A Farewell to Arms

I loved this book. I wish I had been able to sit down and read it one or two sittings, as I probably lost several of the themes by stretching it out over several weeks. Nonetheless, I can register great happiness for the book, a very pleasant surprise after feeling underwhelmed by The Sun Also Rises. I won't go into the plot, since I prefer to read books without any preconceptions and I'd like to give my readers the same opportunity. I will say that the interplay of love and war was done very well, particularly for a theme that is quite overdone (see e.g. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, In Love and War... oh wait, that's actually about Hemingway.. hmm). And the ending... oh the ending. Highly recommended.

I'm now beginning Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, my first experience with the third of the great 19th-century Russians. It's been a long time since I read a Russian, an area of literature where I have a woeful lack of experience (I read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Solzenhitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich for classes in high school, and Andrei Makine's Once Upon the River Love in college). I'm also halfway through Neil Gaiman's American Gods which is a fun fantasy/sci-fi book that I'd heard good things about. So far it has been what I wanted it to be, a nice diversion. It's also classic Gaiman, so those who enjoy his comics might want to give it a look.

UPDATE: Yglesias hated The Sun Also Rises too.