Pechorin

LATEST ARTICLES ( 230 )

• “No One Has Real Names Anymore,”

  

  Europe at Midnight, by Dave Hutchinson I read Dave Hutchinson’s Europe in Autumn back in the summer of 2016 and was distinctly impressed by it. Read more

  Posted on 10 April 2017 BOOKS, CULTURE

• He Possessed Hidden Powers; He Had More Secrets Than the Blessed Rosh Hashonah...

  

  The Magician of Lublin, by Isaac Bashevis Singer and translated by Elaine Gottlieb and Joseph Singer Magician is an exuberant and dark fable set in the shtetls... Read more

  Posted on 31 March 2017 BOOKS, CULTURE

• You Don’t Belong Here.

  

  Dream Story, by Arthur Schnitzler and translated by JMQ Davies Arthur Schnitzler is probably the best overlooked author I know. Read more

  Posted on 23 March 2017 BOOKS, CULTURE

• We Have to Deal with People the Way They Are, Not How We’d Like Them to Be.

  

  Lightning Rods, by Helen DeWitt The thing that makes A Modest Proposal horrific isn’t that it suggests eating babies. It’s that it uses the prevailing logic of... Read more

  Posted on 21 March 2017 BOOKS, CULTURE

• And by Old Habit He Asked Himself the Question: ‘Well, and What Then? What Am I...

  

  War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy (Maudes/Mandelker translation) Where to start? Perhaps by saying this will be a long piece and will include some lengthy quotes.... Read more

  Posted on 14 March 2017 BOOKS, CULTURE

• On Reading War and Peace

  

  War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy and translated by the Maudes with revisions by Amy Mandelker So I finished War and Peace. Reviewing a book like War and Peace is... Read more

  Posted on 24 February 2017 BOOKS, CULTURE

• A Lover of Baroque Music, Classical Literature, and Women Who Are Still...

  

  Three-Card Monte, by Marco Malvaldi and translated by Howard Curtis I read Marco Malvaldi’s Game for Five while feeling a bit under the weather during... Read more

  Posted on 02 February 2017 BOOKS, CULTURE

• the Habit of Luxury Allows You to Regard Its Frills and Furbelows with a Proper...

  

  Ashenden: Or the British Agent, by W. Somerset Maugham Some books grow in memory, some diminish. I read Ashenden in chunks over a couple of months towards the... Read more

  Posted on 31 January 2017 BOOKS, CULTURE

• ‘I’ll Devote the Washing up to God.’

  

  The Loney, by Andrew Michael Hurley [I previously posted an incomplete version of this review – I accidentally deleted the majority of the text while making som... Read more

  Posted on 24 January 2017 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Ian Curtin’s End of Year List – Guest Post

  I recently saw Ian Curtin post some highlights of his reading year on Twitter. It was a really great list and it occurred to me that it was easily missed by... Read more

  Posted on 06 January 2017 BOOKS, CULTURE

• 2016 End of Year Roundup

  

  2016 was a pretty good reading year for me. In terms of pure numbers I read around 56 books (plus a bunch of short works that I didn’t blog). Read more

  Posted on 03 January 2017 BOOKS, CULTURE

• ‘I’ll Devote the Washing up to God.’

  The Loney, by Andrew Michael Hurley The Loney (and yes, that is the correct spelling) is a pretty much ideal winter read. I read it on kindle, where it comes... Read more

  Posted on 22 December 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE

• In Britain, It Was a Time of Whispers, for Re-examining One’s Friends and...

  

  The Summer Isles, by Ian R. MacLeod There’s a long tradition of alternate history novels, sometimes marketed as science fiction and sometimes not. Many are... Read more

  Posted on 12 December 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE

• … She Would Drink Nothing for a Week Except a Beer Or a Glass of Wine After...

  

  The Easter Parade, by Richard Yates Where to start with such a book? Perhaps with the opening paragraph which is sufficiently brilliant that it leaves anything ... Read more

  Posted on 28 November 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE

• You Love Life. I Covet Life.

  

  Vlad, by Carlos Fuentes and translated by E. Shaskan Bumas and Alejandro Branger A few years back or so Lee Rourke kindly sent me a review copy of one of... Read more

  Posted on 14 November 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE

• It Was the Power of Business, Not the Deliberations of Statesmen, That Shaped th...

  

  Uncommon Danger, by Eric Ambler It was John Self of The Asylum who alerted me to Eric Ambler through his review of Ambler’s Journey into Fear. Read more

  Posted on 11 November 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Doing Wrong for Its Own Sake Made Him Happy.

  

  The Hotel of the Three Roses, by Augusto de Angelis and translated by Jill Foulston I recently read De Angelis’ Death of a Banker which I liked but didn’t love. Read more

  Posted on 08 November 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE

• We Had a Nice Time in Reno

  

  Run River, by Joan Didion Run River opens with a death, then backtracks to show the wasted lives that led to it. It’s a lonely and melancholic book; a tale of... Read more

  Posted on 03 November 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Reality Outwaits Us All.

  

  Bird in a Cage, by Frédéric Dard and translated by David Bellos Albert has been away from home for six years. He returns just before Christmas to an empty... Read more

  Posted on 14 October 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE

• I Enjoyed Universal Affection. I Was Mrs Hawkins.

  

  A Far Cry From Kensington, by Muriel Spark Many (many) years ago I read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I’d guess that it’s the only Muriel Spark most people hav... Read more

  Posted on 10 October 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE