Tag Archive

Review of Ian McEwan’s On Chisel Beach

Published on November 14, 2012 By kmooney

(Contains spoilers)
On Chisel Beach is Ian McEwan’s novella about a couple’s wedding night. While there are flashbacks to the couple’s life before they met and their earlier relationship, the majority of the novel takes place in the space of a few hours in and around their hotel room. McEwan uses this delicate moment, the one [...]

Review of The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

Published on November 6, 2012 By kmooney

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes is a slim novel of memory, mis-memory, and self-perception.

The rest of Part Three of Gravity’s Rainbow

Published on October 17, 2012 By kmooney

Where was I? Oh, yes, to Margherita, other children look like Bianca. Margherita is also Greta, and has played the role of Gretel. Captain Blicero moves through his own space. Greta once heard talk about “F-Gerat.” There is a seance with curtains of Imoplex G, the fabric of the future.
Slothrop falls off the boat [...]

Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow Part of Part Three

Published on October 9, 2012 By kmooney

Part Three of Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow is a bit long, so here are the first fifteen or so sections. Things get a little confusing for a while, but still there is an atmosphere of a comical espionage story.
Slothrop is now in the Zone, home of the rockets. Enzian is introduced as the head of Schwarzkommando [...]

Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes Review

Published on September 18, 2012 By kmooney

Tim’s Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes is a history of the CIA as seen from a moral perspective. This is problematic as spying is not an ethical, or even legal, business; spies who are caught often face the death penalty for treason. As a result, it is probably no surprise that the CIA and its men fall short in Weiner’s estimation.

Don DeLillo’s Pafko at the Wall Review

Published on September 4, 2012 By kmooney

Don DeLillo has always been a big gap in my reading. For whatever reason, there was always something I wanted to read more whenever DeLillo’s name passed in front of me. But it was time I got to know something about the man and so I decided to start small with Pafko at the Wall, [...]

Top 100 US Literary Authors

Published on August 28, 2012 By kmooney

In looking through my books, I thought it would be interesting to compile a list of American authors who have contributed to the formation of the modern novel. I took a stab at listing authors and then looked them up on Bookscan to see what their biggest novel was (I may have taken a liberty [...]

Hunter S. Thompson’s The Great Shark Hunt

Published on August 23, 2012 By kmooney

Great stories happen to those who know how to tell them. This sums up my respect for Hunter S. Thompson. I read his books in junior high and went slack-jawed at his gonzo lifestyle. He felt like the patron saint of breaking out from the bureaucratic, life killing nonsense, infested with an anger over what [...]

The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg

Published on August 21, 2012 By kmooney

The Middlesteins is the story of a Jewish family living in the suburbs of the mid-west. It centers around Edie, a grandmother whose habit of finding comfort in food has led to a weight problem that affects her entire family. There are points of humor, but for the most part it is a touching portrait [...]

Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice review

Published on August 14, 2012 By kmooney

In 1973, Robert Altman remade Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. The film set Chandler’s noir story of a moral private investigator in an amoral contemporary Los Angeles. Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice makes a similar move, placing the archetype PI, the last good man, in psychedelic California. He drifts through the crime world in a haze [...]