Catching Up on My Book Reviews

I am slowly wending my way through Updike's Due Considerations, and it is a profoundly embittering experience. I despise his neurotic and self-indulgent fiction, but his essays, and especially his book reviews, are really accomplished. Every damned one of them is a carefully-crafted gem. Every...damned...one...of...them.

It wasn't always so - this terrific article explains how Updike's reviewing advanced from precious solipsism to the craftsmanship of his later years. His rules for reviewers are well-judged, and anyone who wishes to seriously review books should make them a touchstone for their own work.

Screw it, I'm in a hurry. Here are some recent books and what I think of them:

• Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction - Good
  
• Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends - Pretty good
• Black-Scholes and Beyond: Option Pricing Models - Quite good (not available on Kindle)
• China: Its History and Culture - Very good
  
• When Asia Was the World - Really good
  
• Kampung Boy - Superb (not available on Kindle, and you wouldn't want to)
• Hiroshige's 100 Views of Edo - Brilliant - Taschen have outdone themselves

Updike, eat your heart out.