Steppenwolf

Words to live by? Hermann Hesse's novel could certainly be called that. Straddling the theoretical and the practical, it is a search for and a journey into the nature of existence. Conceptually we are all a multiplicity of entities, but with both feet on the ground the book argues the importance of dancing and laughter.

Killing Floor

To see what all the Jack Reacher fuss was about, I picked up Killing Floor, the first installment in the series. The text, 407 pages in paperback, contains probably 300 pages of what I would call sawdust: Reacher eating eggs, Reacher buying supplies, Reacher driving somewhere, Reacher eating more eggs. When you actually get to an action scene, it is more likely than not a disappointment, carried off in a deadpan manner. The clipped non-sentences take some getting used to; but after about 100 pages the reader has stopped trying to find merit in the prose and is simply flipping through to get to the next action sequence. There is some suspense here, but there's too much other stuff or, more accurately, stuffing.

Measuring the World

This novel by Daniel Kehlmann can take its place beside historical fictions like The Way to Paradise and The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa. Although lighter in tone than those works, Measuring the World is, like them, packed with ideas and sharply drawn characters. Kehlmann even skillfully carries off the technique that Vargas Llosa has perfected of interweaving plot strands in the same paragraph. The reader will believe he is consulting a colorful historical account of the two scientists involved, Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss, rather than a novel.