John Rothermel

Lessons of a master

Revisado: 08-04-24

Bird by Bird outlines how to write literary fiction from the perspective of a mature and successful author of fiction and nonfiction who is also a writing instructor.

The gist is to write every day, and by piling up pages, skill, character, plot et. al. will also develop. The key is patience and persistence, and not worrying if first drafts are "s*****". Just keep observing, writing, and developing.

Lamont is an excellent and witty reader of her own audiobook.

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First-rate performances all-round

Revisado: 06-27-24

A sequel to his 1939 novel Rogue Male, Rogue Justice (1982) was also written by Geoffrey Household. It is a brief, "relaxed" first-person thriller. Narrator Richard Ingleram, having failed a second time to get close enough to Hitler to murder him, flees east, then south. Poland, Romania, Greece, Turkey, British Palestine, and Egypt each offer him precarious cover to evade Nazi pursuers. Once he reaches Haifa, the UK mandate authorities assume he's an Oswald Mosley type British fascist.

The justice Ingleram comes to seek is physical oblivion. His personal vendetta has failed, but has blown-back to dirty his own values. His only priority is not to shame his family name.

Rogue Justice is a fine novel, first-rate as a thriller and a story of ethical awakening. Reversals of fortune abound. In the end, death drive becomes death wish.

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Dismal

Revisado: 03-01-23

He just laughs along with himself so obnoxiously... Not every comedian warrants a book deal.

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Intellectually underwhelming

Revisado: 01-31-23

An underwhelming exercise in rhetorical legalese: ahistorical and complacent. The viewpoint on human misery is not differentiated by class or region of the world.Meh.

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Simply superb adventure!

Revisado: 12-05-22

Conan Doyle's 1896 novel is a coming-of-age, hidden heir, bare knuckle boxing, Regency society, pre-Trafalgar Royal Navy epic. The narration/performance by Peter Joyce is simply superb. I wish it had been twice as long.

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Disgracefully amateurish production

Revisado: 11-10-22

This sounds exactly like the audiobook available on YouTube for free. The story's great, of course.

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Great novel

Revisado: 09-13-22

Very funny black comedy. Really enjoyed it. Excellent reader.

Hard to imagine a novel with one above-the-title character being ambitious, but A Rebours (1884) by Joris-Karl Huysmans is ferociously ambitious.

It is also ferociously funny. Jean Des Esseintes, the last excretion of an exhausted noble family, decides to turn his back on society and spend the rest of his life in refined aesthetic self-distraction, isolated far from his old haunts of Parisian debauchery.

Each chapter is an acidic thumbnail of his ambitions and what comes of them: interior decoration, a homemade liquor organ, the pet tortoise, his book collecting habits. He recalls fondly some old escapades with a woman trappeze artist and a female ventriloquist, neither of whom could fulfill desires, no matter how carefully he spelled them out.

His dining room is remodeled into a ship's galley, with authentic fixtures and window art. Tired of the materiality of the country, he orders imitation flowers, gets rid of them and imports exotic species that look like raw meat from an anatomy class. (Perhaps this suggested the carnivorous garden plants on TV's "The Addams Family"?)

When Des Esseintes decides to make his own scent, he nearly ashyxiates himself.

Then it's off to London to savor the Dickensian atmosphere he has been reading about when not studying lithographs of flayed Christian martyrs. Except he only makes it to an English bodega in Paris, then decides physical journeys aren't worth it. So he goes home.

Goes home and quickly binds up his digestive system with quack snake-oil remedies. A local doctor prescribes three enemas a day, which turns out for Des Esseintes to be a sublime aesthetic experience. He decides to create an enema menu from which to order his meals.

Sadly for him and the reader, his local doctor makes him go back to Paris. Prescription: rejoin the human race before you outsmart yourself to death!

A Rebours is a very funny novel. Anyone who ever daydreamed about being able to afford to just stay home will appreciate its macabre and lugubrious drollery.

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Adults relive traumas from their youth

Revisado: 07-27-22

Like many popular horror novels in the last four decades, A Dark Matter's plot is the reunion of childhood friends who together must face the ramifications of a horrific supernatural event that occurred when they were in high school in the late 1960s. Straub uses this plot device to explore trauma, recovery, and competing and conflicting memories. It is an ambitious and well-written novel.

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Great cosmic horror novel

Revisado: 07-17-22

REVIVAL is for King very economical. Gone is the old good versus evil of THE STAND. we are well into the cosmic indifferentist aesthetic here.

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Outstanding performance

Revisado: 06-10-22

A lovely book performed with an ear for Maine dialects. Comforting and beautiful. 👍

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