Book Review: The Wheel of Doll (v2)
March 2, 2024
Ames’ writing is influenced by Richard Stark, Chandler, Buddhism and also reminds me of one of my favourite crime writers, Charles Willeford.
Dylan likes to read his way around bookstores. Some his favourite books/authors are (Fiction) Lucia Berlin, George Saunders, Flannery O’Connor, Percival Everett, Edward St Aubyn, (Comics) Chris Ware, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, Roz Chast, Jim Woodring, Lynda Barry, Geof Darrow, Moebius, (Music) Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, (Film) Werner Herzog – A Guide for the Perplexed: Conversations with Paul Cronin, John Waters, (Sci-Fi) J. G. Ballard, (Crime) James Ellroy, Don Winslow (Humour) David Sedaris, A. A. Gill, (Politics/Economics) Michael Lewis, (History) Svetlana Alexievich, David Grann, (Ecology) Michael Pollan, (Sociology) Douglas Rushkoff, (Science) Carlo Rovelli, (Religion) Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron. When he is not reading with his children, he is working on insulating his home with art books.
Ames’ writing is influenced by Richard Stark, Chandler, Buddhism and also reminds me of one of my favourite crime writers, Charles Willeford.
Happy may be beaten, drugged and beset by all manner of predatory scum but he still finds time to talk to his plants.
My favourite line: ‘Pangloss deceived me cruelly when he said that all is for the best in the world.’ Gold.
Bond villains (Elon Musk? Jeff Bezos?) and professors deeply invested in … nothing, really capture the zeitgeist.
Short stories can be a hard sell for some folks but this collection is a great place to start. Funny, intelligent, dark, and true.
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