Burgess’s Honey for the Bears

I recently finished reading Honey for the Bears, by Anthony Burgess. Of course his most famous work by far is A Clockwork Orange, although his other writing is highly regarded…

The Midwife Toad

The Case of the Midwife Toad, by Arthur Koestler, focuses on the dispute between the neo-Darwin clan and Lamarckian proponents of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The personal disputes that…

A Legacy of Annihiliation

Palahniuk takes an expansive approach to the culling song in his book Lullaby. For those who have not read the book, it features a bedtime poem, the recitation of which…

Damn that Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk does things that should not work. There is a quality to his writing that is prima facie absurd. It shouldn’t work. Kurt Vonnegut was the same way. It…

One Fat Englishman

One Fat Englishman, by Kingsley Amis, was a decent read – but it was one of those works where reading plodded along, drawn more by the thought of finishing the…