Blogroll

2010 in books — by the numbers

2010 was a record year in one respect. I read more books this year than in any one year since I started keeping a book diary in 1976. This year’s total was 127, quite a bit higher than the 111 from last year, the previous record. I attribute the number to 2010 being the first […]

My Best in Books 2010

As usual, I’m posting my favorite books of the year at year-end. Given that I tend to do a lot of reading over the holidays, I fear that if I do it too early there’s a chance I’ll miss THE book. That didn’t happen this year. In fact, I wasn’t really overwhelmed by anything this […]

Book Review: Death as a Side Effect by Ana María Shua

Dystopian literature stems from no particular geographic boundaries. Aldous Huxley and George Orwell were British, Margaret Atwood is Canadian, Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut were American. Thus, while Ana María Shua sets Death as a Side Effect in her native Argentina, the conditions that beset that future society are perhaps universally possible.

Survival is […]

Book Review: The Universe in Miniature in Miniature by Patrick Somerville

Book publicity frequently is an exercise in the art (or artifice) of puffery. So, when a book is described as a “genre-busting” work, I tend to approach it with a bit of caution. Generally, though that term is a fair description of The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, Patrick Somerville’s collection of short stories. Some […]

Book Review: Sunset Park by Paul Auster

Some writers end up being put in a box because their style and subjects seem to forever place them in a particular category or genre. Paul Auster usually ends up in the box labeled “Postmodernist.” Yet the more Auster I read, the more convinced I am that he ends up with that label because his […]