Apparently, I just joined a cult. “Once you read it, you fall in love with it, and from then on you’re part of a secret club, self-selecting and wildly enthusiastic.” That is what Constance Grady said in Vox. At least my new cult has some distinguished members! J.K Rowling: “This book has one of the most charismatic narrators I’ve ever met.” Erica Jong: “A delicious, compulsively readable novel.” The novel is I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith. It was recommended to me by one of my … [Read more...] about Capturing Castles with Jane and Charlotte
Modern Society
Fortunately, the Milk
There are these days, and to be honest it has always been thus, people who are firmly convinced that the world is becoming a worse place. There are people who believe that the children born in the years to come are being born into an impoverished world, that it would have been better to have been born in the past. Those people have not read Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman. The book, published in 2013, came into this world long past the date at which I could have read it to my children. … [Read more...] about Fortunately, the Milk
Don’t Bother to Pick-Up
When you pick up a Library of America volume, you naturally enough expect the material within to be the best of American Letters. That is, after all, the whole point of this non-profit publication company. The physical quality of the books is as good as it gets and the books themselves are full of the best that has been written by Americans. When you pick up a Library of America volume, you naturally enough expect the material within to be the best of American Letters. That is, after all, … [Read more...] about Don’t Bother to Pick-Up
Wokeness at Noon
Are you Woke? It was not too long ago that such a question would have been greeted with a puzzled disdain for its grammatical barbarism. It is now the question of the moment, no longer limited to college campuses as part of the initiation rites to higher learning. In certain political circles, it has already become the code word for being taken seriously on policy questions. The puzzling thing about Wokeness is not that it is fashionable among a small subset of the Campus Left. One should … [Read more...] about Wokeness at Noon
I Know What You Did Next Summer
Do you have the right to commit a crime? Odd question, to be sure. One would not think there is much to discuss. Yet, Philip K. Dick, spun it into a nice story. “Minority Report.” First things first, let’s set aside the “Living in an Unjust Society” discussion. Whether you have the right to violate unjust laws is itself an interesting discussion topic. For now, let’s focus on more mundane crimes. For example: Do you have the right to murder your neighbor because you don’t like him? That … [Read more...] about I Know What You Did Next Summer
Cixin Liu Joins the Pantheon
In its relatively short history, science fiction has had a fair number of books which could be considered Classics, books that are so interesting in what they do, it is reasonably certain that people will still be reading them in the future. Take Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, for example. The idea of imagining what would happen if the laws of social science were as stable as the laws of physical science and then going forward through time was clever; the stories were well done and reasonably … [Read more...] about Cixin Liu Joins the Pantheon