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t o d d w a r n e r

tw@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 years, 8 months ago

I farm. I write. I am. I hope to be.

— "The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress." —Philip Roth

My favorite books: errantruminant.com/blog/favorite-books/

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t o d d w a r n e r's books

To Read (View all 147)

Adrian Tchaikovsky: Alien Clay (2024, Orbit)
Ada Limón: You Are Here (Hardcover, 2024, Milkweed Editions)
Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird (To Kill a Mockingbird, #1)

Currently Reading (View all 5)

Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass (Hardcover, 2018, Canterbury Classics)
George Eliot: Middlemarch (2003, Signet Classic)
Julia Cameron: The artist's way (2016, Io)

Read (View all 231)

Claire Keegan: So Late in the Day (2023, Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated)
Parker, Michael: I Am the Light of This World (2023, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)
Douglas Vigliotti: Aristotle for Novelists (2024, Slightly Crooked)

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reviewed The bluest eye by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison: The bluest eye (1970, Holt, Rinehart and Winston)

Each night Pecola prayed for blue eyes.

In her eleven years, no one had ever …

An incredible work

"And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word."

reviewed Dracula by Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker, Joan Acocella: Dracula (Hardcover, 2010, Everyman's Library)

It tells the story of Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England so he …

Love. Like. WTF!

I kind of had a love/like/WTF relationship with this book. It's so darn clever and yet ridiculous at the same time. The characters are exaggerations and silly. And the dialogue, Gah!

On top of that, the "rules" for this whole vampirism thing make no sense at all, and there are no explanations for how they figured out those rules. The good doctor just knows from some dude who told him and assumed it all to be true, no matter how far fetched.

But still, Dracula is an enjoyable romp that explores some interesting themes that I'm unsure the author knew were even there.

This Everyman Library edition (they are always the best editions) includes an introduction by Joan Acocella who concludes with "Dracula is like the work of other nineteenth-century writers. You can complain that their novels are loose, baggy monsters, that their poems are crazy and unfinished. Still, you …

finished reading Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

James Baldwin: Giovanni's Room (Hardcover, 2016, Everyman Publishers)

Giovanni's Room is a 1956 novel by James Baldwin. The book focuses on the events …

Stunning. Magnificent. Easily one of the greatest books I have ever read.

This is the story of a man in search of himself who keeps all those he loves, or wants to love, at arms length and the consequences that follow. It's a story of the same internal struggles with which we all contend. A tortured tale beautifully rendered by James Baldwin.