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The Ghost Writer (Roth): A Third In–No Kindle
Ghost Writer engages at once: A young writer (Nathan Zuckerman, perhaps making his first of many appearances in Roth novels) visits an older, successful writer (Lonoff) in his (Lonoff’s) home, hoping...
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The Ghost Writer (Roth): Conclusions
A book about writing. When you’re past midway, you think the heart of the book is Zuckerman’s conflict with his family over the content of a story he hopes to publish—a story that borrows heavily from...
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Ralph the Heir (Trollope): Chapters 1 through 6
Another charming, humorous, tale of love and class. The setup begins with the former attorney general, Sir Thomas Underwood—no longer politically connected after his party went out, and then came in...
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Ralph the Heir (Trollope): Chapters 7 through 29-Midway
I said earlier that Ralph the Heir was about love and class. It’s about more than that. The love theme has gotten much more complicated and the class remains strong and getting stronger, but two new...
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Ralph the Heir (Trollope): Conclusions
A biography of ordinary people. Which can be a very strong recommendation of fiction written by good minds: You get to watch the progress of a life, often like your own, and learn from it. But...
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Zuckerman Unbound (Philip Roth): A Third In
This is the second of the Nathan Zuckerman books, the first being Ghost Writer. A third-person narrator continues Nathan’s story: Nathan has written a blockbuster first book, Carnovsky. He now has...
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Zuckerman Unbound (Philip Roth): Two-Thirds In
What is Zuckerman’s problem? We ought, from the text, to succeed in figuring it out. Three failed marriages. He thinks he’s in love with Caesara O’Shea, after a one-night stand. Almost moments later,...
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Zuckerman Unbound (Philip Roth): Conclusions
Not all problems have solutions. I conclude that Nathan Zuckerman’s problem was that his talent lay in writing and his inventory of concrete facts from which to draw was content, the disclosure of...
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The Storm of War (Andrew Roberts): Conclusions
I listened to this book. The reader, Christian Rodska, was so good, he might have influenced my judgment as to the quality of the writing, which I found a perfect blend of detail, broad scope, and...
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The Anatomy Lesson (Philip Roth): Beyond Half Way
We have the continuing hostility of the Jewish community against Zuckerman because of the Jewish-life-critical Carnovsky, his most successful book. We have a Zuckerman more clearly enunciating his need...
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The Anatomy Lesson (Philip Roth): Conclusions
Now in Chicago, Nathan goes off the deep end—the combination ofvodka, Percodan, and marijuana result in his collapse. Much of the last half of the book involves Nathan’s old friend, Bobby Freytag and...
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Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust (Robert Rosen):...
I didn’t need much convincing—especially after reading Andrew Roberts’s The Storm of War—that FDR was anything but an able wartime president. Rosen’s thesis is that FDR did all he could for the Jews...
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Oliver Twist (Dickens): Chapter 1 through 13 (26 percent)
I don’t start Oliver Twist from a good point of view. I’ve read it perhaps twice and seen it in plays and movies perhaps three or four times. The year the Dickens Universe studied Twist, I didn’t go....
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Oliver Twist (Dickens): Through the End of Book the First (38 Percent)
I’m happy that Nancy has been more at center stage. She seems to me the first complex character in the book. She’s accustomed to the life of crime that Fagin and Sikes have introduced her too, but...
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11/22/63 (Stephen King): First Impressions (At About 10 Percent)
I’ve read Stephen King before, although, of course, not this book, which just came out. Many decades ago I read The Stand, and, a few decades ago, Hearts in Atlantis. Enjoyed them both, although a...
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11/22/63 (Stephen King): A Third In
11/22 is certainly written for mass appeal. I think I see a little gratuitous pandering to this group or that: a little nod to the Christian right; another, to the civil rights movement. The biggest...
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11/22/63 (Stephen King): Bailing Out (At 40 Percent)
A tough question: What makes a reader abandon a book that’s written with clear, concise prose and that contains lively action and tender interpersonal relationships? I’m speculating, but I wonder if...
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The Prague Orgy (Roth): Conclusions
A novella, really—just 86 pages. And fun to read. Roth is very good at creating dialogue for outrageous characters. Olga, a very promiscuous lady, is such a character. Indeed, I can’t think of a...
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The Counterlife (Roth): First Impressions (Beyond 10 Percent)
The Counterlife, at least so far, is more about Nathan Zuckerman’s brother, Henry, than about Nathan In the early going, Henry, age 39, has an asymptomatic heart condition that requires him to take...
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The Counterlife (Roth): A Third In
First, I’m loving it; second, I’m confused. The second first. I thought Henry died on the operating table. I remember Nathan commenting, when the cardiac surgeon said that he (the surgeon) and Henry...
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