Colin Marks's Blog, page 15
July 24, 2017
Review: The Silver Dish by Saul Bellow
My rating: 5 out of 5
Saul Bellow’s The Silver Dish has been on my to-read list for at least a year. Ethan Canin, a guest on Brian Koppelman’s The Moment podcast, praised it so heavily that it seemed rude not to give it a shot. It’s just a shame it took so long to get to the top of the list. This is story telling that demonstrates why Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature – expansive in theme and characterisation, quirky and nuanced, everything a short story needs!
Review: A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman and Jessica Cohen
Book supplied by Netgalley for an honest review.
My rating: 5 out of 5
It’s rare to find uniqueness in fiction, we’ve been making up stories for thousands of years after all, but David Grossman’s A horse Walks into a Bar squarely hits the mark. The story is framed around Dovaleh G’s stand-up routine in an industrial area of Israel, but as the night goes on, the comedy fades and the story of a parent’s funeral prevails. The narrator is an old friend of the comedian, one who was close, but who...
July 23, 2017
Violence: A Writer’s Guide Second Edition by Rory Miller
My rating: 5 out of 5
Rory Miller comes across as a good guy, but I wouldn’t want to bump into him a dark alley. Many of the examples in this writer’s guide come from his experiences; he’s been a prison guard, tactical police officer and a host of others, so he knows what he’s talking about. Folks in the UK have very little experience of guns, even the little details that Americans take for granted would be unknown to us, but Rory spans that knowledge divide excellently, for people of all exp...
July 21, 2017
Don’t Shoot the Dog!: The New Art of Teaching and Training by Karen Pryor
My review: 5 out of 5
Karen Pryor’s Don’t Shoot the Dog! is an interesting read for anyone, not just for dog owners, or dolphin owners, or the owners of children! Her background is in sea life training, and many of the anecdotes are based around those experiences, but a large part of the training philosophy also applies to human behaviour.
June 30, 2017
Review: The Summer of Impossible Things
The Summer of Impossible Things by Rowan Coleman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Book supplied by Netgalley for an honest review.
I did struggle to get into Rowan Coleman’s The Summer of Impossible Things. I love the time travelling concept; I’ve recently finished Matt Haig’s How to Stop Time, and I adore Audrey Niffenegger’s Time Traveller’s Wife. The problem here was with over-writing. All sentences are conjoined, three parts linked together, in every sentence. It’s fine occasionally, it helps li...
June 22, 2017
Review: Post-Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back
Post-Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back by Matthew d’Ancona
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Book supplied by Netgalley for an honest review.
Trump, for all his faults, is gold dust for the entertainment industry. He’s petrol on the flames of satire, and the butt of countless books and articles that discuss every aspect of his erratic behaviour, from his handshake, to his wife’s every flinch, and the subject of this book, the fact that his supporters don’t care that he and his cohorts...
June 11, 2017
Review: Popular: The Power of Likability in a Status-Obsessed World
Popular: The Power of Likability in a Status-Obsessed World by Mitch Prinstein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Book supplied by Netgalley for an honest review.
Mitch Prinstein’s Popular is an interesting read. It addresses all aspects of popularity – why it’s important, how it evolved, and where it can lead. I did enjoy it, and many of his conclusions are thought provoking, but at times it did feel like he was shoe-horning populism into unrelated areas. Many of the sections are driven by anecdotes,...
May 23, 2017
Review: The One
The One by John Marrs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The concept behind The One is interesting – match.com with DNA profiling. I was expecting a book that would explore whether likability or sexual attraction could be predetermined by something so scientific as a double helix. Some of the themes could’ve tackled the viability and ethicalness of such a solution, or social equality or religious considerations, heavy themes that would make you think.
Instead, John Marrs, the author, went down a diffe...
May 12, 2017
Review: Option B
Option B by Sheryl Sandberg
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Book supplied by Netgalley for an honest review.
I remember reading about the death of David Goldberg when it happened. He was holidaying in Mexico with his wife, Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook), and suffered some form of heart attack in the hotel’s gym. They found him lying on the floor, bloodied, near a cross trainer. The story resonated with me – we’re about the same age, with the same age children, and the same age wife – so I was in...
