by Richard Subber | Mar 9, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, Language
the good old way…
Book review:
Scaramouche
Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950)
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1921
392 pages
These people talk to each other. It’s face-to-face communications. They pay attention to body language and what you do with your face.
Scaramouche ends the way you think it’s going to end: boy gets girl.
But there’s a lot of road to travel before we get to that ending—I think there’s only one reference to a heaving bosom—there is fastidious bad language, and lots of casual use of Latin—there’s a lot of hand kissing, which is something we could do more of these days.
Sabatini was a prolific writer and he wrote this romance novel the way it should be written. The reader gets an eyeful and an earful and a heartful of genuine romance, with all the words that make it work.
It’s still possible to make love in the good old way they did it in the 18th century. Read all about it.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
The Scarlet Letter, victim of Hollywood
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s version is best
Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Jan 13, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading
“She Who Must Be Obeyed”
Book review:
She
by H. Rider Haggard (1856-1925)
New York: Books, Inc., 1930
first published 1887
384 pages
She is an adventure story that Indiana Jones never imagined.
Most of the action is in an unknowable part of Africa. The protagonist is a 2,000-year-old lady—“She Who Must Be Obeyed”—who is beautiful beyond understanding, all too aware of her great powers, and indefatigably committed to getting what she wants.
She is not a very lovable character, but every man who sees her falls in love with her.
Haggard has created ripe ritual, grand history, a fantastic walkabout, and dabbles of credibility in this incredibly enticing story.
If you even suspect that you might get bored while reading She, you’ve got another think coming.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Ethan Frome
not being satisfied with less…
by Edith Wharton
–
Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Jan 9, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading
a sustaining emotional roadmap…
Book review:
The Woman at the Washington Zoo:
Writings on Politics, Family, and Fate
by Marjorie Williams (1958-2005)
Timothy Noah, ed.
New York: PublicAffairs, Perseus Books Group, 2005
358 pages
I wish I had known about Marjorie Williams’ work when she was an active staff writer at The Washington Post.
She had a pungent, penetrating style, and she carefully offered reasoned judgment as well as what we can nostalgically think of today as “facts.”
In The Woman at the Washington Zoo, her personal memoirs about her life and her cancer are wholly human, and they remain as a sustaining emotional roadmap for an engaged reader.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
“…and dipped in folly…”
only Poe knows how to say it…
As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Dec 16, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language
…think “Larry McMurtry”
Book review:
The View from the Cheap Seats
by Neil Gaiman (b1960)
New York: William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2016
522 pages
I realize it’s a bit outré to mention that I recently “discovered” the very satisfying writing style of Neil Gaiman.
Gaiman writes with panache about Edgar Allen Poe, Rudyard Kipling’s horror (!) stories, Dracula, and more.
I’ve read The View from the Cheap Seats and loved it!
The “Four Bookshops” piece is rare earth for me. Reading Gaiman is giving me flavor and overtones of reading Larry McMurtry (viz., Literary Life: A Second Memoir).
Gaiman recounts this anecdote:
“Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise. ‘If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” (15)
Gaiman also says “There’s a brotherhood of people who read and who care about books.” (29) He’s one of those folks, and so am I.
….viz., Fahrenheit 451
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
“…and dipped in folly…”
only Poe knows how to say it…
My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Dec 12, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Reflections
be a willing reader…
Book review:
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
Alison Anderson, trans.
New York: Europa Editions, 2006
325 pages
The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a logophile’s book.
Really.
If you can read this book without keeping your dictionary close at hand, I want to shake your hand.
Barbery has written a stunning first-person interaction of two characters who could easily be separate books. (Distinguishing fonts makes it easy to know who’s talking.)
The Hedgehog is Renée Michel, an almost unflappable and serenely superior person who pretends to be a simple old concierge in a building almost filled with rich folks who don’t care what she thinks about. She thinks about plenty that would never occur to them.
The second primary persona is Paloma, a barely-out-of-her-tweens girl who thinks she wants to commit suicide but lives an overwhelmingly fantastic life in her head and becomes Renée’s friend.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a literate, penetrating, philosophical, compassionate revelation of two great minds who connect and spiral into ever more fancies for the willing reader’s delight.
Be a willing reader.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Girl at the Lion d’Or
Sebastian Faulks is tenaciously literate,
richly Gallic…
In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Nov 16, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading
a new take on the Western…
Book review:
The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard
New York: William Morris, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2004
528 pages
I’m late to the game of reading Elmore Leonard, and I confess right here that I’m not a big fan of the broadly defined “Western” genre, excepting of course the “must reads” like “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” and “To Build a Fire” and “The Call of the Wild.”
Even so, I’m engaged with Leonard’s short story style, and I plan to return to The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard—his 30 Western shorts including possibly familiar titles like “Three-Ten to Yuma” and “Moment of Vengeance” and “Only Good Ones.”
The prose is direct, realistic, and dialogue-rich, and there is legitimate suspense that gives individuality to each story.
Try a few.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
“…watchers in the crystal sphere…”
”Night watch,” a poem
“…friends who pass the time…”
–
As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
