Author Archives: John Sloan

Kafka, Franz. The Castle. Translation from German by Mark Harman, Schocken, New York, 1998. Original publication as Das Schloss, 1926. F; 7/21. The first time I read any Kafka was in a university European Literature in Translation course as an … Continue reading →

Hoffman, David E. The Dead Hand. Anchor, New York, 2009. NF; 5/21. This is a heavily researched study of the Cold War and analysis of the former Soviet Union’s covert development and maintenance not only of a huge nuclear arsenal … Continue reading →

Peterson, Jordan. Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life. Random House Canada, Toronto, 2021. NF; 3/21. Peterson is at it again, here with I think a sadder and maybe not-much wiser version of his 12 Rules For Life (which I … Continue reading →

Lawrence, DH. Women in Love. Public Domain edition, first published by Thomas Seltzer, New York, 1920. F; 3/21 After reading The Bad Side of Books and recalling The Rainbow, I wanted to revisit Lawrence’s fiction. Women in Love was apparently … Continue reading →

March 2021 This is one of the CNR/CPR hotels built in the late 19th and early 20th century by the great Canadian railroad companies. Its construction started in 1929, stalled by the depression and then finished in 1939. It still … Continue reading →

Hirsch, Edward. How to Read a Poem. Harcourt, New York, 1999. NF; 2/21. For most of my life I’ve approached poetry with a chip on my shoulder: show me what the big deal is. I’ll begin to read a poem … Continue reading →

Batuman, Elif. The Idiot. Penguin, New York, 2017. F; 1/21. Batuman is a Turkish-American born in New York who has been called a “language freak and geek”. I imagine her undergrad arts degree from Harvard and PhD in comparative literature … Continue reading →

Noble, Denis. Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity. Cambridge, Cambridge 2016. NF; 1/21. A fan of ideas about science and about evolution in particular, I was impressed with this polemic. It attacks the orthodox “Neo-Darwinist” view on inherited … Continue reading →

Lawrence, D. H. The Bad Side of Books. New York Review Books (Geoff Dyer ed), New York, 2019. NF?12/20. I’ve been a DH Lawrence fan since the 1960s when I was an English lit major. His novels (The Rainbow and … Continue reading →

December 2020 What a lovely experience. I don’t know why, but when we made the reservation here for lunch on our early-December anniversary mid-week in the city, I expected one of the subgenres of Chinese food, high-class variety. It was … Continue reading →