Archives
- 2012.07.10: INCOGNITO by David Eagleman -- enjoyable, looking forward to more and better from this author
- 2012.07.07: SENSE OF AN ENDING by Julian Barnes --memories, aging, and ambiguities but great writing
- 2012.06.08: A HOUSE FOR MR. BISWAS by Naipaul : difficult to read, autobiographical and political too
- 2012.04.06: LOLITA by Nabokov - Mona Lisa in the sewer
- 2011.10.07: RABBIT, RUN by John Updike - how mundane life can be for someone who was a star athlete in High School?
- 2011.08.09: THE PLAGUE OF DOVES by Louise Erdrich - fragmented, humorous, abhorrent, endearing and Great
- 2011.06.03: THE YACOUBIAN BUILDING by Alaa Al Aswany: a microcosm of Egypt
- 2010.04.18: ANNA KARENINA by Tolstoy - beauty and intelligence with deep conflicts amidst isolation spells disaster
- 2009.10.13: THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Maddox Ford - denial, suspence, psychology and marital dysfunction
- 2009.10.02: THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by Zora Neal Hurston - Houston Books on the Bayou selection - self-realization, sexism, love
- 2009.09.15: CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller - war is hell, very black humor, insanity, escape
- 2009.09.04: UBIK by Philip Dick - ordinary, commercialism, red-herrings and plot twists
- 2009.08.11: THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington - youth, maturity, oedipus, wealth, social and technological change
- 2009.08.07: MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis - youth, community, hypocrisy, isolation
- 2009.07.14: ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST by Ken Kesey - unconventional heroic therapy vs rigid abusive therapy and price paid for bucking a corrupt system
- 2009.07.03: SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES by Ray Bradbury - coming of age, temptation, knowledge and whimsical/awkward language
- 2009.06.10: WATER FOR ELEPHANTS by Sara Gruen - realistic circus story, contrived ending, not a Great Book (uppercase G)
- 2009.06.05: TOO LOUD A SOLITUDE by Bohumil Hrabel - humor, art, repression, and individuality
- 2009.05.12: THINGS FALL APART by Chinua Achebe - tribal culture, change, collonialism, downfall
- 2009.05.08: A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole - humor, farce, stereotypes and kitsch
- 2009.04.14: UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry - isolation, loneliness, love and self-destruction
- 2009.04.03: ROCK 'N ROLL by Tom Stoppard - activism, art, and the personal side
- 2009.03.10: THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark - teaching, tradition, group identity and commonplace
- 2009.03.06: WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS by J.M. Coetzee - torture, fear of intimacy, lies and truth of civilizations
- 2008.07.15: SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser - capitalism, poverty, luck and loneliness
- 2008.07.04: A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh - entertaining, flawed upper class and savages too
- 2008.06.10: INHERITANCE OF LOSS by Keran Desai - dense, fragmented, messy pathos
- 2008.06.06: THE STRANGER by Albert Camus - absurd, existential
- 2008.05.13: DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather - faith, tender sentiment and frontier survival
- 2008.05.03: Writings by Mark Twain - religious hypocrisy, unexamined assumptions and more.
- 2008.04.15: MADAME BOVARY by Gustav Flaubert - ambiguous, uncomfortable, memorable
- 2008.04.03: MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett - great story, simplistic characters