Category: books

Paulo Coehlo, Translated By Alan Clarke

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The Alchemist is short, simple and profound. The idea of following your dreams is simple but in the hands of Paulo Coelho it is profound. Santiago leaves his life as an Andalusian shepherd behind to follow fate in search of his treasure. Only after many adventures and when his journey has come full circle does he discover what the true treasure is. The Alchemist is uplifting and reaffirms all that is truly good in life, a true fable—timeless in it’s themes.

Umberto Eco, Translated by William Weaver

On Amazon.com

The Name of the Rose is an amazing book. Eco’s story is set amid a turbulent time in European history, filled with references that more than a few times sent me to the encyclopedia to look up things. At it’s heart Name of the Rose is a mystery but the history, theology, philosophy and myriad of other subjects Eco covers will suck you in and leave you, like the main characters, hungry for knowledge. Having seen the movie you may expect that you know the answer to the mystery and that this may spoil your reading of the book. This is in no way the case—the book is so much more complex and gripping than the movie was.

(If like me you do not speak German, Latin, French, Italian and Greek then I recommend getting The Key to The Name of the Rose which contains translations of all the passages not translated into English in the American version of Name of the Rose.)

Truman Capote

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Capote weaves a beautiful tale of a unique personality. Holly Golightly is such a deplorably lovable character that men cannot help but fall endlessly in love with her. As the narrator recounts the times he spent with Holly I could not help but compare the power of her personality to that of a girl I once knew—she could get anything she wanted from almost any man but no matter how much they tried none of them could ever posses her or her love wholly. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is easy to read but filled with meaning and wit. And that damn scene with the cat will rip your heart out!

Author

Herman Melville

Moby Dick was a great book well deserving of it’s status as a classic but it was not what I was expecting. Melville is heavy on the details—to the point that you learn a lot of, now outdated, stuff about whales, whalers and whaling in general. I expected more of the white whale. Though he looms over the entire book he spends precious little time as it’s focus. Melville’s writing style is somewhat like that of Joyce in Ulysses, the same attempt to capture the local language and color and switching writing formats from standard prose to play writing. Melville, unlike Joyce IMHO, handles it well and it is neither overpowering nor distracting. A great book for detail oriented people.

On Amazon.com

Author

James Joyce

Ulysses is, without qualification the worst book I have ever read. James Joyce makes me sick. The book is convoluted tour-de-force of bad writing and attempts to “push the boundaries of a novel,” all of which, individually and in essence, have been used to good effect… by other authors. The worst thing about this whole disaster is that there are sparkles of really amazing writing but they are mostly confined to passages where Stephen Dedalus speaks to some of his fellow teachers. The fact that you know Joyce can write this well makes the rest of the book that much more of a disappointment. I don’t know how Ulysses keeps making it to the top of editors choice lists. They must know something I don’t—and I would consider myself fairly well educated and well read. My advice: don’t waist your time reading Ulysses, unless you are hopelessly in love with Modernist writing.