When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. Thus begins Franz Kafka’s novella, The Metamorphosis, as translated from the original German by Stanley Corngold. The rest of the story is spent describing the remainder of Gregor’s short and painful existence as a… Continue reading Book Review: “The Metamorphosis”
Author: Eric
Book Review: “Wandering Stars”
Avid science fiction readers are familiar with several common themes: good-humored adaptation to inhospitable conditions by people who didn’t ask to be there; unfamiliar languages, customs, and alien or inscrutable jargon; the guiding, intervention, or oversight by unseen-but-powerful forces and/or beings; and the triumph against insurmountable odds by those armed with little more than intelligence… Continue reading Book Review: “Wandering Stars”
Farewell to Abbye
Abbye took her last breath today, bringing to an end a life that was harder than she deserved. After battling through almost three years of diabetes (two daily insulin shots) and Cushing’s Disease (regular doses of a powerful anti-cancer medication), her little heart finally gave out. I wish I could say that she was the… Continue reading Farewell to Abbye
Book Reviews: “Patriotic Grace” and “Jim the Boy”
I took a break from exploring for forgotten gems in our home library and read two new (to me) books a couple of weekends ago. Peggy Noonan’s Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now (published earlier this month) and Tony Earley’s Jim the Boy (published in 2001) are both short, quick-reading… Continue reading Book Reviews: “Patriotic Grace” and “Jim the Boy”
Book Review: “Proust and the Squid”
…the goal of reading is to go beyond the author’s ideas to thoughts that are increasingly autonomous, transformative, and ultimately independent of the written text. … The experience of reading is not so much an end in itself as it is our best vehicle to a transformed mind, and, literally and figuratively, to a changed… Continue reading Book Review: “Proust and the Squid”
Jason Polan: The Art of Texas Law
I don’t remember how I stumbled across it, but The 20×200 Blog is a fascinating showcase for a wide variety of artists. If you like what you see, you can buy the artwork for a fixed price of $20, $200, or $2,000, depending on the size of the piece. Anyway, one of the posts that… Continue reading Jason Polan: The Art of Texas Law
Book Review: “The Road”
In his devilish little book called A Reader’s Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose (reviewed in these pages in 2006), B.R. Myers devotes an entire chapter to Pulitzer prize winner Cormac McCarthy, calling his prose unspeakable in every sense of the word. That and similar pronouncements were at the front… Continue reading Book Review: “The Road”
Book Review: “The Lizard King”
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by reptiles. Growing up in rural West Texas, I had plenty of encounters with lizards and snakes, and cultivated an encyclopedic knowledge of the more notorious species. But I never graduated to collector status, and thus never encountered the types of characters and degree of… Continue reading Book Review: “The Lizard King”
Fire Ant Sightings
Once upon a time there was a boy. We’ll call him Robert, since that was his name. Robert was an odd little boy, for many reasons, but not the least of which was his obsession with princesses. As you might imagine, this made for some challenging times during recess, and those challenges continued throughout his… Continue reading Fire Ant Sightings
Book Review: “The Year of Living Biblically”
A.J. Jacobs’s first book, The Know-It-All, chronicled his quest to read the Encyclopedia Brittanica from A-to-Z. Jacobs has now extended his version of literary flagpole-sitting to the Bible in The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, in which he describes his attempts to adhere to… Continue reading Book Review: “The Year of Living Biblically”