1.
A wise friend of mine rejects the idea of there being such a thing, because it suggests that novels are like horses and the race makes assessment into a simple matter of comparison in a single field of endeavour.
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Is Wuthering Heights the Best Novel Ever Written?
Posted in Observation, Reading with tags book-review, books, Emily Bronte, gothic, gothic novel, In Search of Lost Time, literature, Pyramids, Robert McKee, Taj Mahal, War and Peace, Wuthering Heights on March 22, 2026 by Jarrod Boyle
The Monk
Posted in Observation, Reading with tags Ambrosio, Angel Clare, books, Breasts, Fiction, Matilda, Matthew Lewis, poetry, short-story, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The Monk, Thomas Hardy, writing on February 25, 2026 by Jarrod Boyle
2.
Certainly, this is high drama, and skilfully rendered by Mr Lewis. I have not chosen to recount it here for that reason, however. I reproduce it because the breast, probably the only breast Ambrosio has encountered – aside from his mother’s when he was an infant – appears to him as an enigma of overwhelming power.
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The Monk
Posted in Observation, Reading with tags book-review, book-reviews, books, Fiction, Gothic literature, literature, Matthew Lewis, The Monk on February 9, 2026 by Jarrod Boyle
1.
A very literate friend of mine once described The Monk as the most boring book ever forced upon him by an educational institution. Any book that comes to take up that kind of notoriety is often contingent on timing: my friend was 19 when he encountered The Monk, and it may have become his central focus of regret in signing up to study Gothic literature.
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Carldav13 Writes:
Posted in Film, Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading, Real Men with tags Dionysus, I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, Iris, Jesus, Joseph Campbell, Martin Scorsese, Mithras, Narcissus, Odysseus, Orpheus, Paul Schrader, Peter Attia, podcast, Robert De Niro, Sam Peckinpah, Siddhartha, Taxi Driver, Terry Real, The Drive, The Hero of One Thousand Faces, The Tim Ferriss Show, The Wild Bunch, Tony Soprano, Travis Bickle on July 31, 2025 by Jarrod Boyle
J.G. Ballard: Kingdom Come
Posted in Reading, Real Men with tags book-review, books, fascism, Fiction, J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come, politics on June 14, 2025 by Jarrod Boyle
2.
I thought it was time to pay him a visit and see if he could freak me out like he used to.
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J.G. Ballard: Kingdom Come
Posted in Reading, Real Men with tags book-reviews, books, Crash, David Cronenberg, Empire of the Sun, Fiction, Five Books, J.G. Ballard, Jeff Buckley, Joyce Carey, Kingdom Come, Marquis de Sade, reading, Robert Plant, Running Wild, Steven Spielberg, The Atrocity Exhibition, writing on June 5, 2025 by Jarrod Boyle
The Magic Mountain
Posted in Reading with tags book-review, books, Dickens, Dosteyevsky, Fiction, Judi Dench, literature, Nobel Proze, Pavel Tsatsouline, reading, Shakespeare, Sonnet 26, The Graham Norton Show, The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann, Tolstoy, War and Peace on March 26, 2025 by Jarrod Boyle
The internet is like having a giant bilge pipe mounted above the armchair in your lounge room with all kinds of garbage gushing out of it. There is hardly a moment to take stock and discriminate amongst the torrent of what’s raining down upon you.
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Meditation Killed My Motivation
Posted in Observation, Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading, Real Men, Statement of intention with tags Alain De Botton, Blade Runner, Buddha, How Proust Can Change Your Life, In Search of Lost Time, Luke David, Marcus Aurelius, Nietzsche, Osho, Proust, Roy Batty, Scott Moncrieff, Tim Ferriss on December 1, 2022 by Jarrod Boyle
Tim Ferriss once said that he had initially avoided meditation for fear it would bliss him out and diminish his drive. In my case, I fear that it’s true.
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Thomas Hardy: Character is Fate in ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’
Posted in Fiction, Observation, Reading with tags Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Donald Farfrae, Michael Henchard, Narcissus, Phillip Pirrip, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy on May 31, 2022 by Jarrod Boyle
‘Character is fate, said Novalis, and Farfrae’s character was just the reverse of Henchard’s, who might not be inaptly described as Faust has been described – as a vehement gloomy being who had quitted the ways of vulgar men without light to guide him on a better way.’
Thomas Hardy,
The Mayor of Casterbridge,
P. 131
While reading The Mayor of Casterbridge this morning, I saw something that I did not like: myself.
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Brave New World: Beware the Philosopher
Posted in Observation, Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading with tags 1984, Aldous Huxley, Artificial intelligence, Brave New World, George Orwell, Yuval Noah Harari on December 26, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
“I think Brave New World is the best science fiction book ever, definitely the most prescient. Huxley was writing in the early 1930’s with Stalin and Hitler around, but what he was envisioning was our present.
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Theme Park at its Darkest 