Allan's Updates en-US Wed, 02 Apr 2025 10:48:49 -0700 60 Allan's Updates 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Review7456866006 Wed, 02 Apr 2025 10:48:49 -0700 <![CDATA[Allan added 'The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder']]> /review/show/7456866006 The Wager by David Grann Allan gave 5 stars to The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder (Hardcover) by David Grann
A very highly recommended book by David Grann is a good bet for readers influenced by New York Times bestseller lists, such as studio snoops, and are looking to discover the follow-up to Killers of the Flower Moon. With The Wager, Grann has earned that second N. ]]> Review7435775360 Tue, 25 Mar 2025 21:19:17 -0700 <![CDATA[Allan added 'This Sweet Sickness']]> /review/show/7435775360 This Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith Allan gave 5 stars to This Sweet Sickness (Paperback) by Patricia Highsmith
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]]> Review7420893205 Thu, 20 Mar 2025 18:12:29 -0700 <![CDATA[Allan added 'Hot Water']]> /review/show/7420893205 Hot Water by P.G. Wodehouse Allan gave 5 stars to Hot Water (Hardcover) by P.G. Wodehouse
No Jeeves, no Bertie, no other Woosters, no Blandings, whoever they are, leaving plenty of room for transatlantic guys and dolls to stretch out and go over every move twice for enhanced comic effect. The marital status of Americans Jane and Packy is a foregone conclusion starting with P. G. Wodehouse’s introductory sentences. None of Jane and Packy’s countrymen step out of step with this very British master romp in which no one comes near a dip into Hot Water. ]]> Review7408434491 Sun, 16 Mar 2025 11:56:19 -0700 <![CDATA[Allan added 'Crook Manifesto']]> /review/show/7408434491 Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead Allan gave 5 stars to Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2) by Colson Whitehead
New York City’s fictional crooks have been literary mainstays back to Damon Runyan if not further, crossed the color line with Chester Himes, maybe sooner, like as done by Iceberg Slim, for instance, and settled into an expertly chromatic criminality as the characters in Colson Whitehead’s pair of Harlem underworld travel guides—first Harlem Shuffle and later, this one, Crook Manifesto. If more than two of those names mean what they should to you, nobody can tell you anything about this book beyond, “Get going! What are you waiting for?� ]]> Review7389001323 Sun, 09 Mar 2025 10:51:10 -0700 <![CDATA[Allan added 'The Alcoholics']]> /review/show/7389001323 The Alcoholics by Jim Thompson Allan gave 5 stars to The Alcoholics (Paperback) by Jim Thompson
The Alcoholics is one of those novels that hardboiled maestro Jim Thompson cranked out in a of couple of hours. Reading this tough-times depiction of a dollar-strapped doctor flimming every flam he can to rescue his beachfront spin-dry clinic from foreclosure will elapse marginally more time than the staff and inebriants can pass without a crapulous sleaze attack. ]]> Review7375932959 Tue, 04 Mar 2025 15:36:10 -0800 <![CDATA[Allan added 'Dead Man's Walk']]> /review/show/7375932959 Dead Man's Walk by Larry McMurtry Allan gave 5 stars to Dead Man's Walk (Lonesome Dove, #3) by Larry McMurtry
Dead Man’s Walk is the first novel in Larry McMurtry’s four-part Lonesome Dove saga. The book reads like middling prestige TV. Characters are introduced thick and fast and dispatched with the same alacrity. Quality problems and savage solutions abound. Action verges on and seldom crosses into tedium. McMurtry chases one conflict hot on the heels of the current one as if always looking forward and stocking up drama for the following season. There are three more long books much like this one. That’s the Dead Man’s Walk good news and bad news. ]]> Review7349208242 Sun, 23 Feb 2025 16:04:44 -0800 <![CDATA[Allan added 'Scoop by Waugh, Evelyn Reprint Edition']]> /review/show/7349208242 Scoop by Waugh, Evelyn Reprint Edition by Evelyn Waugh Allan gave 5 stars to Scoop by Waugh, Evelyn Reprint Edition (2003) by Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop can be fully categorized as a farcical comedy of errors. The farce is elaborate, fast and unrelenting, often funny enough and at turns obvious even to some of the novel’s Fleet Street characters. Maybe a decade later, Dorothy Parker posted a scathing takedown of Waugh in reaction to his release of the novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, which was nowhere near as unreadable as Dorothy made the book out to be. She may have been objecting to Waugh’s casual, classist, crabby deployment of slurs racial and Semitic in replacement of character development, in retrospect a far more lasting and telling device than the Brit wit might have anticipated or hoped for. ]]> Review7340100455 Thu, 20 Feb 2025 14:02:22 -0800 <![CDATA[Allan added 'A Disaffection']]> /review/show/7340100455 A Disaffection by James Kelman Allan gave 5 stars to A Disaffection (Paperback) by James Kelman
James Kelman birls out 337 pages of rampant stream-of-consciousness in A Disaffection. The author and his spewing narrator appear to be equally in love with the language and the characters of the colonized Scots, the fat-fried food, the crushing football, the crashing romance, the wee, continuous flow of ever-present bevy, crippling internal conflicts of family and cranium, the scathing attacks of the educated mind. Up in there is where Kelman’s great affection turns to bitter dis. ]]> Review7317882942 Thu, 13 Feb 2025 10:01:49 -0800 <![CDATA[Allan added 'Keep Moving and No Questions']]> /review/show/7317882942 Keep Moving and No Questions by James Kelman Allan gave 5 stars to Keep Moving and No Questions (Hardcover) by James Kelman
I’m partial Scots, and the wee stories (the author’s words) spun off by James Kelman’s conflicted protagonists in Keep Moving and No Questions are a vivid reminder that I might have been great and am not. ]]> Review7299765540 Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:56:49 -0800 <![CDATA[Allan added 'The Spider's House']]> /review/show/7299765540 The Spider's House by Paul Bowles Allan gave 5 stars to The Spider's House (Paperback) by Paul Bowles
At first glance through the opening chapters, none of the characters moping along in The Spider’s House is creepy enough to be a Paul Bowles protagonist. Even Poppy “Lee� Burroughs, an homage to William S., appears innocent to her wholesome core. All I can say, as you slog along wondering when do we get to the profound atrocity, is “Don’t give up before the miracle!� Rot will out. ]]>