Earthly Powers

from alpin

A monumental novel, currently out of print, that has stuck in my mind for thirty years as an all-time favorite but needed to be reread to remind me why. An octogenarian British writer, asked to attest to a miracle that will support canonization of a Pope writes his memoirs, giving us a personal t...

from stillatim

I'm unsure if I'll remember this as fondly in a few years as I do now. The second quarter of the book was extremely dull, and the narrative 'technique' is silly (bad novelist travels to a dozen or so countries in order to pick up royalties cheques through the twentieth century--necessary because ...

from richardderus

One of my nearest and dearest sent me her old mass-market copy years ago in one of her purging moods. And, in a deeply unusual act, I've read it twice! I see lots of breakdowns of this story's alleged core, the Problem of Evil that besets monotheistic religions. In my own opinion, Burgess's point...

from mimal

bookshelves: booker-longlist, gr-library, vatican-city, italy, winter-20132014, published-1980, lit-richer, those-autumn-years, books-about-books-and-book-shops, glbt, religion, christian, catholic, malta, art-forms, dodgy-narrator, historical-masturbation, historical-fiction Recommended to ☯Bett...

from michaelmacfarlane

Possibly the best book I have ever read. When I was younger I read clockwork orange and was so gripped i read it in one afternoon, although a completely different book in style size and context, the one thing they do share in common is a brillianty compelling first person narrative. The size of t...