For more than fifteen years, we have been meeting on the first Tuesday of the month in the Lower Haight for a potluck dinner and literary discussion.
Authors have ranged from Jules Verne to V.S. Naipaul, Fanny Burney to James Baldwin, Claude Levi-Strauss to Ulysses S. Grant, Iris Murdoch to Kenneth Grahame, Thorsten Veblen to Jim Thompson
If interested, call Frank Hanny, (415)552-2729 or email
Below, some of the books we have read, with my comments:
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A Bend in the River |
V.S. Naipaul |
Flawed but very powerful story of post-colonialism in Africa. |
A Distant Mirror |
Barbara Tuchman |
More than you wanted to know about the 4 horsemen in the 14th century. |
A Frolic of His Own |
William Gaddis |
Badly in need of copy editing. |
A Hero of Our Time |
Mihail Lermontov |
Greater than the sum of its parts, and very Russian. |
A Modern Instance |
William Dean Howells |
Excellent 19th Century American social problem novel. |
A Severed Head |
Iris Murdoch |
Cynical and amusing. |
Adam's Diary/Eve's Diary |
Mark Twain |
Good yucks. |
Against Criticism |
Susan Sontag |
Very dry, not very rigorous. |
Among the Believers |
VS Naipaul |
Aspects of the anti-Enlightenment. |
Animal Family, The |
Randall Jarrel |
Charming fantasy. |
Atonement |
Ian McEwan |
Well written and researched, but somehow forgettable. |
Autobiography |
Benjamin Franklin |
Venery for health, but not to excess. |
Autobiography |
Charles Darwin |
Stick to the major works. |
Autobiography |
Dalai Lama |
A sheltered childhood. |
Autobiography |
W B Yeats |
Fairies in the garden of a tone-deaf laureate, but fascinating nonetheless. |
Belinda |
Maria Edgeworth |
Didactic but intriguing. I preferred the characters before they reformed… |
Benito Cereno |
Herman Melville |
Tabloid material transformed by genius. |
Bible |
Ywh |
A popular religious text. |
Black Prince, The |
Iris Murdoch |
Dark, strange and brilliant. |
Brothers Karamazov |
Dostoyevsky |
Remember the TV series with Fred MacMurray? |
Castle Rackrent |
Mariah Edgeworth |
Delightful 18th Century Anglo Irish satire. |
Chaos |
James Gleick |
Like a good 3 part New Yorker article. |
Collected Poems of |
Elizabeth Bishop |
2nd rate |
Confessions |
Jean Jaques Rousseau |
A fascinating document about a not very nice man with a persecution complex. |
Conformist, The |
Alberto Moravia |
Fascism anatomized. |
Consciousness Explained |
Daniel Dennett |
An amusing materialist. |
Continental Op, The |
Dashiell Hammett |
Bad early stories. Read The Dain Curse or Red Harvest instead. |
Crowds and Power |
Elias Canetti |
Polyymathic brilliance from the original of Iris Murdoch’s magus figure. |
Death Comes For the Archbishop |
Willa Cather |
Good enough to overcome the anti-Catholic bias I acquired in parochial school. |
Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark |
Carl Sagan |
People believe the goddamndest piffle. Carl deplores this at tedious length. |
Devils of Loudun, The |
Aldous Huxley |
The spiritual biography of a deranged exorcist by an admirer. Bludgeoning erudition brought to bear on the evils of intellectual pride. |
Education of Henry Adams |
Henry Adams |
Fascinating, dripping with ideas and beautifully written, a surprise hit. |
Epitaph of a Small Winner |
Machado de Assis |
19th Century Brazil's foremost, a philosophical fantasy narrated by the deceased protagonist. |
Evelina |
Fanny Burney |
Solidly engaging, and occasionally startling in its depiction of a violent, vulgar and amoral era. |
Fathers and Sons |
Ivan Turgenev |
Short and almost perfect. |
Frankenstein |
Mary Shelley |
Not bad for a 19 year old girl. |
Go Tell It on the Mountain |
James Baldwin |
An impressive meeting of the King James Bible and Freud. |
Guns, Germs and Steel |
Jared Diamond |
Firstest with the mostest. |
Heartbreak House |
G B Shaw |
For once a drama richer than the didactic purpose stated in its preface. |
His Monkey Wife |
John Collier |
Exquisite irony. |
House of Mirth |
Edith Wharton |
Very fine. |
Huckleberry Finn |
Mark Twain |
Several novels about a boy. |
Innocents Abroad |
Mark Twain |
The Ugly American. |
Insurgent Mexico |
John Reed |
Participatory journalism by a romantic. |
Invisible Cities |
Italo Calvino |
Metaphysical candy fluff. |
Jane Eyre |
Charlotte Bronte |
Great! Read Villette too, which is even better! |
Jurgen |
James Branch Cabell |
A monstrous clever fellow. |
Language, Truth and Logic |
A. J. Ayer |
Clever, clever, clever... |
Life of Charlotte Bronte |
Mrs Gaskell |
A Gothic biography of a gothic novelist. Duty over pleasure. |
Lives of A Cell, The |
Lewis Thomas |
Biological belles lettres. |
Lucky Jim |
Kingsley Amis |
Big yucks. |
Man Who Loved Children, The |
Christina Stead |
Unique and wonderful book by an unclassifiable writer. Her Letty Fox, Her Luck is also great. |
Martian Time Slip |
Phillip K. Dick |
Another head-twister from the master paranoiac. |
McTeague |
Frank Norris |
Not a pretty picture, but sticks to your ribs. |
Memoirs of US Grant |
Ulysses S. Grant |
Another surprise hit: terrific prose, great sincerity and character. |
Mind of A Mnemonist |
A. J. Luria |
Fascinating study of a man whose extraordinary memory seemed of little benefit. |
Moby Dick |
Melville |
Many novels centering on a whale. |
Mrs Dalloway |
Virginia Woolf |
I prefer Orlando . |
Mysteries of Winterthurn, The |
Joyce Carol Oates |
Repulsive and inept 19 th century gothic pastiche. |
Nicholas Nickelby |
Dickens |
Didactic and sentimental. |
No Man Knows My History |
Fawn Brodie |
Bio of Joseph Smith, the man who found God in his hat. |
No Man’s Land |
Harold Pinter |
I saw the original production with Gielgud and Richardson. |
Nothing |
Henry Green |
A minor 20th C. English writer with a unique style and sensibility. |
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit |
Jeanette Winterson |
Slight. |
Ordeal of Richard Feverel, The |
George Meredith |
18 th century style, 19 th century psychology. |
Our Mutual Friend |
Charles Dickens |
Characters you will never forget. The Master. |
Palace Walk |
Mahfouz |
Solid 19 th century novel. |
Pere Goriot |
Honore de Balzac |
Oddly disappointing and sentimental. Read Droll Stories instead. |
Posession |
A. S. Byatt |
Talent misused. The 19th C. pastiche is clever, the 20th C. satire tedious. |
Professor and the Madman, The |
Simon Winchester |
An ok version of a terrific true story. |
Psychopathology of Everyday Life |
Freud |
The book that introduced the "Freudian slip" into popular culture. Ponderously Teutonic but fascinating. |
Rasselas |
Samuel Johnson |
Exquisite style and charming story. 18th C. |
Rats, Lice and History |
Hans Zinsser |
Our friend the plague. Fascinating. |
Redburn |
Melville |
A potboiler by a genius |
Remains of the Day |
Ishiguro |
Honest but forgettable. |
Roderick Random |
Tobias Smollett |
A comic masterpiece. |
Savages |
Joe Kane |
Journalism re South American Indians and oil politics. Well done. |
Seven Years in Tibet |
Heinrich Harrer |
Someone was ready when opportunity knocked. |
Six Character in Search of an Author |
Luigi Pirandello |
No doubt a novel exercise in it’s day. Seems dated now. |
Some Buried Caesar |
Rex Stout |
Classic murder mystery. |
Songlines |
Bruce Chatwin |
Excellent travel book on Australia , In Patagonia is even better. |
Souls of Black Folks |
W.E.B. Du Bois |
Sad but true. |
Sylvie and Bruno |
Lewis Carroll |
Twee. Odd. Twee. |
Ballad of the Sad Café, The |
Carson McCullers |
Disappointing Southern Gothic. |
Beast in the Jungle, The |
Henry James |
Short and almost perfect. |
Betrothed, The |
Allesandro Manzoni |
Italy 's Sir Walter Scott. Scene of ruffians carousing atop a wagonload of plague victims astonishing. |
Death of Ivan Illich, The |
Leo Tolstoy |
Short and almost perfect. |
Egoist, The |
George Meredith |
A Jane Austen plot and a very elaborate prose s cup of tea, but I liked it. |
Girls of Slender Means, The |
Muriel Spark |
Elegant! read "The Comforters", "Memento Mori" and "Ballad of Peckham Rye" while you’re at it. |
Good Soldier, The |
Ford Madox Ford |
A painful gem. Also read his modernist masterpiece Parade's End . |
Hobbit, The |
Tolkien |
A better if more modest work than the trilogy. |
Killer Inside Me, The |
Jim Thompson |
The author is a very sick man. |
Masterpiece, The |
Emil Zola |
Bleak and powerful. |
Monk, The |
Matthew G Lewis |
Torture, incest, rape, necrophilia, transvestism, Satanic posession and clerical incelibacy: how can you go wrong! |
Old Regime and the French Revolution , The |
Alexis de Toqueville |
A very smart guy, with some very deep insights. |
Ordeal of Richard Feverel, The |
George Meredith |
18 th century style, 20 th century psychology. |
Oresteia, The |
Aeschylus |
All in the family, Greek style. |
Sea and the Jungle, The |
H M Tomlinson |
Terrific travel book, and a real vocabulary builder. |
Things They Carried, The |
Tim O'Brien |
Vietnam |
Virginian, The |
Owen Wister |
Smile when you say that. |
Warden, The / Barchester Towers |
Anthony Trollope |
A 2 piece comic gem. |
Theory of the Leisure Class |
Thorsten Veblen |
Absolutely brilliant! One of the great satires, and a profoundly insightful work of sociology at the same time! |
Tiny Alice |
Edward Albee |
A disturbing theological puzzle. |
Tragic Muse |
Henry James |
Very minor James. |
Travels of |
Marco Polo |
An utterly prosaic business man goes to another planet, and for 500 years is believed a liar. |
Travels With A Donkey |
Robert Louis Stevenson |
One of the prose masterworks of the 19th C. Absolutely delightful! |
Tristes Tropiques |
Claude Levi-Strauss |
Intellectually scintillating, stylistically superb, another pick hit! |
Under Milkwood |
Dylan Thomas |
Music to the ears. |
Undiscovered Self, The |
Carl Jung |
A highly implausible political speech which proposes direct experience of God as the only alternative to Soviet style totalitarianism, style good, content incoherent. |
USA |
John Dos Passos |
Unique modernist masterpiece and sociological document at once. |
Valleys of the Assassins |
Freya Stark |
An English broad with serious chutzpah (and a good prose style) wanders around Persia in the early 1930's. |
Voyage of the Beagle |
Charles Darwin |
Everyone loved this: excellent plain style, fascinating observations, and a delightfully modest narrator. |
Voyages of Dr Dolittle |
Hugh Lofting |
Wonderful, and thankfully not bowdlerized in my copy! |
Wapshot Chronicle, The |
John Cheever |
Perhaps the finest American stylist of the post WWII era. A very funny book. |
Wide Sargasso Sea |
Jean Rhys |
Skip this and read After Leaving Mr Mackenzie. |
Wind in the Willows, The |
Kenneth Grahame |
Poetically wonderful, albeit with some disturbing political angles when read as an adult. |
Winter Notes on Summer Impressions |
Dostoievski |
Witty, Burkean pan-Slavism, believe it or not. |
Woman in White, The |
Wilkie Collins |
Great 19th C. mystery. The Moonstone is also terrific. |
Wonderful Life |
Stephen J. Gould |
Pretty unreadable. His essay collections are much better. |
You Must Remember This |
Joyce Carol Oates |
Surprisingly good sex scenes. |
Young Torless |
Robert Musil |
Fin de Siecle S&M in a military academy. Skip this and read The Man Without Qualities . |
21 Balloons |
William Pene Du Bois |
Delightful text and pictures. |
44: The Mysterious Stranger |
Mark Twain |
For devotees of textual variants. |
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
Jules Verne |
A great novel virtually devoid of psychology. |
Undaunted Courage |
Stephen Ambrose |
Bipolar exploration. |
A Coffin for Dimitrios |
Eric Ambler |
The pattern tale of Balkan suspense. |
Quark and the Jaguar, The |
Murray Gell-Mann |
A Nobelist lucid on how complexity derives from simplicity. |
Decline and Fall |
Evelyn Waugh |
Cruel, funny and very well written. |
Possessed, The |
Dostoyesvsky |
Surprisingly funny, psychologically brilliant, politically deplorable, a masterpiece. |
Circular Staircase, The |
Mary Roberts Rinehart |
An old dark house mystery from the golden age. |
Story of My Experiments With Truth, The |
Ghandi |
Crank diets and sexual anxiety lead to Indian independence. |
Mysterious Island, The |
Jules Verne |
Men without women. Utopia. Darn that volcano. |
Travels With Charley |
John Steinbeck |
An articulate boy and his dog. |
Iris Murdoch, A Life |
Peter J. Conradi |
So she screwed around. Read the novels instead. |
The Turn of the Screw |
Henry James |
Scary. |
The Sixth Extinction |
Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin |
Dead critters. |
A Midsummer Night's Dream |
Shakspeare |
Whimsical. |
Betrayal |
Harold Pinter |
See the film! |
Selected Letter of Gustave Flaubert |
ed/trans Francis Steegmuller |
Hard to tell if he was leading or following the trends. |
Journal of the Plague Year |
Defoe |
Further proof of intelligent design. Amazing. |
Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War |
Barbara Ehrenreich |
Read her sources, including Canetti, instead. |
V. |
Thomas Pynchon |
Terrifying intelligence, occasional silliness. "Mondaugen's Story" will leave permanent scars. |
Miles, the Autobiography |
Miles Davis |
Listen to the music, and skip this narcissistic piece of crap. |
The Three Musketeers |
Alexandre Dumas |
Best villainess in literature! |
Memoirs of a Polyglot |
William Gerhardie |
Fascinating memoirs of a British upbringing in pre-Soviet Russia.. |
My Name is Red |
Orhan Pamuk |
A colorful and intelligent novel of ideas. |
Two Years Before the Mast |
William Henry Dana |
California before the real estate boom, and well before OSHA. |
Palimpsest |
Gore Vidal |
Written in a hurry, presumably for money. Some amusing gossip, lots of dishing. |
The Greek Coffin Mystery |
Ellery Queen |
Enough plot for 4 mysteries. Still under the shadow of SS Van Dine. |
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution |
Howard Rheingold |
If one must read ephemera, it should be current. This was not. |
| Uncle Tom's Cabin | Harriet Beecher Stowe | A solid 19th century novel which gives the devil some of the best tunes. |
| Turkish Reflections | Mary Lee Settle | Ms. Settle seems preoccupied with her place in the pecking order of knowingness, and occasionally writes sentences that aren't. |
| Sirens of Titan | Kurt Vonnegut | This warped my mind as a child, and holds up very well. |
| A History of the End of the World | Jonathan Kirsch | The embedded text of the Book of the Apocalypse is far more interesting than the trite commentary. |
| Parzival | Wolfram Von Eschenbach | A surprisingly readable Medieval Arthurian romance. |
| All the Shah's Men | Stephen Kinzer | |
| Hajji Baba of Ispahan | J.J.Morier | An hilarious amoral picaresque. |
| The River of Doubt | Candice Millard | She never met a cliche she didn't like. |
| The Bachelor of Arts | R.K. Narayan | A lovely bit of writing, doubly impressive since in the author's second language. |