Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
2024 CE.
2024 is the publication year for the editions below.
You can view all years of edition, or you can search by language/region, genre, era/movement, book authors, or editor/translator.
I do love a short novel. Not only do they reliably help me out of even the most prolonged of reading slumps, but short novels are where writers really shine. It takes a lot of skill to craft a narrative that is tight but still full of intent and power.
I came to William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade via last week’s book, Julie Salamon’s The Devil’s Candy. It was actually mentioned in the puffery on the back of that essential book as being another essential book.
If you’ve never read Dorothy Parker, you are in for a real treat with this book. She’s a writer that was known just as much for the sharpness of her wit as for the products of her pen, and she is delightfully funny in that very special, dry, sarcastic way that I always love.
I was excited to read War — not because I’m a big fan of Céline, but because it’s a small piece of lost history that didn’t actually end up being lost. Now, all they need to find is a copy of Tod Browning’s London After Midnight.
It starts with a tone that is mundane but bitingly humorous as Bouillier tries to convince himself that he has let go of the mystery of the end of the relationship with the caller. He does a poor job of it.
As Alice evades her dour sister on the riverbank and slips into the realm of cats that talk and tea parties with rotating cups, she is finding the joy of being in one’s own world and one’s own mind.
Cloudland Revisited is a hilarious ode to the movies, including all of those bad and cheesy ones that we watch and then wonder why hundreds of people came together to produce such a clunker.
Caliban Shrieks has been described as somewhere between an autobiographical novel and a rant, and you know what? I actually agree with this statement.
I won’t spoil it for those of you who don’t know Byron’s reputation or just what shocking and scandalous shenanigans he got up to, but it was enough that his literary contemporaries were all talking about it.
This week I’m going to review two McNally selections from earlier this year, both of which are delightful non-fiction reads that I wouldn’t have necessarily chosen off the shelf.
