Archive for the 'books' Category
Ape & Essence by Aldous Huxley
Originally published in 1948.
Huxley opens this philosophical novel with two Hollywood studio execs talking shop and digging through some slush pile scripts that have fallen off a garbage truck. One of these scripts is “Ape & Essence” by a Mr. William Tallis–who, we soon learn when the execs try to track him down, has [...]
John Franklin Bardin Omnibus Part One
John Franklin Bardin Omnibus Part One
I knew little of John Franklin Bardin when I found this 1976 omnibus at a Mystery bookshop. I had only seen his 1948 novel Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly (included here) on several lists of the best mystery novels of the 20th century. The cashier told me that [...]
The Fifteen Weeks, by Joseph M. Jones
The Fifteen Weeks (February 21-June 5, 1947), by Joseph M. Jones
Published in 1955
A behind-the-scenes account of the Truman’s decision to take up the mantle of world leadership from the crumbling British Empire in the face of Stalin’s moves to turn Greece, Turkey and Iran into Soviet satellites, and how the main administration players, Dean Acheson [...]
The Gallery, by John Horne Burns
The Gallery by John Horne Burns
Originally published in 1947
One of the pleasures in searching through the book reviews of the late 1940s is finding a book such as this: a war novel—one highly lauded in its own time, barely mentioned in succeeding years, and the subject of revival attempts—which still stands up, and in [...]
The Franchise Affair, by Josephine Tey
The Franchise Affair, by Josephine Tey
Originally published in 1947.
In The Franchise Affair, the digestive routine of a rural barrister (Robert Blair) is happily upset and the reputations of an elderly woman and her middle aged daughter are put into question when a fifteen year old girl named Betty Kane tells a story abduction and imprisonment. [...]
The Path to the Spider’s Nests, by Italo Calvino.
The path to the spiders’ nests, by Italo Calvino ; translated by Archibald Colquhoun and Martin McLaughlin. Originally published 1947
This was Calvino’s first novel, by his account written hurriedly in the final months of 1946—though the available translation incorporates revisions the author made years after the book’s initial publication, as well as including Calvino’s apologetic [...]
Read More..>>Waltz into Darkness, by Cornell Woolrich
Waltz into darkness, by Cornell Woolrich
Originally published, 1947.
Cornell Woolrich was a favorite of moviemakers: his novels and stories were adapted into more than 25 motion pictures, with Rear Window as probably the most famous. Two (Francois Truffaut’s 1969 film Mississippi Mermaid and 2001’s Original Sin—which, though it is already largely forgotten in whole, has [...]
The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid
The reluctant fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid.
Originally published, 2007.
A few decades ago, before publishers felt the need to justify the eight dollar price tags of mass market paperbacks with page counts of 400 or more, a thriller novel could be as tightly plotted as any Hitchcock masterpiece—and lean books like John LeCarre’s The Spy Who Came [...]
The Web and the Rock, by Thomas Wolfe
The web and the rock, by Thomas Wolfe.
Originally published in 1939.
The protagonist in The Web and the Rock, George Weber, writes a novel deemed unpublishable due to its extreme length—lazy editors send him insulting rejection letters without bothering to read the manuscript, alcoholic writers give it backhanded praise after admitting to having only read “a [...]