Westlake had an idea for a Parker novel, but it was too funny, so he invented John Dortmunder, a comic version of Parker. The Hot Rock introduced Dortmunder and also launched the genre of the “comic crime caper.” I read a Dortmunder book in high school, Drowned Hopes, and it really influenced my writing at the time. …
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I read about half of this book and then decided I was done. I had gotten all I was going to get out of it. Buddy recommended a podcast about Jacques Ellul (Chronicles Podcast, Episode 31), and that got me interested in reading one of his books.
Ellul is credited with coining the phrase, “Think globally, act locally.”
The …
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I read this during Lent, 2025. Here are some notes I jotted down:
In the Preface, when he’s poking fun at people who think they are too good to re-read the catechim, Luther mentions a medieval book called Sermons That Preach Themselves (358). It’s funny to me that a book like that existed even then. Sounds like something …
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“There was a song that I didn’t know would be the last song I would ever play on a Walkman.” (10)
“Language is a ship that goes down while you’re building it.” (14)
“Some sorrow is so baroque you would look back on it and feel like a schmuck.” (18)
“Even in my shed I want a shed.” (18)
Some …
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My employer gave us all $25 to spend on a book, and this is what I got. I get very nostalgic for cassettes, and this book reminded me of some things about them that are really great. I started reading this book while hanging out with the fam at Monkey Nest Coffee, and the guy sitting next to us was doing a …
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A few slow parts, but overall I really liked it. I always forget how much I like Dickens, then I get one chapter in and don’t want the book to end.
For my own sake, here’s a plot summary, FULL OF SPOILERS.
Pip, age 7. His parents are dead, so he was raised by his sister, who is older (20s) and married to Joe, the …
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This book was pitched as a survival story, like The Martian inside a whale. But The Martian was fun. This is really a story about a boy who failed to make peace with his father before his father died. It’s not fun.
It is well-written (enough). Some of the survival details are not very believable. He puts a sock on his hand to hold a …
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Boethius is considered the last philosopher to have a classical mind, the last to be able to think like the Greek and Roman philosophers. He lived 480–524 AD and was a senator, Roman consul, and …
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Just a nice little book – nothing heavy, everything works out well for the right people, and it’s a funny without being hilarious.
When Homer’s sister (Barney) is caught shoplifting, “it was a sort of mental illness… She helped herself because she couldn’t help herself.” (2)
Vera’s mother, …
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Most volumes in the 33 1/3 series are non-fiction, but John Darnielle writes about Black Sabbath’s album Master of Reality in the form of journal entries by a teenager in a mental hospital. About ten years later, the same character finds his old journal and writes the second half.
The mental hospital took away his Walkman and tapes, …
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