2014 Short Book Reviews

Please forgive the super short reviews.  I wanted to catch everyone (read the two of you) up with my reading to set the stage for a real strong 2015 effort.

1. All the Pretty Horses:  Volume One The Border Trilogy, by Cormac McCarthy

I found this to be another exceptional McCarthy book, the dude can really write!  Anytime I read a western, I am skeptical that I will be engaged by the book.  McCarthy’s mix of good story telling, sometimes unbridled violence, and excellent drama made this book particularly engaging.

2.  Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel

I learned about this book in some magazine catalog of good Canadian contemporary fiction.  It is a light, fast moving piece of dystopian science fiction and good chunks of the book are based in Toronto.  A virus originating in the former Soviet republic of Georgia brings the world to its near end leaving a handful of people to rebuild.  I would recommend this book, it is a fast read and quite entertaining.

3.  Burmese Days, by George Orwell

Those of you who enjoyed Kim will enjoy this book too.  It is the story of a colonial outpost in the interior of Burma where the dozen or so white people enjoy colonial life while treating the natives like absolute crap.  It has its intrigues and is generally an enjoyable read.

4.  The Children Act, by Ian Mcewan

People are always raving about this guy.  He writes well and tells some ok stories but they all seem so superficial and formulaic to me.  Mercifully it was a fast read.

5.  Jar City, by Arnaldur Indridason

Indridason has written a series of Icelandic based detective fiction based on the travails of one detective in the police force in Reykjavik.  The story is about a current murder that is connected with a murder and rape that happened some 30 years before.  Indridason does an excellent job with the story.  Highly recommended.

6.  In One Person, by John Irving

Over the past year or so I have grown to like John Irving quite a bit.  This is the story of the coming of age of a gay boarding school student somewhere in Maine.  The most remarkable part of the story is the description of the fear that ran through the early 80s New York homosexual community as they were decimated by AIDS.  Highly recommended.

7.  The Drowned World, by J.G. Ballard

This is the story of a world that has been flooded over and has been submitted to massive climatic change.  It focuses on an informal army unit that is charged with clearing the last of the population from the low lands of central Europe to take them to the outer edges of the north pole where the ice has melted and the living is as normal as it gets.  An excellently written Ballard book with a fantastic storyline.

8.  The Chrysalides, by John Wyndham

This one never gets old.

9.  The American, by Henry James

The story of a well to do young American who has come to Paris to get cultured and to meet a woman.  It’s an excellent story but I found the short book hard to get through.

10.  Invitation to a Beheading, by Vladimir Nabokov

I loved this book for its absurdity.  It is the story of a sort of criminal who has been sentenced to death for some post-modern crime that is never fully described.  The beheading has to take place as a public fete and it is continuously postponed driving the prisoner to near insanity.  Excellent!

11.  Memoirs of Montparnasse, by John Glassco

I’d skip this.  It is the story of two Montreal boys who head to 1920s Paris to mix it up with the ex-pat glitterati.

12.  Ham on Rye, by Charles Bukowski

I can’t remember the details of the story, but I do remember that it was an excellent picture of bleak, drunk, hard times writing.

13.  Strange Shores, by Arnaldur Indridason

This is the better of the two Indridason novels that I have read.  This time the detective heads to the wilds of coastal Iceland on a mission of self-discovery only to be confronted with a cold-case crime that he has to solve.  Excellent.

14.  The Outsider, by Albert Camus

I thought it was cool in high school, then again in college, and it still remains a cool book.

15.  The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham

Again, outstanding and timeless.

16.  How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff

I think this is a case where the movie is a little bit better than the book.  I saw the movie a couple of years ago and then came to read the book.  It is the story of an American teenager sent to England to spend the summer with her aunt and cousins.  Shortly after her arrival nuclear war breaks out and the teenager and the cousins are left to fend for themselves.  Pretty good book.

17.  Strangers on a Train, by Patricia Highsmith

Yet another great Highsmith story.  Excellent.

18.  On Chesil Beach, by Ian Mcewan

Well written story, again nothing earth shattering.

19.  Survivor:  A Novel, by Chuck Palahniuk

I enjoyed the frenetic story telling in this book.  It is the story of someone who can predict the future and how the world takes advantage of him and how it leaves him.  I would recommend this but not too strongly.

20.  The Professor’s House, by Willa Cather

Some Reedies recommended this book quite aggressively so I decided to take it up.  It is a cool story and definitely worth the short read.

21.  Life on the Mississippi, by Mark Twain

Mark Twain’s rendition of commercial boating life on the Mississippi just before the river traffic was replaced by the railroad.  It is a long book and sometimes a little slow, but it is cool nonetheless.

22.  Vermillon Sands, by J.G. Ballard

Set in a future crazy fashion centric world, this is the story of the people who come and go and live on the Sands.  Excellent.

I also read or re-read books by Richard Cobb, William Gibson, and Ernest Hemmingway among others.  All in, I think I hit 30 books in 2014.