Books
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My sisters and I grew up surrounded by excellent books, all chosen by our mother and almost all of them British classics. (I have often wondered where my mother, a Chinese immigrant to California, acquired her knowledge of English children's literature.) As children, we didn't know that they were classics. They furnished the imaginative landscape…
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In all the many books that I have read, there exists much truth and wisdom, but in not a single volume has the truth of lovemaking been revealed. When I lie in the arms of [my wife], in ecstasy, it is essentially not about sensation but about passion, and passion is not of the flesh…
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The Lord of the Rings has been such an important component of my psychic make-up for so long, that I don’t even know where to begin. I’ve read and reread LOTR many times, including at least twice out loud to my kids. I also love the short stories, especially “Leaf by Niggle” and “Farmer Giles…
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David Bentley Hart compares them as novelists, and puts Tolstoy higher. I can't give a very respectable opinion on that, because the only Tolstoy I've read was Anna Karenina many years ago, in my twenties. But I'm going to venture tentative agreement with him. In reading or re-reading Dostoevsky's major novels–Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov,…
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Imre Madách was an Hungarian romantic poet and playwright of the 19th century. He wrote one major work, and some lesser works which are now only of interest because of it. His magnum opus is The Tragedy of Man (Az ember tragédiája) – a play which ranks as one of the most important works of…
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I feel ill-prepared to write about Larry McMurtry though of course I picked him for this project. It has been 20+ years since I read a bulk of McMurtry’s oeuvre, so why did I decide on him as a subject? Because not too long ago (within the past two years) I re-read Lonesome Dove and…
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Ronald Blythe, born in 1922, published his first book in 1960 and more than half a century on is still at it. His most recent release was a privately printed collection of poems, which came out late last year. In the interim he has written fiction, literary criticism, biography, and nature and travel books. And…
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I read Theology at Manchester University in 1979-1982. I was a book lover, and I spent most of the summers reading the book lists for my courses. I planned to take Christology in my third year, so in the summer of 1981 I read The Myth of God Incarnate. That’s a collection of essays published…
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The most difficult thing about reading P.G. Wodehouse is the attempt to fix in one's mind that it's Woodhouse, “wood” as in “wood,” and not, as it plainly should be, Wodehouse, as in “We wode the twain.” After many years of reading him, this still bothers me. It would be easier if his name were…
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Robert Sheckley, who died a few years ago in 2005, was an author of (mostly) science fiction, very prolific with short stories, very snarky and tongue-in-cheek. In my experience short story collections tend to be hit and miss with most authors, and Sheckley wasn't an exception; but if the author's good, it's worth the misses…
Light On Dark Water 