![]() (On the principle that one shouldn’t review books one hasn’t read from cover to cover, I eventually deleted that post.) ![]() There I pronounced My Struggle an essentially conceptual artwork, meant to be contemplated as a phenomenon rather than read, and worried that Knausgaard’s willful and much-advertised abandonment of literary form implied that the necessary contrivances by which we live were merely disposable bits of ornament rather than load-bearing structures. As longtime readers know, I tried to read My Struggle when the first installments were published in America, did not succeed in clearing 100 pages, and wrote an impatient and aggrieved assessment of what I did read on this site in 2014. This will be neither a palinode nor a redrawing of the indictment. ![]() My Struggle: Book One by Karl Ove Knausgård ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() Also, the book is packed full of illustration, and not the usual portraits of people no one ever saw. I especially liked how he explained the figures with context rather than listing a bunch of meaningless numbers. He spins a good yarn but also includes relevant figures and great anecdotes. It almost feels as if someone is reading it aloud and telling a story while explaining something important. The author is an academic, but he has a style (at least in this book) that is readable and engaging for a wide audience. The author makes a powerful and persuasive case both for the usefulness of food as a way to understand people's relationships with their worlds generally and, more important, how much and deeply the empire affected peoples lives in Britain. Instead it narrates and argues for the importance of food in how people understood the empire and how the empire affected the daily lives of the people who stayed in Britain. It is not really food history in that it is not a biography of coffee. ![]() The book explores how food, society and empire interacted in Britain during the 18th century. There are no reviews of this book yet, so I am taking a stab at it. ![]() ![]() ![]() After the first twelve inmates have undergone rather bizarre transformations, the lead scientist wants to use a child for the next iteration. ![]() To test the formula, they experiment on death row prisoners. military develop an experimental drug therapy out of a rare virus believed to “weaponize” human beings. ![]() The book takes place some twenty years into the future. Cronin has managed to combine them, refashion the product to be suitable for young adult audiences (but sold in both YA and Adult markets), and spin it out to over 760 pages. Is it possible in any conceivable universe that Justin Cronin did not read Stephen King’s The Stand before he wrote this? Or see the movie series “28 Days Later” and “28 Weeks Later?” No, I doubt it’s possible even in an alternate universe. ![]() |