Atonement for Atonement

While many of my waking hours recently have been spent flipping out about technical problems maintaining this fucking blog, I have also been reading. Essays upon essays about subjects unlikely to improve my body or soul, or even my mood.

But! I’ve made a new friend who loves books, and we’ve been lending each other our favorites. I’ve lost count of how many books I’ve read in the last two years, but there are stacks of them. Here are some reviews to save you from wasting your time on second rate fiction and to confirm what a book snob I am.

Atonement by Ian McEwan.  There is no atonement for the florid writing here, so overwritten as to employ several hundred tedious words to describe a garden path. Once I realized how bad it was, I felt obliged to go on until I reached some pivotal action that I knew was coming. When I reached it, I put the book down in disgust and decided to google the ending. If you haven’t read it maybe you’ve seen the movie? In any case, I won’t “ruin it” for you. The plot was like a WWII version of Wuthering Heights, without the sincerity or passion. I have enjoyed many novels by this writer but this was surprisingly stupid.

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. Very short but atmospheric and packed with intense homo-erotic longing, not to mention pedophilia. Recommended reading if you like this sort of thing.

The Warden and Barchester Towers – Two in a series by Trollope, who I always viewed as a B-list Victorian novelist. I was so wrong! A cast of vivid characters embodying the entire spectrum of human nature, it involves politics and the church but is basically a comedy of manners. A great escape from the world as we know it.

The Locusts Have No King and A Time to Be Born, by Dawn Powell. She is one of those overlooked writers who was before her time in ruthlessly satirizing theater people and socialites. Her book are hard to find but worth the effort. She died by suicide, like most people who are too brilliant for their own good.

The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford. A strange and intense story about siblings, it is literally unforgettable. Her Collected Short Stories are good, too.

Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers. A bizarre western with lesbians and dwarfs. Boy, was she nuts. Love her.

Lectures on Russian Literature by Vladimer Nabokov. Just what you’d expect: erudite, thoughtful, and grumpy.

The Rub of Time by Martin Amis. A collection of wildly opinionated essays on literature and pop culture. I love him so much. Witty, enthusiastic, and mean.

This is more than enough, right? I’m just trying to avoid hot takes for a while. Everyone else is giving us their two cents about Simone Biles, that Algerian boxer who looks like a man, the election, why phones are destroying our children, J lo and Ben, tribalism, the masculinity crisis, influencers, Ozempic, Clarence Thomas, and mental health.

Although I do actually have to weigh in on Bennifer , obviously. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to enjoy their breakup! Stay tuned, unless my blog disintegrates.