All Reviews by Juliod
The Idiot
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I didn't like this at all. A Russian acquaintance suggested this as the greatest Russian novel. Large chunks are unreadable, pages and pages of low-quality metaphysics. The plot is not so attractive. The characters remain ciphers throughout. Themes are introduced but then suddenly dropped without resolution. The ending is rushed. I think Dostoyevsky got bored with it himself.
Dead Souls
by Nikolai Gogol
Pretty good. Apparently written in two parts. The first is good, the second less so. Gogol apparently has difficulty coming up with a good ending. Readable.
A Book of Prefaces
by H.L. Mencken
Good. Mencken is great. A very modern cynic. I wish he were alive today. Not every essay is good, but the good ones are very good.
The American Credo
by H.L. Mencken
An amusing and cynical attack on the american people. If you like self-mockery and social criticism, you'll like this. Not everything he writes is quite right, perhaps, but this is readable and enjoyable.
In Defense of Women
by H.L. Mencken
This is very funny. It's impossible to decide if Mencken is a feminist or a misogynist. Probably both. This book is still largely relevant.
Forbidden Fruit; Luscious and Exciting story; and More Forbidden Fruit
by Anonymous
Not very good. Lacks any real sense of eroticism. It's about an incestous family that forks anything that moves. Yet every one in the story treats this as perfectly normal. So any sense that this behavior is deviant or erotic is lost completely. My guess is that this was written merely to shock Victorian morality. Inferior to most amateur porn stories you'll find on the net. Interesting, perhaps, to philologists.
The Best American Humorous Short Stories
by Various
Very poor. Not funny at all. Even the Twain stories. Don't bother. I can't imagine what the original editor was thinking. Did past generations think these stories were funny? I can't believe that.