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Koba the Dread 59 reviews
Martin Amis
Miramax, 2002
Koba the Dread
+ A Different Approach
+ Stalin -- Direct Progression from Lenin and Trotsky
Amis applies his mastery of language to the soviet "experiment", recounting his own story of discovery.
Horrific and brilliant
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Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business 30 reviews
David Mamet
Pantheon, 2007
Thought provoking Insight
+ Behind the scenes in Hollywood
+ A Hoot
Mamet does it again! In BAMBI VS. GODZILLA, he offers essays which provide new ways of looking at motion picture production, writing and life. He inspires. He challenges. He shares ways of looking at things that are as profound and simple as they are new. I wish I could have gotten this kind ...
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Man Is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag 33 reviews
Janusz Bardach, Kathleen Gleeson
University of California Press, 1999
An unbelievably bleak tale of survival in the Gulag
+ You Can Survive Anything if You Keep Believing You Will
+ Gripping
+ Stunning
+ Surviving against all odds
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Survival In Auschwitz 71 reviews
Primo Levi
Touchstone, 1996
primo levi
+ Vivid Portrayal of Horror
+ "...man is bound to pursue his own ends by all possible means, while he who errs but once pays dearly."
+ Direct and Powerful
+ Excellent! Excellent! Excellent!
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The Universal Baseball Association Inc., J.Henry Waugh, Prop.25 reviews
Robert Coover
Minerva, 1992
Book review
+ Intellectually brilliant but humanly lacking
+ The Boxscores Were Enough
+ Homo Ludens
+ A Brilliant Allegory of Something or Other
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Peeling the Onion18 reviews
Gunter Grass
Harcourt, 2007
Best Grass yet
+ Gunter's Memoirs
+ An accidental writer
+ A tale, a tall tale even, but so European
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After the Quake: Stories40 reviews
Haruki Murakami
Vintage, 2003
A delightful collection of short stories....highly enjoyable, but without complete closure. (who cares?)
+ If These Stories Were Music....
+ Enjoyable but not as good as his novels
I enjoyed this book very much. While reading the stories I was completely engrossed in how they would end. In hindsight, I realize that a lot of the stories did not provide me with true closure, however, I enjoyed them so much that I hardly cared. Deep within each story I found a moral to take ...
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Bonjour Tristesse
Francoise Sagan
Rene Julliard, 1954
Texte en français [Text in French]
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The Second World War15 reviews
John Keegan
Penguin (Non-Classics), 2005
An excellent one volume account
+ An excellent analysis of the Second World War
+ J.Keegan : Second World War __ Very Good
+ Attempts the Impossible ... nearly succeeds!
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Travels in the Scriptorium36 reviews
Paul Auster
Picador Henry Holt, 2007
Blank Slate
+ Clever, but forgettable
Paul Auster's novel is short(at 145 pp.) but quite thought-provoking.
The subject of the novel - nameless man wakes up not knowing who, why when or how about his identity or anything remotely important - is not a new one and the bulk of the text feels like an extended Twilight Zone episode. The ...
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Electric Flesh: A Novel
Claro
Soft Skull Press, 2006
Howard Hordinary is convinced that he’s the bastard grandchild of Harry Houdini. An unemployed executioner with a fetish for electric chairs, Howard is tormented by multiple perversities and obsessed with schemes to restore his status as executioner and as Houdini’s legitimate heir. Cycling back and forth between Hordinary's paranoid present and Houdini’s fantastical past ...
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time1455 reviews
Mark Haddon
Vintage, 2004
Fun and engaging
+ Not your usual read . . .
+ An unusual and striking first novel
+ Very Likeable Book
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Demian (Bantam Modern Classics)
bantam books, 1969
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Targeting Iran (City Lights Open Media)5 reviews
David Barsamian, Noam Chomsky, ...
City Lights Publishers, 2007
Interviews on the Past, Present & Future of the U.S.-Iran Relationship
+ Clear, simple arguments to counter the warmongering against Iran
+ unknown society
+ Iran is not the enemy!
+ Target Iran
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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Perennial Classics)71 reviews
Muriel Spark
Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1999
Portrait of a fascist
+ A book best enjoyed by those in their prime
+ Hippy of the 1930's -- Chapter 3 described it all [76][T]
+ Hmm...
+ Superb
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Twenty Prose Poems2 reviews
Charles Baudelaire
City Lights Publishers, 2001
Evocative
+ One of the first modern poets
These prose poems were my first experience with Baudelaire. I didn't know what to expect, but they're pretty good. They are often vague, but even then manage to be evocative. I'll admit I also bought the book to help my French along (as it is bilingual), but it's Baudelaire and it's good and ...
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Ignorance: A Novel37 reviews
Milan Kundera
Harper Perennial, 2003
You can't go home again
+ another persons shoes
+ Nostalgia ("nostos"-return, "algos"-suffering)
+ Nostalgia
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Boyhood: Scenes From Provincial Life14 reviews
J. M. Coetzee
Penguin (Non-Classics), 1998
Twice-born
+ Senior Writers Seminar Review
+ His Boyhood
In this youth memories, J.M. Coetzee defines himself as `twice-born: `born from woman and born from the farm'. He is, first of all, a mother's son (`he clings to her as his only protector'), but `the farm is his secret fate'.
Growing up in a rude and unsocialized family with eccentric characters, ...
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Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics)5 reviews
Hannah Arendt
Penguin Classics, 2006
A Classic that Elaborates on the Genocide of Jews and Others
+ Incredible investigation of Adolf Eichmann
+ excellent!
+ Emphasis on Banality
+ Rethinking the Nature of Evil
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Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy20 reviews
Anna Politkovskaya
Metropolitan Books, 2005
Excellent! True to Life...
+ Politkovskaya's prophecies turned out to be true
+ revelation of a Tyrant
+ Should Be Required Reading
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