds' Rip It Up and Start Again  constitutes my favorite period of popular (sic) music o...

50 Book Pledge #13: Alan Greenberg—Every Night the Trees Disappear

A Werner Herzog film shoot is an invariably absurd, harrowing thing, and few matched the intensity and insanity of the production of Heart o...

50 Book Pledge #12: Patrick deWitt — The Sisters Brothers

FINALLY getting back to reading after a busy end to my internship and then a week of just being out of it. I took a break from my Finnegans ...

Geoff Dyer — Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room

I mentioned reading this a few weeks back and that a full review was on the way. It's finally up at Spectrum Culture. Zona  was a great ...

50 Book Pledge #6: Philip Pullman — The Golden Compass

Having seen and quickly forgotten the decent 2007 adaptation of this book, I never got around to its source material, which is a shame becau...

Robert K. Massie — Catherine the Great

This could have been a great text. Instead, it feels more like a very good introduction to Catherine II for middle schoolers, maybe high-sch...

50 Book Pledge #5: Albert Camus — The Stranger

A short novel, but the way Camus writes, it'd breeze by at six times the length. His spare style nevertheless burrows deep into his cryp...

50 Book Pledge #4: Robert K. Massie — Catherine the Great

I can't really talk about this at present, as I'm meant to review this intriguing but occasionally narrow-minded biography for Spect...

50 Book Pledge #3: Martin Amis — Money

Like a Bret Easton Ellis novel as written by John Kennedy Toole, Martin Amis' Money  is a savage gutting of the Reagan era as seen throu...

50 Book Pledge #2: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — A Study in Scarlet

BBC's simply fantastic Sherlock  series inspired me to revisit the Sherlock Holmes stories, and I was happy to stumble across some great...

50 Book Pledge #1: Vladimir Nabokov — Pale Fire

Nabokov's Pale Fire  may be even better than his Lolita . A total put-on of a work—consisting of a poem by one "John Shade" an...

Jennifer Egan — A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel/short story collection/who-cares A Visit from the Goon Squad  has racked up enough accolade...

Books I Read in 2011

I fell shamefully behind on reading when I went to college, first overburdened by an engineering course load then spending so much time writ...

Richard Ellmann — James Joyce

Richard Ellmann's James Joyce  is, quite simply, the best artistic biography I've ever read. Like the work of David McCullough, Ellm...

Ulysses, Chapter Six: Hades

Sometimes, despite my best effort to get as close a reading as possible, I find myself zipping through a book, so caught up in its narrative...

Ulysses, Chapter Five: The Lotus Eaters

Well, dear readers, we move from the waste management system to the playground. Yes, where the digestive system formed the anatomical refere...