Review Round-Up
Some reviews you have missed:
- Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach is reviewed in the Guardian (Read an excerpt).
- Jim Crace’s post-apocalytic American tale The Pesthouse is also reviewed in The Guardian.
- LA Times reviews Jamestown (another post-apocalyptic tale) by Matthew Sharpe (I’m reading it as we speak) – and the Village Voice calls it Jackass for the Jacobean set…
- LA Times runs a separate article to answer the question, “what’s up with all of this post-apocalyptic business?“
- Thomas Keneally (Schindler’s List) has a new book, The Widow and Her Hero.
- A review of The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall is reviewed in The Guardian here and in the LA Times here.
- Joshua Ferris’ Then We Came to the End in the NYTBR.
- Kurt Anderson’s gigantic Heyday, also in the NYTBR.
- Jane Smiley’s Hollywood story, Ten Days in the Hills is a modern telling of The Decameron. Also reviewed here.
- John Banville (won the Booker for The Sea) has written a crime novel, Christine Falls, under the name Benjamin Black. What’s the point of a pseudonym if everyone knows it’s you?
- You Don’t Me Yet, by Jonathan Lethem gets the NYTBR treatment.
- Open Up and Bleed, a biography of “classic American anti-hero” Iggy Pop, is reviewed at The Guardian.
And Round 1 of the Tournament of Books’ Semi-Finals pits Half Of A Yellow Sun against The Road (another post-apocalyptic book!)
Books, To Checkout | Tim | 
March 26, 2007 11:48 am
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By Beth (The Toronto One), March 26, 2007 @ 12:18 pm
Your blog is feeding my addiction. I only have two of these books. Must now check out the others.
By DJ Cayenne, March 26, 2007 @ 12:54 pm
What do you have? I only have Jamestown in hand and a copy of The Raw Shark Texts on its way.
By Shaft, March 26, 2007 @ 1:08 pm
Juggernaut Dallas (my action hero name) here. Although with a handle like “Shaft”, it’s tough to switch.
Anyway, I’ve only got one of the books mentioned (“Then We Came to the End”), which I’m taking with me on a trip to [drumroll] Europe later this week. I’m looking forward to it, given that I work as an advertising attorney and interface with ad agency people every day (and they’re the subjects of the book). I’ll start it as soon as I finish “Dreaming of Gwen Stefani” and “Small Town Punk”, my two trophies from winning the music/literature linking contest.
Also, you are safe to infer from the foregoing that I’ve bailed on “1984″, the book that I’m apparently 55% like. I started it, but as I got going, having read it before, I wasn’t particularly re-engaged by it this time. Maybe it’s just that the concepts presented aren’t really that groundbreaking in this day and age. Plus, I read the book jacket which discussed how riveting the book is, right down to “the last four words”. So I immediately looked at them to remind myself of what they were, and that was pretty much the ultimate spoiler.
By Beth (The Toronto One), March 27, 2007 @ 8:45 am
I have the Jane Smiley and Ian McEwan books on my Amazon.CA wish list. (I shouldn’t have said I actually have them yet.)
I just received some books from Amazon and recently paid a visit to my local used book store.
My pile is huge. I have to wait at least a few weeks (??) before ordering again. (Maybe.)