Many friends of mine also liked it a lot. However, I have met those who simply don't get it. I think you can tell in one chapter if you will hate it. Adams has a lot to say and he gets a lot of it into this book. It's mostly comedy laced with social commentary in a scifi setting; I don't care much for scifi as a class, but I liked this a lot. 

It's engrossing, but not a page-turner. Read it when you have emotional and mental cycles available. 

Get the translation by Mirra Ginsburg. 

Effortlessly presented, engaging, and interesting. 

The story is good, Card doesn't waste time on parenthetical crap, and the writing is fair. Scifi fans shouldn't miss it. For others, I'd recommend it if you are up for a dose of 

Most of my reading has been in Penguin editions; I can't speak about various translators. 

These are an ongoing saga of westerners in Asia. They're listed in the chronological order of the stories. 

Better, in a way, is Yoshioka's Musashi. 

Great stuff, sometimes fairly dark. War's impact on Dahl is quite present, but mostly just people stories. Quite English, quite good, never pretentious. 

And that's not all. Another disappointment is the awkward presentation of Oxford, its environs, and its people. Dexter's opinion of detail is apparently to describe the plaque on the side of some actual door, or to explain in detail which street intersects with which. He completely misses conveying the sense that you've been there. Furthermore Dexter overdoes it when establishing Morse's rare and admirable qualities. It's as if he thinks that he can boast more if he only remembers to point out weaknesses as well. Enough, enough, enough. 

I read two or three of these in situations when anything would do for a read. They were so well recommended. Well, I'll save the rest for another hard up moment. 

If you see the movie, my clear choice is the pair with Michael York, Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch, Charlton Heston, et al, from the '70s. It takes both movies to cover this book. 

Fleming was a bit of a jerk, IMHO - he was really into brand names, status symbols, and such. (Look at his author's picture - gun, cigarette, pose - blech.) But the idea of a postwar spy guy who doesn't really care much about living, and who therefore gets life's relish by living on the edge all the time - this works well. Some of the books are really well done. 

If that sounds interesting, go read this. If you're wondering "why would I be interested in stuff like that?" then give it a miss. The writing is pretty good. 

Both books start out needlessly coarse and vulgar. It just isn't needed and the artifice makes it unpleasant. I'm no prude, but I know excess when I read it, and it's here. This was surprising, coming from Fry. Maybe it shouldn't have been, I don't know, but it was. 

So, these are good though bad. Maybe I ought to give them one less star, but in truth I would recommend them to certain people, so given my rating system, I have to give them 3. 

As far as the linguistic showboating is concerned, I think we have some unintentional hypocrisy on Fry's part. He bemoans our current inability to make even tolerable use of our language, then goes on to overexercise a rather esoteric vocabulary. I share his unhappiness over the widespread poor use of language in writing as well as discourse, but I think better-chosen ordinary words are far preferable to the arcana employed in this book. 

It's pretty much what you think, but less hokey than you might suspect. Not a bad thing to leave by the bed. 

This is brilliant satire, frighteningly funny situational concoctions, a wonderful world of personalities. 

Helprin manages to pour out all sorts of comedic comments on the random sillinesses of people and life, intertwined with a good yarn. 

It's a 3000-page pulp scifi monster. Fortunately, the pages go fast, very fast. It's Earth, much later, and the Bad Guys have taken over and Our Hero has to get the Earth back for the natives, overcoming the most powerful race in the galaxy. Stuff happens. You get the idea. 

How good is it? Go to the store or library, grab a copy, open anywhere, and read a paragraph or two. That should be more than enough - Iyer's talent is obvious on every page. 

Karr remains upbeat throughout, like a child might, and has a nice attitude through it all. Some people claim this makes the book "funny" but I couldn't disagree more. No matter how I slice it, it's a downer. Though very well written, sometimes lyrical, I just don't think it was worth it. It's like a picture of an accident. OK, clear enough, but did I have to see that? What for? 

This is fast reading though rich, believable though fantastic, good though profane, entertaining though distressing. I laughed a lot, though maybe I should have cried. Read anecdote after anecdote about boorish foulmouthed egomaniac gluttons who, apparently awash with adrenaline and testosterone, daily juggle hundreds of millions of dollars in pursuit of keeping their cut. 

The title comes form one of the anecdotes regarding Gutfreund, chairman of Salomon Brothers, and Meriwether, one of his chief lieutenants and the best "trader" Lewis ever saw. Apologies for imperfect recall: 

[G walks up to M]

        G: One hand, one million dollars, no tears.

[pause]

        M: If we're going to play, let's play for real money.

           Ten million.

[G's turn to pause]

        G: [turns and walks away] You're crazy

But Ludlum created a style. He writes very fast tense action, often in one word sentences. Many people claim that Ludlum costs them way too much sleep - they cannot put the books down. So, go try The Bourne Identity and if you like it, you'll be in hog heaven for awhile. If you don't, well, you don't like this kind of stuff. 

This book is a perfect gift for someone going to (or recently gone to) Japan. Some help in locating:
ISBN 4-7890-0028-1 ; Library of Congress Catalog Card no. is 75-319087 ; Published 1975. 

This stuff is enjoyable, but it's too selfsimilar to take in gulps. Spread it out and let a year go by between doses of Mayle and you'll like it more (or tire of it less). 

The tale is brain candy and the money-is-cool thing is a bit overdone, but overall a decided thumbs-up. 

Like Anything Considered, this is brain candy. But so what. The story is pleasant enough, and has enough local quirkery to remain interesting. 

By far Mayle's best, this is charming, funny, and fun throughout. 

So, this is social comedy, a little mystery, and lots of use, misuse, and abuse of English country life. I had a little bit of a hard time getting going, then couldn't put it down. 

The style is a bit pedantic and sometimes a touch preachy or self-indulgent, but not so far as to ruin the book. 

Murakami's work is blessed by translation which is simply outstanding. 

Well paced and delivered, it is possibly a confession but never an apology. I actually wish I hadn't stumbled onto this one - it was pretty disturbing.... 

I probably need to check this out again now that I'm older and wiser. Maybe I'm smart enough now that I'll find it better. 

O'Brian's prose and dialog are amazing. His characters are diverse, complete, real, and engaging. They succeed and fail, win and lose. Some describe O'Brian as a masculine Jane Austen (with a bigger dose of intelligent humor added) ... these works are incredible period pieces, taking you completely to a time and place without artifice of any kind. You certainly don't have to care a whit about naval history to adore these books. On the other hand, if that's all you are interested in, you won't find anything better. 

These books comprise a long tale around two men. One is Jack Aubrey of the Navy. He's not an atypical Post Captain of 1810. The other is Stephen Maturin, a Dublin physician of mixed Catalan descent who volunteers as an agent in order to assist in the overthrow of Bonaparte (Stephen loves France, hates Napoleon), Stephen signs on as Ship's Surgeon as a way to see the world (he's an ardent and somewhat known natural philosopher), and the two form a friendship which yields to O'Brian infinite material. 

If you didn't already know it, the things the Royal Navy went through between, say, 1750 and 1812 are entirely amazing. There's no need to invent incredible accomplishments, feats, attempts, or situations because the history provides circumstances which, if not documented, would be beyond belief. If O'Brian's stories weren't available (with different names) in contemporary news, letters, etc, we might find his tales pretty well beyond the limits of credible fiction. 

There are other authors who have attempted this kind of work. O'Brian is by far the best. Forester is very good in a distant second; everyone else is behind in the pack. 

Here are the titles: 

Master and Commander  Post Captain  H.M.S. Surprise  The Mauritius Command  Desolation Island  The Fortune of War

The Surgeon's Mate  The Ionian Mission  Treason's Harbour  The Far Side of the World  The Reverse of the Medal  The Letter of Marque

The Thirteen-gun Salute  The Nutmeg of Consolation  Clarissa Oakes (in USA: The Truelove)  The Wine-dark Sea  The Commodore  The Yellow Admiral

 

This guy and his son are out on a cross-country motorcycle trip. The guy is really into understanding why everything is, and how and why he and others value everything they see and do. He quietly yet compellingly talks of simple things as simple things, yet seems to lay great import on them. He uses the motorcycle's state and maintainance along the way as metaphor for all sorts of life situations: care for the machine: it works; disregard or abuse it: it fails. Etc. 

This book is 25% tale, 75% analysis. It's very interesting, but for some reason I never went back to reread even parts of it, and I never tried to follow up with similar works. Maybe it's a bit too new-age for me. Even so, it's far less self-serving than other stuff I've seen in the genre. 

This is a mood book, essentially another view of the modern American family and life and love. I didn't like certain style effects: in the beginning there are a lot of (too many) non-sentences. Sentences without verbs. Or: Reading sentences without a subject. Happily, Proulx gets over these about 1/3 of the way through and you're left with headlines as the only literary weirdness, and the headlines work fine. Headline Style OK By Reader. 

This book won the National Book Award ('93) and the Pulitzer Prize ('94). I dunno - it seems they could have done better. It's really not bad; it's even good, but it's hardly my idea of a must-read. 

There's all sorts of things here which go a bit far, and some extremely preachy chapters (eg This is John Galt Speaking, and see "So you think that money is the root of all evil?" ), but I think this is a worthwhile read. Even if you disagree with some or all of Rand's conclusions, there's some good stuff here and at least you'll get insight into the other side. I think this is really good for people in their early 20s. 

• Quicksilver's Review 
• Lindsay Perigo's Review 
• An interview with Phil Donahue 
• Commentary by The Atlantic 
• The Objectivism Web Service 
• So, you think that money is the root of evil? 

Drama

Poetry

I was in study hall in high school once, bored, and I blindly reached behind me and grabbed a book. It was this behemoth and I groaned but opened it anyway, and I fell into the part where two generals come to Rommel's house in order to force him to kill himself (or face a state trial for treason). Rommel tells his son "I've just told your mother I'll be dead in a quarter of an hour." and I was hooked. 

The story has promise, but it isn't delivered on: it's intentionally terminated just before the climax in order to force you to buy the sequel. A dirty trick, but somehow I can live without continuing on. Another big problem is that the book is full of heard-it, seen-it, read-it scifi, assumptions that the whizziest technology of 1996 is indicative of 2700, other abundant anachronisms, and very many stumbles through too-easy conditions or Earth references. All we're missing is the inevitable incipient armageddon with a superenemy threatening the very survival of all humankind. Oops, we have that, too! But maybe the Shrike can help us? Whatever. Prose: fair. Dialog: weak. 

I've been told a lot of Sci Fi fans love this. Hmmm. This makes me think they're an easy sell. 

The story is overdone, and severely dated. Sinclair was annoyed he missed a Nobel for this, but I agree with the Nobel people. 

There's a new one out called The New Russians but I haven't checked it out yet. 

This short, easy-to-read history is a gem. 

A young Thompson hangs out with Hell's Angels back when they were new and untethered. He encounters very rough stuff and writes fairly straight stuff about it. Thompson can sling it with the best of them, but here he hasn't really gone overboard yet. 

My recommendation: don't read them all at once. Save them and spread them out - and read them in chronological order. 

There is nobody quite like Wodehouse. Give him a try. 

The comedy is more subtle but the human angles more true. I liked all of these. 

The story involves tons of Chinese period detail which is nice. You see again that times and places are different, but people aren't, via star-crossed lovers, family politics, successes and failures, hopes realized and dashed, and lots of dialog and personal interactions. In short, there are about a dozen tear-jerker movies in here. 

This story is very long. (Penguin does this in five paperback volumes.) You can do very well to get an abridgement. This will give you the story and more than enough detail. Remember that, as Shakespeare's characters come primarily from the most upper classes, so do these, and you get the same sort of limited view. But so what. 

Ms. Yoshimoto released this at age 24 and was immediately covered with accolades in Japan. The volume I have has three pages of rave comments from English sources. I dunno. It was quite good, but not earth-shaking. Probably really good marketing. 

This reads fast and fun. The writing is fairly plain (very well could be the translation) but the story is so good, it just doesn't matter. Give this a go. 

Note Musashi himself wrote a book on strategy, called Book of Five Rings. 

This book is not as compelling to the westerner as Musashi. It is good, but it's length and detail get to be a bit much. Read it if you have interest in the topic, but not if you expect it to suck you in from an ignorant stance.