in Books: book review:
eats, shoots & leaves: the zero tolerance approach to punctuation
by
lynne truss
Lynn Truss’s “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” turned out to be an utterly delightful discovery. It was a journey into a land I love — punctuation. The lady is endearingly nutty: she once picketed the movie Two Weeks Notice with an apostrophe on a stick, wanting to bring the apostrophe back into the title, after Weeks. But it is full of deep insights and Truss moves with unerring instinct through treacherous territory. Her comments on why we need punctuation at all; how the Internet has damaged language (“it’s not writing, or even typing; it’s just sending”) and how punctuation is actually critical not just to reading and writing but to basic communication, are sharp and accurate. She takes a good, hard swipe at the modern trend of self-publishing, so easy with the Internet (bloggers, beware!) and she’s right. Some of the comments and customer reviews at Amazon, for instance, are truly hideous, full of typos, badly punctuated and not proofed at all. » more
in Books: book review:
coming through slaughter
by
michael ondaatje
Geoff Dyer, in his astonishing “But Beautiful” says that Michael Ondaatje’s “Coming Through Slaughter” is arguably the greatest novel about jazz ever written. Dyer’s book is itself a masterful exposition of the nature and essence of jazz, played through the saxophone of literary fiction and it’s quickly clear that Dyer’s reference to Ondaatje’s novel is itself a reflection of another jazz tradition: acknowledging the influences that shape the present artist’s work. » more
in Books: book review:
embers
by
sándor márai
After a gap of 41 years, two friends meet. One, a retired General, Henrik, lives alone, a widower, in a Hungarian castle with only his faithful retainers. There’s a history in the walls of the place. And, tonight, after a 41 years, there is a guest to dinner. Everything is arranged just as it once was, so many years ago. » more
in Books: book review:
gods, mongrels, and demons : 101 brief but essential lives
by
angus calder
Angus Calder’s thesis, summarized on the dust jacket flap, is that the weird deserve centre-stage because these creatures are the zeitgeist of our world and, quite independently, are inherently interesting. He argues that they may even be more telling than better-known entities. » more
in Books: book review:
the best awful: a novel
by
carrie fisher
Carrie Fisher’s The Best Awful is an elliptical work. That’s not a compliment. I mean it literally. She uses ellipses with something bordering on a pathological condition … and it does … nothing … for an already doomed book. That’s not as bad as her use of the em dash. Now that’s really something. Everywhere you go, the em dash lurks, ready to — pounce. » more
in Books: book review:
shutter island
by
dennis lehane
With Mystic River Lehane catapulted himself to the top of the thriller psychological and mind-games genre. It must have been a very hard act to follow. With Shutter Island, Lehane almost pulls off the ultimate writer’s coup of going one better. Almost, but not quite; but it is still an extraordinary thriller, well above the median in the genre. » more
in Books: book review:
the curious incident of the dog in the night-time
by
mark haddon
Jay McInerney wrote a ravereview in the New York Times of Mark Haddon’s “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”. Haddon’s book is nowhere as great as McInerney makes out. He reads far too much into a book so slight. Is it politically incorrect to dislike a book with an autistic child at its centre? » more
in Books: book review:
the blind man of seville
by
robert wilson
I so thoroughly enjoyed Robert Wilson’s A Small Death in Lisbon and The Company of Strangers that I couldn’t wait to get into this one. To call it a disppointment is not just putting it mildly, it’s giving the book far more credit than it possibly deserves. This is a mean-spirited, small-hearted, oppressive book from start to finish. » more
in Books: book review:
the king in the tree : three novellas
by
steven millhauser
Stephen Millhauser’s The King In the Tree is, without question, a tour-de-force. These are three novellas and each one is blindingly brilliant, dazzling. Millhauser writes like an angel: the language is taut, superbly controlled. There is nothing of the bludgeon in this writing — Millhauser is like a surgeon at the peak of his profession and he wields the scalpel of his writing with breathtaking virtuosity and skill as he dissects that most basic — and, in his conceptualisation, the most base — of all human emotions: love. » more
in Books: book review:
deception point
by
dan brown
Perhaps I ought to have paid more attention to The Da Vinci Code. It was such an irresistibly delightful lark that I didn’t look very closely at the language. Certainly, nothing dreadful jumped out and whacked you in the face. This isn’t true, however, of “Deception Point” or “Digital Fortress”. Like “Da Vinci Code”, they’re silly and slight, the kind of thing you carry on a long plane journey, but at least “The Da Vinci Code” was clever, even though it’s theories are nothing but a well-known con, as an excellent article in the New York Times shows. » more
in Books: book review:
designing web usability
by
jakob nielsen
A great blog. The blogcritics.org site, said to be a “sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture and technology”, is becoming a favourite haunt. One of its more prolific contributors is bookofjoe, who authored the terrific blog review of Jacob Nielsen’s “Homepage Usability”. » more
in Books: book review:
the real trial of oscar wilde
by
merlin holland
Holland is Oscar Wilde’s grandson and, with John Mortimer, in this astonishing book he shows us the enfant terrible (or perhaps by then the eminence grise) of London’s literary circle battling, albeit unwittingly, for his very life. The book contains the entire, unexpurgated tanscript — previous versions were heavily censored. » more
