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Category Archives: Mr. Boo Klist

book list, and other write-ups and critiques

No Country for Old Dudes

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” – Uncle Ellis, No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy Book report: No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. Yes, I read the book first, finishing it a few hours before the matinee. It’s a contender for the decade’s Great American [...]

Book ‘em, Benno

“Book ‘em, Danno” is a stick-in-your-brain phrase I’ve no memory for this. A book is mentioned and I’ll remember if I’ve read it, and how long ago, and whether it was paper or audio, as I also “read” about 1 1/2 books a month on CD while commuting. (There’s no best verb for drinking in [...]

Dial a Compass

Two years ago I read a profile of Philip Pullman in The New Yorker (I don’t get this magazine for the articles but to look at the pictures, except sometimes) that inspired me to get the audio editions of the three volumes of the British children’s author’s His Dark Materials, a phrase from the Protestant [...]

Lens on Fort Smith

In a Brick from a few weeks back I referred to a recent novel that had Fort Smith, Arkansas, as one of its main locales. But I hadn’t read but a few pages. It’s time to do the right thing: finish and reflect. It’s A Secret Word by Jennifer Paddock, 2004, published by Touchstone, an [...]

Shhh: Fight Club

Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Sunday, July 10, 2005. A few days ago I finished “Fight Club,” by Chuck Palahniuk, and now have seen the DVD. I’ve been dancing around reading more of this extraordinary writer since he was interviewed on NPR, mocking their style more acutely than something on “The Daily Show with Jon [...]