Archive for April 2006
Rite of Passage
A collection of first person accounts of backpacking through Europe. It has been fifteen years since my poor treks through southern and central Europe. This book takes me back to that time. I forged friendships through a multi-language political debate on a nighttime ferry crossing of the Aegean during the Perseid meteor shower– among many […]
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Alexksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel Prize winning novel is this spring’s selection for the Chicago Public Library’s “One Book, One Chicago” program. Fierce, uncompromising and haunting– a relentless indictment of political oppression.
Chicago: City on the Make
“You shouldn’t read it if you cannot take a punch.” – Ernest Hemingway on Nelson Algren’s writing. This twelve thousand word prose poem is Chicago’s magnum opus.
The Da Vinci Code
Dan Brown’s thriller marries an international murder to curious esoteria culled from centuries of Western history. It reminds me of Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum— in that this is precisely the sort of book Eco satirized so well. Promise me you will remember it is a common work of fiction.
Reflections on Neuropsychology
Thus, the Fool may indicate the whole range of mental phases between mere excitement and madness, but the particular phase in each divination must be judged by considering the general trend of the cards, and in this naturally the intuitive faculty plays an important part.
~ Arthur E. Waite, occultist and co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot
I […]Olympos
Part Two of Dan Simmons’ literary diptych: start with the recipe for Ilium, but bake for 704 pages to higher degree of literary allusion. Garnish with Virgil and serve with a nice novel of later Heinlein.
