LibraryThing Book Notes

I try to keep these pithy -- not Twitterific, but punchy in the manner of the great rock critic Robert Christgau.

E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Devil's Elixirs -- This classic Gothic novel about a mad monk is completely deranged, and I mean that in a good way. Don't ask too many questions, just hang on for the ride. When you finally get to the lengthy explanation of who was really who, realize that you will need a PhD in genealogy to understand it. Sample dialogue: "You mad fools, will you tempt the providence that passes judgment on guilty sinners?"

Blaise Pascal, Pensees -- Pascal the wide-ranging thinker and crisp aphorist is, as another reviewer here has well put it, "electrifying"; Pascal the religious apologist is of a more historical interest, but still worth reading. I am very happy with A.J. Krailsheimer's Penguin edition, and strongly recommend it. This is a classic that no educated reader should miss.

John Lange (Michael Crichton), Zero Cool -- As described very well by other LibraryThing reviewers, this is a silly book -- a quick read, but even those few hours constitute a waste of time. I generally trust Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai's taste, but sometimes he does let me down. It is also curious that there is no indication given that this is a slightly updated version of the text, augmented by the contemporary "video interview" sections mentioned by another commenter. Were there any other changes made? The reprint is therefore suspect from a scholarly point of view, whereas in the past I have always felt I could trust Hard Case Crime's bibliographic integrity.

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales -- It will take me a long time to complete this project, since as usual I am juggling many books at once. But let me say this: Every educated reader with an interest in Chaucer should tackle the full original in Middle English. It has a flavorfulness that is unmatchable. I recommend the massive Penguin edition for its amazing introduction, vocabulary footnotes, explanatory endnotes, and complete Middle English glossary; it truly offers everything you need to make this journey with the Canterbury pilgrims.

Howard Pyle, The Wonder Clock -- Completely charming, both the stories and the illustrations. In some ways this is an early example of a "mash-up," because Pyle borrows and re-combines story elements from many sources. Bright young readers and adults should enjoy the book equally. The stories are good for reading aloud, too; the droll repetitive patterns (many groups of three!) are very effective orally.

Elif Batuman, The Possessed -- The subtitle sounds irresistible: "Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them." And the book starts engagingly, but by the time I reached the halfway point, I realized that it was simply a cobbling together of magazine pieces with no through-line. Batuman writes in a Bright Young Thing tone (unfortunately rather generic), and her humorous phrasings are occasionally reminiscent of Daniel Kalder, who also writes about Russia. But Kalder really something to say; Batuman does not, and her attitudinizing eventually becomes wearisome. When she states with mock rue that after her summer in Uzbekistan, she was done with poetry, "the Caucasus, the Russian East, and the literatures of the peripheries," all I could think was, who really cares what you are done with? To be fair, there are glimmers of interest scattered throughout the book that, although they don't amount to a lot, perhaps barely justify the time a Russophile might spend reading it: a clear account of Rene Girard's literary theory in relation to Dostoevsky's novel "Demons," for example. So at best, and not wanting to come down too hard on a young writer who could develop, I give this a borderline recommendation.

Dolores Hitchens, Sleep with Strangers -- As has been widely noted in the hardboiled community, this is an excellent classic P.I. novel. Detective Jim Sader of Long Beach, California, makes a sharp study in male mid-life crisis (probably a somewhat worse experience in the Fifties, when 40 was our 55). All that keeps this novel from five-star status is that the solution to the mystery is not strongly related thematically to the other concerns of the story.

Bram Stoker, Dracula -- Bram Stoker makes brilliant use of the technique of multiple perspectives perfected by Wilkie Collins in The Woman in White. Anyone with the slightest interest in horror or vampire fiction has got to read this seminal novel, of course, but they may be surprised by how little Count Dracula is "onstage": after the lengthy opening sequence in Transylvania, he barely appears again until the final pages. If a book that helps to define its genre is a classic, then this is definitely one.

Andrew Smith, Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth -- It has become all too common for non-fiction narratives to be written in the form of the author's "quest for the story" (and, coincidentally, for him/herself). Probably the whole format ought to be banished for anything but extremely occasional use; but I have to admit that Andrew Smith's Moondust offers an occasion where it works, because some of the surviving moonwalkers were quite hard for Smith to snare, and their elusiveness is actually central rather than incidental. (Where have you gone, Neil Armstrong?) The quest for the story here is fascinating, step by step, and the material that comes out of it is enthralling. A book justifies its structure by delivering the goods, and Moondust does just that.

Yann Martel, Life of Pi -- This novel is moderately entertaining for a while, but disintegrates badly toward the end and winds up being not much more than a fluently written time-waster with unrealized literary pretentions. The Man Booker Prize? Really? Who were the judges that year?