Currently reading
Hieroglyph: Stories and Blueprints for a Better Future
Ukraine: Zbig's Grand Chessboard & How the West Was Checkmated
The Girl on the Train: A Novel
Our Souls at Night: A novel
Above the Waterfall
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction
The Homicide Report: Understanding Murder in America
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
The Gods of Mars
This is a kafkaesque story of an entomologist who travels to a remote village in search of a new species of beetle. It is he and not the bug who is captured. The village is beset by relentless sand. Their homes have already been buried so deep that it takes full time effort by residents to remove incoming sand from the holes in which their houses are now nearly buried to keep from being destroyed. Jumpei is placed in the home of a widow to help her. The story tells of his imprisonment and his attempts to escape. There is much detail here about sand, but the true intent here is an examination of life. What is existence? What is the true role of man? Do we control our fate? If so, how much? A bond grows between the man and woman, and becomes sexual. Finally, he is faced with a choice, when freedom is offered, to stay or go. There is one scene that is quite chilling, in which taunting village elders at the top of his hole tease him that they will set him free if he will only have sex with the woman in their view. God playing with his human toys? I appreciated the intellectual drive of the novel, but I never felt much of a visceral tie to the characters. The absurdity of the store prevented that for me.