Isham Cook

Read this when I was about 12. Still enshrined in the memory.

A captivating volume in this well-regarded trilogy but I find it lacks the narrative drama to entice me to read all 3 books.

Breezy, largely cliche-filled account of China by British reporter.

Slim but fascinating volume unlike anything else there - a truly unique book equal parts Japanese culture and home interior design.

Early study on the Sugar Empire and its impact on our health.

Couldn't find an English version of this intriguing Spanish writer so I had to make do with trying to translate parts myself. A quote: “When poets speak of death, they call it the place without breasts.”

Somewhat thin book though surprisingly well-written and evocative. Recommended.

A valuable edition to the LSD history shelf.

An academic text, one of the classic intros to Communications studies, which starts with the basic question of how objects communicate.

Hilarious premise but overloads the action a bit too much too fast for my taste.

Exhaustive, extremely detailed (down to ground plans) of ancient bath ruins, not for the general reader but those interested in Roman antiquity.

Gripping history of 1930s Shanghai with some apparent fictionalization.

History of a misunderstood drug by a practitioner and connoisseur.

Eccentric American composer lives in Bali for musical inspiration.

Tangled analysis on a timely topic; remembered almost nothing after finishing the book.

Merged review:

Tangled analysis on a timely topic; remembered almost nothing after finishing the book.

Moving story of a heroine kidnapped by her own family.

A useful addition to the growing LSD history bookshelf.

A unique and mysterious book that taxes and exercises the reader's imagination.

I find Harris' books generally compelling, but this got tangled up for me in redundancies and logical excesses, slim though the volume is.

Classic account of excessive cannabis consumption by the decadent French writer.

Some useful tidbits for authors, particularly on constructing dialogue scenes.

Thoroughly told history of the Boxer Rebellion, with fascinating account of the Allied troops struggling to build a railway to Beijing.

This was one of the first metaphorical bombs in the form of a book that blew up in my face (in my junior year of college); the other was the Marquis de Sade's Justine.

Some regard this as the first novel in Western literature, marred only by its missing fragments; lively sense of humor and engaging characters.

One of the greatest novels ever written; actually 3 shortish novels but which must be read together. As I write (in https://ishamcook.com/2012/06/16/multiply-cascade-explode/), Beckett “withdrew increasing amounts of ambulatory capacity from his characters until they are reduced to crawling in circles in a forest or floundering in a ditch in the mud, others stuck in urns or rubbish bins or buried up to the neck in sand. Space is reduced almost to zero and there is nothing left but time and the voice.”