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kerryvaughan's reviews
173 reviews
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
4.0
18. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Did everyone have to read this in high school or just me? I still had my copy.
I can tell you I liked it much more now than I did then. I can also tell you I “got it” much more than in high school. A swift choppy story about age, the fight of a lifetime and a lifetime of fight, and the unfair tragedy of losing even after you’ve won.
Adults get this. Older adults really get this. Teenagers who think they’ll live forever and defeat every foe do not get this.
I may warm to Hemingway yet. #2025books
Did everyone have to read this in high school or just me? I still had my copy.
I can tell you I liked it much more now than I did then. I can also tell you I “got it” much more than in high school. A swift choppy story about age, the fight of a lifetime and a lifetime of fight, and the unfair tragedy of losing even after you’ve won.
Adults get this. Older adults really get this. Teenagers who think they’ll live forever and defeat every foe do not get this.
I may warm to Hemingway yet. #2025books
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
4.0
“What’s punishable mean?”
17. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
Noboru, a smart, troubled 13-year-old boy obsessed with ships, watches his widowed mother go to bed with a manly, worldly sailor through a peephole between their bedroom walls.
Thus begins Noboru’s hero-worship of the sailor Ryuji. But Noboru is as troublesome as he is troubled, running with a gang of kids who think they have life all figured out, and that adults do not, and that violence abounds.
Much like a roiling sea swayed by the wind, Noboru’s passion for Ryuji swells in every direction, ultimately swirling into hatred as Ryuji chooses marriage over the sea, and Noboru chooses contempt over consolation.
For me, this was a slow burn (I went through phases of not liking it) but it paid off. The longer the coal sits in my stomach, the more it sears. Good stuff. I think Mishima, and maybe most Japanese literature, is like this. Sparse and muted and stealthy. #2025books.
17. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
Noboru, a smart, troubled 13-year-old boy obsessed with ships, watches his widowed mother go to bed with a manly, worldly sailor through a peephole between their bedroom walls.
Thus begins Noboru’s hero-worship of the sailor Ryuji. But Noboru is as troublesome as he is troubled, running with a gang of kids who think they have life all figured out, and that adults do not, and that violence abounds.
Much like a roiling sea swayed by the wind, Noboru’s passion for Ryuji swells in every direction, ultimately swirling into hatred as Ryuji chooses marriage over the sea, and Noboru chooses contempt over consolation.
For me, this was a slow burn (I went through phases of not liking it) but it paid off. The longer the coal sits in my stomach, the more it sears. Good stuff. I think Mishima, and maybe most Japanese literature, is like this. Sparse and muted and stealthy. #2025books.
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel García Márquez
3.0
16. The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
This was boring. Which feels terrible to say since it’s a true story. But in a way, if you’ve read one “man lost at sea alone” story, you’ve read them all.
This one is a series of newspaper articles GGM wrote of a man’s account of getting swept off a Navy destroyer with seven other men who died, floating in a raft for 10 days before washing up half dead in Colombia. The articles got published decades later as a book when GGM got famous. GGM basically says in the introduction that his name being fashionable was the reason it got republished. And yep, that tracks. I mean, it’s not BAD writing. It’s just nothing special. And the introduction’s mention of political intrigue after the story’s publication (the Navy got caught with its ass out) was way more interesting than the castaway story itself. Apologies to the man who actually lived the horror of it. #2025books
This was boring. Which feels terrible to say since it’s a true story. But in a way, if you’ve read one “man lost at sea alone” story, you’ve read them all.
This one is a series of newspaper articles GGM wrote of a man’s account of getting swept off a Navy destroyer with seven other men who died, floating in a raft for 10 days before washing up half dead in Colombia. The articles got published decades later as a book when GGM got famous. GGM basically says in the introduction that his name being fashionable was the reason it got republished. And yep, that tracks. I mean, it’s not BAD writing. It’s just nothing special. And the introduction’s mention of political intrigue after the story’s publication (the Navy got caught with its ass out) was way more interesting than the castaway story itself. Apologies to the man who actually lived the horror of it. #2025books
The Children's Crusade by Kit Schluter, Marcel Schwob, Jorge Luis Borges
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
An IG post turned me onto Schwob and I am forever grateful. This was incredible.
A crumb of a novella about the medieval legend of thousands of children who walked in a body across the land during the Crusades looking for the Holy Sepulcher and finding tragedy instead, either being sold into slavery or lost at sea. The language stays punchy and crisp even as the perspective switches between eight characters including a leper, two popes and the children themselves. This is bleak, touching, beautiful stuff. One chapter end nearly made me cry.
So short you can read it in a hour and I strongly recommend you do. For me it was a perfect intro to an author who apparently influenced from under the radar several of the greats.
A crumb of a novella about the medieval legend of thousands of children who walked in a body across the land during the Crusades looking for the Holy Sepulcher and finding tragedy instead, either being sold into slavery or lost at sea. The language stays punchy and crisp even as the perspective switches between eight characters including a leper, two popes and the children themselves. This is bleak, touching, beautiful stuff. One chapter end nearly made me cry.
So short you can read it in a hour and I strongly recommend you do. For me it was a perfect intro to an author who apparently influenced from under the radar several of the greats.
Class Trip by Emmanuel Carrère
2.0
First clunker of 2025. What a bummer.
Carrere got onto my radar for The Mustache (which I’m still open to reading) so I snagged a used copy of this little book about a little boy having a tremendously terrible time on a ski trip with his classmates. Anxiety and dread build like a ski slope in a steady falling snow.
I like the setup. There are a few cool sentences. And as a movie I think this could slap. But I guessed the plot almost immediately, and the story seems somehow simultaneously rushed and too long. And the “Stephen King is salami but this is caviar” comparison on the back cover does the book NO favors. The writing ain’t all that special.
I am not going to keep this book but I’m not ready to kick Carrere to the curb just yet. Anyone read anything else by him? Is this just a mid effort from a good author? #2025books
Carrere got onto my radar for The Mustache (which I’m still open to reading) so I snagged a used copy of this little book about a little boy having a tremendously terrible time on a ski trip with his classmates. Anxiety and dread build like a ski slope in a steady falling snow.
I like the setup. There are a few cool sentences. And as a movie I think this could slap. But I guessed the plot almost immediately, and the story seems somehow simultaneously rushed and too long. And the “Stephen King is salami but this is caviar” comparison on the back cover does the book NO favors. The writing ain’t all that special.
I am not going to keep this book but I’m not ready to kick Carrere to the curb just yet. Anyone read anything else by him? Is this just a mid effort from a good author? #2025books
The Holy Terrors by Jean Cocteau
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
4.0
My first but not last Cocteau. I quite liked this little book and its “delicious” phrasing, though I think I have Lehmann to thank for that as much as Cocteau.
This copy appears to be the second printing of the @ndpublishing edition, and I love how worn and broken in it is. Easy to daydream about all the hands this has passed through, how many people considered it “treasure” for their “Rooms.” Used books > new books til the day I croak.
Link to last book: short story called “The Holy Terror” in All The Days and Nights
Link to last few books: complicated sibling relationships
#2025books
This copy appears to be the second printing of the @ndpublishing edition, and I love how worn and broken in it is. Easy to daydream about all the hands this has passed through, how many people considered it “treasure” for their “Rooms.” Used books > new books til the day I croak.
Link to last book: short story called “The Holy Terror” in All The Days and Nights
Link to last few books: complicated sibling relationships
#2025books
All the Days and Nights: The Collected Stories by William Maxwell
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
sad
5.0
How did I live without William Maxwell’s writing in my life. It’s fantastic, not a letter out of place.
Actually I’ll tell you how. When I was younger, I would have been too cynical and too angry to have liked Maxwell’s style. These stories spanning 50 years of writing are wise and funny, sad and wistful, brutal and tender blows to the heart. He writes tragically gorgeous paragraphs about grief, age and death in a way a younger, less experienced, less wrinkly me just would not have appreciated.
But if you have lost loved ones or ever been in love or are finding yourself softening in these recent years, as I physically and emotionally am, then you will find something to hold here. And you will likely be held as well. #2025books
Actually I’ll tell you how. When I was younger, I would have been too cynical and too angry to have liked Maxwell’s style. These stories spanning 50 years of writing are wise and funny, sad and wistful, brutal and tender blows to the heart. He writes tragically gorgeous paragraphs about grief, age and death in a way a younger, less experienced, less wrinkly me just would not have appreciated.
But if you have lost loved ones or ever been in love or are finding yourself softening in these recent years, as I physically and emotionally am, then you will find something to hold here. And you will likely be held as well. #2025books
Love by Péter Nádas
Happy Valentine’s Day, freaks and tweaks.
8. Love by Peter Nadas. When I learned my order of this book was gonna arrive on Valentine’s Day, I resolved to read it same-day. And now I have.
A man is at a girl’s place to dump her but first they smoke joints and get really, really high. And he descends (soars?) into a head space of recursive contemplation of place, time, reality, and yes, a little bit of love, and of madness. “But after some time, the insane go nuts.”
I immediately had a soft spot for this short book because if you’ve ever been really, really, really out of your gourd on booze or drugs (which I have of course never), then this will make you (not me of course) say “same, bro, same” (which I of course did not say).
And along the way, it IS sweet and he DOES love her. At least in the moment. Which he can’t seem to get out of.
I also got this bc it only had 4 reviews on Amazon and 3 of them were 1-star hate bombs, which cracked me up. Next slide please. #2025books
8. Love by Peter Nadas. When I learned my order of this book was gonna arrive on Valentine’s Day, I resolved to read it same-day. And now I have.
A man is at a girl’s place to dump her but first they smoke joints and get really, really high. And he descends (soars?) into a head space of recursive contemplation of place, time, reality, and yes, a little bit of love, and of madness. “But after some time, the insane go nuts.”
I immediately had a soft spot for this short book because if you’ve ever been really, really, really out of your gourd on booze or drugs (which I have of course never), then this will make you (not me of course) say “same, bro, same” (which I of course did not say).
And along the way, it IS sweet and he DOES love her. At least in the moment. Which he can’t seem to get out of.
I also got this bc it only had 4 reviews on Amazon and 3 of them were 1-star hate bombs, which cracked me up. Next slide please. #2025books
So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
Loved it. Been a long time since a book made me cry but damn, man, set that Days Since Last Accident calendar back to 0.
In just 133 pages, Maxwell’s narrator recounts memories of a fledgling childhood friendship with a boy whose father kills a man. Alongside his own memories, he imagines what this boy and the involved parties may have said and done. He speculates and guesses, and reflects on the fallibility of moments in time. “In any case, when talking about the past, we lie with every breath we draw.”
His characters are flawed and beautiful and cruel, as we all are. And throughout, Maxwell’s prose cracked me up, broke my heart and dropped my jaw. Funny, gut-wrenching mastery of words and rhythm. Each paragraph a morsel.
I’m an instant devotee and am already reading All The Days and Nights. #2025books
Loved it. Been a long time since a book made me cry but damn, man, set that Days Since Last Accident calendar back to 0.
In just 133 pages, Maxwell’s narrator recounts memories of a fledgling childhood friendship with a boy whose father kills a man. Alongside his own memories, he imagines what this boy and the involved parties may have said and done. He speculates and guesses, and reflects on the fallibility of moments in time. “In any case, when talking about the past, we lie with every breath we draw.”
His characters are flawed and beautiful and cruel, as we all are. And throughout, Maxwell’s prose cracked me up, broke my heart and dropped my jaw. Funny, gut-wrenching mastery of words and rhythm. Each paragraph a morsel.
I’m an instant devotee and am already reading All The Days and Nights. #2025books