Book Reviews

These are some of our favorite books–what are yours? Leave us comments with your reviews and we’ll post them here for all to see!

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Brighton Rock—Graham Greene

17-year-old Pinkie is a bad seed; he has already killed a man and will do everything necessary to keep it a secret, including more murders and ruining others’ lives. When Ida, a single woman in her forties, gets a hunch about Pinkie’s inappropriate ways, she takes matters into her own hands. This novel of moral dilemmas shows us that sometimes love, loyalty, hatred, and manipulation are simultaneously present in relationships.

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The Secret Agent—Joseph Conrad

With apologies to Messrs. Conrad and Kurtz, this is the book for all of us who find it harder to read Heart of Darkness than Herodotus. Based on a real attack in London’s Greenwich Park in 1894, the novel follows Mr. Verloc and a group of anarchist terrorists as they plan a dynamite outrage in newly-industrialized 1886 London. The Secret Agent also details Verloc’s domestic life, complete with a beautiful younger wife, a mentally disabled brother-in-law, and a mother-in-law who wields guilt to greater effect than the terrorists’ explosives. Conrad’s Dickensian bent toward caricature lends this early narrative of modern terrorism, beloved by the Unabomber and noted as one of the three works of literature most cited by the American media after 9/11, some much-needed (though still undeniably dark) levity.

Michaelis…had come out of a highly hygienic prison round like a tub, with an enormous stomach and distended cheeks of a pale, semi-transparent complexion, as though for fifteen years the servants of an outraged society had made a point of stuffing him with fattening foods in a damp and lightless cellar.

See also: Salinger’s Franny and Zooey versus the ubiquitous Catcher in the Rye

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Angels & Demons—Dan Brown

Robert Langdon, a Harvard expert on symbols, is asked to help try to stop the Illuminati, a legendary secret society, from destroying the Vatican with their newly discovered antimatter. The suspense makes you want to read “just one more chapter” every time you pick it up, and Brown’s attention to detail proves to be really cool when you see how all the clues piece together.

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Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk—Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain

Legs McNeil, one of the founders of Punk Magazine, weaves together personal accounts by many of the crucial players in the American and British punk scene into an eminently readable oral history. McNeil tracks the development of the punk movement from its beginnings (we’re talking ‘60s Michigan protopunk/garage pioneers like MC5 and The Stooges) to the rise of the CBGB scene (think Richard Hell, Mink DeVille, Patti Smith, and Lou Reed) through the late ‘70s British surge (as The Clash and The Damned rose to prominence and failed New York Dolls manager Malcolm McLaren returned to the U.K. to manufacture The Sex Pistols) to form a coherent narrative of the music and society of punk’s first wave. Though it sometimes seems that stories of drug-crazed club denizens like Bowie and Sid Vicious overshadow the comparatively tame narratives of arguably more important bands such as Television and Blondie, this history will please the voyeur (ever wonder about “53rd and 3rd”?) and the music nerd (want the behind-the-scenes story of Parallel Lines?) alike.

Nancy Spungen: Punk is just real good basic rock & roll, with really good riffs…it’s just real basic fifties and early sixties rock.

See also: Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

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The Girl Who Owned a City—O.T. Nelson

A plague kills off everyone over the age of twelve, and ten-year-old Lisa becomes a leader to try to rebuild a life for the children, struggling with fear, gangs, lack of food, and health issues. Although the protagonist is a younger girl, the novel illustrates how even the smallest things that we take for granted become big problems when rules cease to exist. Lisa’s clever thinking allows the children to survive without the help of adults. Read to see if you would have been that creative!

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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland—Lewis Carroll

Dear world,

I know you think you know this story, but I wish you would really read it (having had it read to you in your infancy doesn’t count). And then reassess your opinion of Dave Eggers. I’m just saying.

She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed; it was labelled “ORANGE MARMALADE”, but to her great disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar for fear of killing somebody, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as she fell past it.

See also: Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

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Memoirs of a Geisha—Arthur Golden

This novel was written based on stories told by one of Japan’s most celebrated geishas, or female entertainers. After being sold into slavery, she has to learn the arts of a geisha while enduring the hardships of World War II and heartbreak over the one man she truly loves. The fast-paced plot teaches us about the early 1920s Japanese culture in a subtle manner. It’s an enjoyable read that you won’t forget quickly.

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Invisible Cities (Le città invisibili)—Italo Calvino

Calvino’s almost unclassifiable novel is framed as a conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan (reminiscent of Scheherazade and Shahryar in One Thousand and One Nights) in which Polo, intrepid traveler, updates the last Khan on the fragile state of his Mongol empire. From the short framing passages, Calvino transitions into 55 fantastic one- to three-page descriptions of cities, from Argia, where earth replaces air, to Zobeide, which draws men to it with a siren-like dream only to trap them within its ugly streets. The sections read more like short stories—indeed, more like poems—than like a novel, but whatever Invisible Cities is, it demands to be savored.

From up here, nothing of Argia can be seen; some say “It’s down below there,” and we can only believe them… At night, putting your ear to the ground, you can sometimes hear a door slam.

See also: Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler (Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore)

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With or Without You—Carole Matthews

When her live-in boyfriend leaves her, heartbroken Lyssa Allen decides to go backpacking to Nepal to get away from her world. Little does she know the tour guide will change her life forever. The novel illustrates a different, very self-sufficient way of life and shows that we should explore different lifestyles to see where we’re happiest before we accept the expected.

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