User Profile

Freeman Crouch

freemancrouch@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 4 months ago

Blue dotter, potter, novel reader, tuba player. Retired Texas HS Computer Science, English and Math teacher, so I have Certain Tendencies of Mind. 🤷‍♂️

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Sharon Rybak Portugal: The Fault at the Center (Paperback, 2002, Writer's Showcase Press) 5 stars

Review of 'The Fault at the Center' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This is a sensational and lovely book. A quasi-autobiographical bildungsroman, a coming of age story set in Guatemala in the 60s and 70s. The narrator, Sandy Fischer, and with her, the reader, gradually grows in understanding of how the conflicts within her family -- faith, identity, and personalities -- fit within the bigger picture of conflict and commitment in Guatemala.

Quite a ripping yarn, to be sure, but told in a deliciously dense, allusive voice that bears -- demands-- slow and careful reading. I look forward to Sandy's further adventures.

James Edward Austen-Leigh: A memoir of Jane Austen (2002, Oxford University Press) 5 stars

Review of 'A memoir of Jane Austen' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

For even marginal Janeites, this is rather good! A number of years after Austen's death, one of her nephews pulled this together. It is a narrative of what he and other relatives remember, as well as some of her letters. While some of his paragraphs are a little long-winded now and then the book overall has the virtue of being rather short. It's also historically interesting, because it triggered a revisiting of Austen.

Marcel Proust: In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7] (EBook, 2020, Pandora's Box Classics) 4 stars

Monty Python paid hommage to Proust's novel in a sketch first broadcast on November 16th, …

Review of 'In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7]' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I've been putting off reading Rememberance of Things Past for, um, 33 years. My neighbor in my dorm in college, who was magnificent, and who now, curiously, is a corporate takeover artist in the City of London, said that Proust was the. Greatest. Novelist. Ever. Such words from SL I took seriously. Anyway. It is odd that this is marketed with the title In Search of Lost Time As far as I can tell it is C. K. Scott Moncrieff's translation, and therefor should probably be called "Remembrance of Things Past." (The book racket is not scholarly; it is about marketing books.) Anyway, this seems to be an competent, and sometimes beautiful, translation. I think I detect Moncrieff's Scottish cadences, perhaps; I think this is a good thing. It is also really cheap, and the Kindlization is better than acceptable. The other point is that Proust is perhaps at his …