Tom > Recent Status Updates

"It was a pattern that would recur between Washington and Baghdad. What many Americans understood as staggering incompetence in their nation’s foreign policy, Saddam interpreted as manipulative genius.”

This book is so melodramatically overwritten.

There are more than 150 interesting sentences in this book (thankfully).

Amazingly, he lives China even less than Georgia.

At a cricket match, in 2006.

"In a class-conscious country riddled by divisions, the whole mob still chanted as one"

I wonder if this is still true?

So far so pleasant, but clearly not a fan of Georgia!

I am not convinced by the non-chronological narrative. Does it really enhance his story or is it just needlessly confusing?

...wait, I just got it.

What an absolutely fantastic book this has turned out to be. Too clever for me!

I think he wrote this entire book just for the "sham-poo" pun.

This book has the most confusing flash-forward I've ever read. If I hadn't stopped to check the plot summary, I think I would assume some pages had fallen out of my copy or been misprinted.

Puzzled by the glowing reviews -- this is really not very well written.

Dŵr by Catrin Kean is a mawkish little tale. So far I haven't liked any of these stories.

This is absolutely fascinating. A time machine of a book.

And now it switches to second person. Really not convinced by these stylistic conceits.

170 pages without a full stop is pretty taxing

This is the most tense catfishing I've ever read.

But... Shakespeare didn't write in "Middle English"?

oh no

Doubting he detects in her hesitation.

thanks Yoda

This book is so incredibly boring. I can't imagine how tedious it would be if she actually used full sentences.

"Idea of that, yes."

no.

Really interesting the way the book develops the underlying theme of fear of Catholic recusancy playing into the superstitions swirling at the time.

I'm really enjoying this -- but have no idea how to review it. Any comment is going to be swallowed by an ouroboros of meta.

The Brazilian Cat by ACD much better, a genuinely fun little story.

"Your leg is broken. Both shoulders dislocated, too. Tough night. Would you like some tea?"

These stories are mostly awful. Which is, in its own way, quite interesting. An encapsulation of the dreary state of fin-de-siecle writing. The Great War cannot come soon enough to blow all this up!

Fascinating and provocative chapter on the ethics of genetic research on Native Americans.

What an interesting first section. Highly unlikable -- and possibly unreliable? -- narrator.

In a happy synchronicity, the first story in his volume is The Man Who Would Be King, and I have just read about (a rather sub-Dravot) James Brooke of Sarawak in the Atlas of Extinct Countries.