ENGLISH PASSENGERS, by Matthew Kneale

English Passengers is a wonderfully entertaining and often funny historical novel centered around the how the aboriginal natives of Tasmania were wiped out literally "to the man". It doesn't sound like a very cheerful topic, and indeed it is not, but Knowles manages to paint a picture of that particularly dark chapter in English colonial history in a vivid and clever way. The story is told from multiple perspectives, both English and aboriginal, and pieces together very nicely. Much of the humor is ironic and absurd, yet he does base his story loosely on real events, or at least events similar to real historical ones. It's very well written, and although long, remains engaging throughout.

For a review of the book by The Guardian, click here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/mar/04/fiction.bookerprize2000

EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE, by Mark Dawidziak

Designed for pop culture fans, particularly baby boomers like me, Mark Dawidziak's fun and, yes, thought provoking book Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone mostly works as a concept. Rather than analyzing episodes one-by-one or engaging in deep cultural analysis, Dawidziak organizes the book according to "life lessons" such as "what doesn't kill you will make you stronger" or "pride comes before a fall." He then loosely discusses relevant episodes and points out how they support the lesson in question. It works because Twilight Zone fans (aren't we all TZ fans to some extent?) can remember and relate to the episodes. We can ponder the lessons illustrated in them that we may not have thought about. Baby boomers would have mostly been children at the time of the broadcasting of the series from 1959-1964 (for example, I was 4-9 years old) and may not have analyzed the deeper implications of the show. The book is entertainingly and humorously written, making it very readable. It's not a deep philosophical analysis but does provide insights. His "guest statements" written by a wide range of interesting media, scifi and other personalities adds interest and depth. My only complaint is that there is some redundancy as some of the same episodes are used for several chapters. Considering there were 150+ episodes, there isn't really a need to be repetitive, in my opinion. All-in-all, the book is a fun, light read with some nostalgic flavor.


For a review of the book from Popmythology, click here: https://www.popmythology.com/everything-i-need-to-know-i-learned-in-the-twilight-zone/

THE JOURNEYMAN, by Marc Bojanowski

Journeyman is a strongly-written novel about a drifter with a "still waters run deep" personality who mostly runs from and occasionally confronts his own moral compass. The book starts with the latest run from himself, which results in his "temporarily" staying with his pothead and rather paranoid brother "Cosmo" (his real name, Chance, seems more appropriate. In this seemingly idyllic northern California town, plagued at the moment by a serial arsonist, the protagonist manages both his brother and his own conscience. I was disappointed by the ending, but other than that, it is a good and engaging book.

For a review of this book from NY Times, click here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/books/review/journeyman-marc-bojanowski.html?_r=0

THE NOISE OF TIME by Julian Barnes

The Noise of  Time is a good treatment of the life of Dimitri Shostakovich, the renowned Soviet-era Russian composer. There is a lot of psyching of the composer and a pretty vivid depiction of life for an artist under Stalinist control. I'm having a hard time being too moved by it probably because I had previously read a similar depiction in William T. Vollmann's great work Europe Central, which in my opinion was more engaging and better written. But again, maybe the newness of the subject matter was lost to me. The Guardian called the book "Barnes' masterpiece". At any rate, it certainly is worth a read.

For a review of the book from NY Times, click here: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/books/review/the-noise-of-time-by-julian-barnes.html?_r=0

TO RISE AGAIN AT A DECENT HOUR, by Joshua Ferris

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is described by one reviewer as "the Catch-22 of dentistry". That's a pretty good one-line summary. This off-beat and very funny book, shortlisted for the 2016 Booker Prize, chronicles the life of the protagonist, Dr. Paul C. O'Rourke, a dentist with a successful NYC practice but not particularly successful life. For much of the early part of the book, Paul's personality is established in a series of hilarious rants that brought to my mind the narrator of Thomas Bernhard's Extinction, also an off-beat and very funny book. He's cynical, self-absorbed, prone to obsessive relationships with women and his beloved Boston Red Sox. The Catch-22 link comes as Paul's identity is "stolen" online, involving him in a strange journey to establish his "roots" as a member of a hidden, proscribed community called "Ulms" - a kind of foil of Jews. Issues of faith and doubt, religion and belief are explored in unpredictable ways. There are a few slow sections in the latter parts of the book as we wade through the Jewish/Ulm stuff, but overall, the book is both fun and thought-provoking. It's certainly very well written.

For a review of the book from NY Times Review of Books, click here: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/books/joshua-ferriss-to-rise-again-at-a-decent-hour.html?_r=0

MOONGLOW, by Michael Chabon

Being a big fan of Michael Chabon, I eagerly anticipated reading his latest novel, Moonglow. It's a kind of memoir in the form of a novel, with his dying grandfather as protagonist and indirect narrator. The chronology jumps around unpredictably, which turns out to be a very effective and interesting approach to dealing with the grandfather's eventful life: WWII trials and shocks, marriage to a mentally ill French war refugee, work as a model builder for NASA, late-life romance in a retirement center in Florida, etc. The direct narrator, named Michael Chabon, is ostensibly the author, who goes about researching his grandfather's story/history and piecing it together, with help from his grandfather's "loose tongue" due to pain medication for his terminal bone cancer, his mother and others who knew him. It's a rich and warmly-told story which is, as the reviewer in the Guardian article mentions, is uncharacteristically serious in tone. In my opinion, this fact does not negatively affect the book's quality or readability.


for a review of the book from The Guardian, click here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/03/moonglow-by-michael-chabon-review

ALL THAT MAN IS, by David Szalay

All That Man Is is a collection of nine thematically linked short stories that reflect on the reality, unsavoury as it might be, of masculinity, masculine desire, ageing and failure. The book was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2016. The stories, in my opinion, are uneven. Some are quite riveting and some almost banal. All-in-all, though, most are quite strong and move along in plot and style well. I'm not a huge fan of short stories as a genre, but these are well-written; some are excellent. The stories follow a kind of chronological order, with the first story tracing two 17 year-old British students on holiday in Europe and the last about a 73 year old reflecting on his failing powers. All of the protagonists are failures of a sort, which gives the collection a decidedly gloomy feel. Yet despite the "realism",  the writing is not brutal or judgemental. We do care about at least some of the protagonists and can relate to them to some extent. There is also a strong current of wasted motion, of unsettledness in most of the stories, as characters move around Europe looking for.... what? Whatever it is they're after, they generally don't find it.

For a review of the book from The New Yorker, click here: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/nine-tales-of-crises-in-all-that-man-is