Tag Archives: Magical Realism

Book Review: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Tietsu

God, I hate short story collections. They are damn near impossible to review. Unless you have somehow managed to find one written in a single year long cluster there it virtually no way to engage it properly. It’s like having … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

Posted on May 18, 2017 by Tietsu

I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll mention it again just for the sake of posterity: Murakami and I do not agree on the fundamentals of writing. He creates yamato-e paintings. Giving you the tangible as he deems necessary as well … Continue reading →

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Book Review: The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

Posted on March 21, 2017 by Tietsu

After World War II, as one can imagine, Germany was in something of a bind when it came to moving forward. What is the correct way to move forward after an all but global rebuttal to the government of Hitler’s … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Summerlong by Peter S. Beagle

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Tietsu

I never cared for The Last Unicorn. It was a fable, it was fantasy. It told a happy story where nothing much comes in the way of generally harming anything else. Not my fare, but after tearing apart most of … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Tietsu

Reading this book is like learning to speak another language. It is frustrating, illusive, and so densely furnished in its culture as to feel utterly inscrutable. The first part of the book attempts to teach you, albeit impatiently. It gives … Continue reading →

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Book Review: The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu

Posted on December 13, 2016 by Tietsu

Liu’s short stories are so good, so short that I can’t shake the feeling that he is simply giving away ideas. Each is an untold epic in its own right, waiting to be written from the sheer power of its … Continue reading →

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Book Review: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

Posted on November 3, 2016 by Tietsu

I seem to have stumbled across a niche I didn’t realize existed. The genre is simple, or not, depending on your judgment of such things: charming prose exploring an overlapping space between magic and the real, the quintessential familiar and … Continue reading →

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Book Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Posted on June 8, 2016 by Tietsu

Erin Morgenstern has created something lovely here. A little loose, but then most first books are, and life itself is a pretty loose thing, so I’m hard pressed to dress it down too much for not being some tightly scripted … Continue reading →

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