Author Archives: John Sloan

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 →

McCarthy, Cormac. The Orchard Keeper. Vintage, New York, 1965. F; 11/20. A friend listing the books on his “to be read” shelf mentioned this. Classic fiction is sometimes surprisingly rewarding (Middlemarch, Mrs. Dalloway). I’ve read McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses … Continue reading →

Berlin, Lucia. A Manual for Cleaning Women. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2015 (stories all published previously here selected posthumously) F;11/20. This is a big collection (43 stories) of mostly linked and mostly autobiographical tales written by a sort … Continue reading →

Walton, Jo. Or What You Will. Tom Doherty, New York, 2020. F;10/20. Almost 30 years ago I somehow convinced my wife and three young kids to spend a year with me in the south of France. It changed all of … Continue reading →