Ataraxia

  Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov can be found on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction 10 out of 10     The novel that ‘everyone must read’ has a fabulous start, where a major sees a militiaman with a penguin and he says take it to the zoo, but when they meet some time later and the militiamen is with the penguin, and the major asks what have you been doing, I said take it to the zoo and the answer is ‘we have been to the Zoo and then the circus, now we are going to the pictures…without spoiler alerts, let us just say that the ending is equally provocative, unexpected, both amusing and sad.   It always helps the reader enjoy the book more when he, she or they (as we may have to refer to others in the near future, taking into consideration those who are not binary, male or female and transition, are in between, etcetera) can identify with the hero or the main character and this is what happened...

  The Choral by Alan Bennett – one of my favorite authors, you find more than ten reviews of his oeuvres, along with thousands of other notes on magnum opera from The Greatest Books of All Time and other sites, on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube channel   8 out of 10   Alan Bennett https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/09/a-life-like-other-peoples-by-alan.html is a formidable, prolific writer, he is listed on Goodreads with 308 distinct works, and I think I may have reviewed (only) about fifteen, but I am instantly captivated when I see his name, just like in the case of The Choral   Admittedly, we have the reviewed astounding Ralph Fiennes as Dr. Henry Guthrie, we could see this as the main cheater, ergo this would be a leading role for the thespian that was nominated for three Academy Awards, the best known part would that of The English Patient   https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/...

Sex With Camel by Joyce Carol Oates is the first short story in the collection Lovely, Dark, Deep, which has been a finalist for The 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Literature; I still have to open Them, which is 658 th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, and Blonde, 723 rd on The GOAT – I have been elated by Black Water and this short story is wondrous –   you have more reviews at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html   9 out of 10   Black Water is so outstanding https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/black-water-by-carol-oates-this-book.html that I must find time to take on Blonde, 1110 pages (!), or Them, which only over five hundred pages long, and placed quite high on the hierarchy of The Greatest Books of All time site, which has a dubious algorithm   I say that because some of my favorite oeuvres do not even find a place on this GOAT, whereas Black Water is only 10798…I have just checked again, and Lovely, Da...

 

  A Season in Sinji by JL Carr again   Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens Tom Jones by Henry Fielding                     975          librivox Michael Frayn again   Eric Hodgkins Blandings maybe again   L’Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane (Gil Blas) Alain-René Lesage              608 p      David Lodge          again, still one to go   Magnus Mill yes Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov La Disparition by Georges Perec to kindle 319 Les Revenentes by Georges Perec La Vie Mode d’Emploi by Georges Perec to kindle 581 Anthony Powell   again for sure Belles Lettres Papers: A Novel by Charles Simmons again and again The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollett The Expedit...