There are a few novels that I will read more than once, for the simple reason that most novels are poorly written or predictable. I have just re-read this novel for the third time, the first time was in 1977, the last in 2007. I have found that each reading is a treat as the story and characters are realistic. This is a story about a man, Sam Damon, the product of small-town America. We follow his journey as he joins the U.S. Army during World War I and makes a career with all of it’s mind numbing stupidities, undying loyalty and honor and knowledge that the real reward is in his sense of his own identity and purpose.  Although a novel, it was written during the height of the Viet Nam war and is required reading by Marine officers and occasionally used in leadership courses at West Point.

Hamsun is widely credited as opening European literature to a new level of realism and impacting novelist such as Mann, Zweig, D’Annunzio and even Hemmingway.  You will love this book if, 1) you enjoy the darkness of Ingmar Bergman’s films, 2) listen to Leonard Cohen while you are stoned or 3) have a burning desire to slit your wrists.  While highly acclaimed during his career, his main charter (based on 10 years of his life before his success) is the type that would make you hang garlic around your house in order to keep him away.

Considered Thomas Mann’s first great novel for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1929. It traces the decline of a North German family which has been engaged in the export grain business for several generations.  Like all families, this family has its share of fools, marriage missteps, successes, dreams, individual failures, good and bad luck.  We follow one generation, the last of this family from the very summit of their success to their extinction. Are they bad or evil people?  Do they lie or cheat in personal or business relationships?  No, but none the less, they begin a descent which cannot be stopped and their line withers and stops in the most ordinary of ways.

These two novels finish the trilogy by Margaret George (The Autobiography of Henry VIII was previously reviewed).  Of the two novels, Mary Queen of Scotland has the more complex character development, and while Elizabeth is good, it seems Ms. George must have been worn out by the time she got to the last book in the trilogy.

An excellent novel which focuses on the life of Baruch Spinoza, the seventeen century thinker and philosopher who was excommunicated from the Jewish community in Amsterdam for questioning the basic precepts of the Torah, the existence of God, life after death and who had a huge impact on Goethe, Nietzsche, etc. 

This is the second novel by Yalom that I have read, and it is excellent.  Nietzsche is my favorite philosopher and if someone were to ask me how to begin understanding Nietzsche, I would recommend this novel. 

Although The Bridge Over the Drina is Ivo Andric’s best know novel, Bosnian Chronicle is certainly his longest, running just over five hundred pages in this edition.  Being such a long novel and covering a dark, remote area of Bosnia, it can be a tedious read.  The story centers around a newly appointed French Counsel during the early years of Napoleon’s successes, through the fall of Napoleon.  During this time, the French Counsel attends to the normal duties of his time; gathering information (spying) on Austrian actions in the area, paying bribes to local corrupt (is that redundant?) Ottoman officials designed to hinder the efforts of his Austrian counterpart and trying to influence the local Ottoman Pasha for the area.