Agent Palmer

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, “The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel featuring Ignatius Reilly and his marvelous, madcap adventures in New Orleans,” is something unique to behold, and it is definitely worth holding.

There are quite a few stories within this book, including a book within a book that’s quite the read, but I’ll get to that in a moment. October Light, written by James Gardner, is based on two very specific things; a conflict between an old man and an old woman, as well as pieces of a fictional book that we read along with one of the characters.

“Vancouver is falling down–crumbling into sand. To save it, Astrid O’Brien boards a bus to a parallel dimension, there to confront the demons of the city, and to answer the question: Are we who we’re told we are, or who we decide to be?” This is the back cover synopsis for Andrew Cownden’s debut novel Astrid Falls: A Legend of Vancouver. And it is not a book to skip, but one to read and discuss with friends. Who are you?…

Comedy is tragedy plus time, but with The Human Comedy, it’s reversed because this 1943 novel by William Saroyan is relevant again. While that might be the nature of the book, it’s amazing how far we haven’t come, or how timeless Saroyan’s novel truly is. I would classify this as a great American novel. It’s timeless, it’s about community and family, loneliness and belonging, being a child and growing up, war and faith, reality and perception, and to be fair,…

Sometimes the story of our relationship with a book is as interesting as the book itself. In the case of my relationship with Storming Intrepid by Payne Harrison, it is more about timing. But as I have finally read this book completely, perhaps for the first time, I want to explain just how good this book is and my relationship with it.