Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samantha Schweblin

 

Saw this review in the WPost (probably). Strange, eerie, pathologically deep examinations of characters and plotlines that sometimes feels like they're straight outa Stephen King fiction. 

Wasn't digging it, but just read and liked her long story ("The Woman from Atlántida") about two young sisters "rescuing" an alcoholic reclusive poet living in the beach resort town they're visiting.

Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt

 Good but the usual Greenblatt treatment - take a subject about whom almost nothing is factually known, and build out the social/intellectual/historical era around the black hole of the character's existence, and posit how he must have participated.

Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford

 

I remember as a child reading a young person's biography of Beethoven - or at least reading the first chapters, where a six year old Ludwig races home through the village streets humming the melody of a composition he's going to give to his mother at her nameday celebration.

This biography is good if stuffed with cultural history of Bonn and Vienna, the other German states and Europe at the end of the 18th century. Lots going on. Meanwhile, Beehoven, preternatually gifted, sullen, isolated, productive, does exactly what he needs to do.

From a junior Mozart/Hayden imitator, he creates incredible music that builds on their example, and then towers over it.

The Angel of Rome and Other Stories by Jess Walter

 

Good if minor stuff. Seems like he's imitating Richard Russo sometimes though, but without Russo's snarky undertones.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

 

I'm late to this party, but find the novel clarifyingly beautiful...

... if long and somewhat tediously overwritten. I watched the 2007 BBC series with Ruth Wilson instead. Quite good!

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima

 

Finally got around to this. Found it tedious and overstuffed with internal psychologizing.

The Novelist by Jordan Castro

This was what the literary world did now, I reminded myself, they celebrated stupid novels for stupid reasons.
Not very compelling single day single consciousness pov of someone not writing.

 

Independent People by Halldór Laxness

 

12/23/25: Finally bearing down and reading this. It's a slog but worth it so far. Like the incident where the farmer chases down a reindeer and jumps on top of him and they ride down the river together, farmer nearly freezing to death.

And the wife killing the ewe who's been left behind as her company, then eating it.

Brutal. Only entertainment is coffee and reciting ancient poetry. My kind of people.

1/20/26: Still laboring away at this. It's great but so dense: some of the most common, primitive people in world having extraordinary poetical thoughts about mortality and the natural world. Finally into the life of Bjartur's children, which is helping things. But much work still ahead of me.

So Far Gone by Jess Walter

 

Good but not that exciting.

Big Sky by Kate Atkinson

 

same old Jackson Brodie story. Atkinson seems to churn them out effortlessly, but there doesn't seem to be much difference between them. Understand the Jackson Brodie TV series, CASE HISTORIES,  is interesting.