What is happening to The NYTBR? Self began noticing, a few months ago, that interesting reviews were becoming few and far between. For, you see, dear blog reader, self puts as much emphasis on a review as on the artifact — er, book — under review. And lately, those have been so dull. Self can say all this because she has never, ever had a book reviewed by The NYTBR, and probably never will, so she doesn’t give a hoot what they think (and they, obviously, don’t give a hoot about self, either!)
Here are the two books self is interested in reading after perusing NYTBR of 7 March 2010:
1. After reading Joseph O’Neill’s review of Christopher de Bellaigue’s Rebel Land: Unraveling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town (What a fabulous name for a writer! In fact, self thinks it would be a crime for anyone born with a name like that not to be a writer!)
- Christopher de Bellaigue’s Rebel Land: Unraveling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town
2. After reading Alexander McCall Smith’s (hysterical) review of Helen Simonson’s first novel, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, in which the author assembles “a cast of utterly stock characters” and lets “them loose in a rural England that is now very different from the one imagined by earlier practitioners” of a genre he calls the “English village novel” :
- Helen Simonson’s first novel, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Kanlaon 