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Monthly Archives: August 2007

Iron and Silk

Thursday, August 30, 2007

This is the fourth or fifth time I’ve read Mark Salzman’s charming debut novel, and it’s still just as delightful as I remember it. The book recounts Salzman’s two years of teaching English in China in 1982-84, and it is one of the best and most honest of the “English teacher in Asia” type books [...]

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The Dain Curse

Thursday, August 16, 2007

I had never read Dashiell Hammett before picking up this book. According to other reviewers, The Dain Curse is atypical of Hammett, but of course that doesn’t matter to a first-time reader. I wanted to try something from the master of 1920s hard-boiled detective fiction, and sure enough the book was entertaining, despite a plot [...]

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The Natural

Saturday, August 4, 2007

For all that the plot revolves around murder and corruption, this 1984 adaptation of Bernard Malamud’s novel brings to mind a more innocent age. It’s a story about baseball, set sorta-kinda in the 1930s, and has a lot of baseball’s lore and best moments woven into the story. Robert Redford heads up a truly all-star [...]

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