L.S. Popovich's Blog, page 24

Review of The Bridegroom Was a Dog by Yōko Tawada

Only valuable as a distraction from dry Realism or for those interested in surreal imagery. If you are looking for an easy read, there are worse choices than Tawada. This small edition is curiously random, which is one of the trademarks of her style, but unlike her other books, it does not resolve into much […]

Review of Seduction of the Golden Pheasant by Damian Murphy

I suspect the author has spent some time abroad. Such were my impressions while reading this novella, steeped as it is in the aura of its locales. Seduction of the Golden Pheasant provides us a brief glimpse at Damian Murphy’s implementation of oodles of subtext. Several of his stories function on the level of a […]

Review of The Opposing Shore by Julien Gracq

While the descriptive passages are gorgeous, I tired of the narrative and the narrator about 2/3 of the way through. My reading was hindered by some inconsistencies in the prose, which tended to ebb and flow, ranging from excellent evocation of dense imageries, conjured with immaculate confidence, to forced, teetering, cobbled-together dialogue sections between characters […]

Review of 2020 on Goodreads by Various

My reading status and accompanying thoughts at the end of 2020 are as follows: Some mixed reading experiences this year. In the pursuit of a better reading year in 2021 I am not going to follow trends as much, or read as many reviews. My backlog of TBR grows as the future diminishes. Therefore, it […]

Review of Mimi by Lucy Ellmann

Mimi is not Lucy Ellmann’s best work, but this book was still intelligent and more entertaining than 99% of inanimate objects on this planet. Ellmann’s acerbic brand of feminism doesn’t really work with the goofy male narrator, as other reviewers have pointed out. You most certainly won’t like this plastic surgeon guy, but again, entertainment […]

Review of The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada

This book is a prime example of the commercial bent of recent Japanese translations. It is a case study in how to underestimate your readers. It is a case study in how to underestimate your readers. It was well-marketed to adults by a very reputable publisher. Of course it is selling well, garnering misleading blurbs […]

Review of Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon

Listened to this whole audiobook on an all-day bike ride. I loved sinking in to the uber-omniscient narration so much that I repeated the experience with his similar book, Starmaker, on a similarly exhausting fifty-mile ride.  This novel is a survey of 1930s European society extrapolated and speculated upon until we arrive at two billion […]

Review of Sleepwalker in a Fog by Tatyana Tolstaya

This second collection by Tolstaya is a brief, inconsequential, but enchanting volume, reminiscent of Cat Valente’s Deathless, or similar quirky, literary, bold tales, congealed together by the old fashioned setting and the unfixed narration.  On the whole, it was not focussed enough to move me, but entertained me all the way through. Extremely naive characters […]

Review of Justine (The Alexandria Quartet #1) by Lawrence Durrell

The start, I hope, of a long-term interest in this author. Highly impressed on every level, I am.  At first his style seems forced, but it winds, riverine, recapitulating itself, strengthening as it goes along, so that it is clear, having read much of Henry Miller, that their friendship bled into aesthetic similarities, apart from […]

Review of It Takes Death to Reach a Star by Stu Jones

I received an advanced review copy of the book without knowing anything about the authors beforehand. Immediately, I was not sure about the title. “It Takes Death to Reach a Star” brings to mind a corny line from a sci-fi movie, something a character says right as they press the button to enter hyperspace.A few […]