Share for friends:

John Updike

John Updike
Your rating
Rating
3.8 of 5 Votes: 3
Books: 39 | Review: 0 | Avg rating: 3.69
gender
male
website

Books by John Updike

Book

The Widows of Eastwick (2008)

I couldn't put the book down for the last hundred some pages. So clever and interesting. I was and still am enthralled with three aged widow, witches. Trust Updike; he will bring the show. Lovely writing, character, meaning, and American literary tradition (and a bit of Hollywierd). Most las...

The Widows of Eastwick (2008) by John Updike
Book

Widows of Eastwick (2008)

I first read the Witches of Eastwick back in the year 1984. This is the follow up book to that. The 3 witches EVENTUALLY get back together and travel to Eastwick for the summer. The witches are Jane (serious, mean, cello player who marries into a rich New England Nathaniel Hawthorne sort of fa...

Widows of Eastwick (2008) by John Updike
Book

The Widows of Eastwick. John Updike (2008)

This book grew on me as I read it. I'm still not sure it's 'necessary' - people weren't eager for a sequel, but it is nice to catch up with old friends and Sukie, Jane and Alexandra don't disappoint. Updike isn't entirely convincing when writing about women, but he's a hell of a lot better than...

The Widows of Eastwick. John Updike (2008) by John Updike
Book

My Father's Tears: And Other Stories (2010)

MY FATHER’S TEARS, and other stories. (2009). John Updike. ****.John Updike passed away in 2009 so I have to assume that this would have been his last collection of short stories. He was a masterful short story writer. He didn’t employ any tricks; he was not an O’Henry or an Ambrose Bierce. ...

My Father's Tears: And Other Stories (2010) by John Updike
Book

Le lacrime di mio padre (2010)

I have not read Updike before but this collection seems a rather transparent recollection of his own (short) stories. Here is a reminiscence of travel, of how ambivalent families and places can make one feels, of loves come and go, of id and ego in battles, of how memories can be grand and insign...

Le lacrime di mio padre (2010) by John Updike
Book

The Maples Stories (2009)

How amazing for Updike to have written 18 stories about the same couple, Richard and Joan Maple, over a 30 year period, returning time and again to what is effectively the portrait of a difficult and latterly disintegrating marriage. He could have written a novel instead, one supposes, but the st...

The Maples Stories (2009) by John Updike
Book

Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams (2010)

Wonderful little essay about baseball legend Ted Williams' last game. John Updike was there and later wrote a wonderful piece for the New Yorker. It was republished in a commemorative version last year. I'm not a big sports fan, but this is so well told. When I finished, I was angry all over agai...

Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams (2010) by John Updike
Book

The Power and the Glory (2003)

My first Graham Greene novel was The End of the Affair and it rocked my world, and affected me in some profound ways. It was the perfect novel for me at the time, and I am forever indebted to Mr. Greene for giving me that enlightening experience.Going into this, I knew better than to expect the s...

The Power and the Glory (2003) by John Updike
Book

The House of God (2003)

Spoiler alert (esp. 3rd paragraph) Also, this book has some very *explicit* parts.This novel follows an intern, Roy G. Basch, for his internship year at a prestigious hospital nicknamed the “House of God.” Roy must deal with sickness of the elderly, the death of the young, the competition of hi...

The House of God (2003) by John Updike
Book

Terrorist (2006)

i’ve been an atheist as long as i can remember and my life, in part, has been a feigned attempt toward belief. i will never believe and know this, so i scramble toward god as a tightrope walker over a net of godlessness. the point, i guess, is to get as close as possible to something i know i’ll ...

Terrorist (2006) by John Updike
Book

Couples (1996)

I’m honestly a bit surprised that I picked this up. To my prejudices it was the jejune, possibly self-caricatural big bestseller, the book whose fame caused every obituary writer to narrowly cast Updike as a chronicler of upper-middle class New England marriages (Rabbit is a Pennsylvanian petit-b...

Couples (1996) by John Updike
Book

Rabbit at Rest (1996)

Кондо во Флориде, внуки, отход от бизнеса, хобби в виде чтения толстой исторической книги... Кажется, Кролик действительно перестал бежать и примирился с жизнью. Жизнь стала предсказуемой, чуть скучноватой, но удобной как старые домашние тапочки. Но расслабиться и наслаждаться ей не получается, р...

Rabbit at Rest (1996) by John Updike
Book

Toward the End of Time (1999)

June 8 2015, Update: 186. That is the page I got to when I gave up. Why, you ask? Because that is the page on which the protagonist describes his fantasy of giving himself a blowjob, describing the different fluids involved. Disgusted, I decided it was not worth reading through this to see what t...

Toward the End of Time (1999) by John Updike
Book

The Complete Stories (1995)

The Old Man in the Woods Or The Monkeys by fire We monkeys have sat by this ever-burning fire for generations because we are simply afraid to go outside the perimeter of its light into the dark. Although we have tried to look beyond into the darkness everyday hoping to find something; ye...

The Complete Stories (1995) by John Updike
Book

In The Beauty Of The Lilies (1997)

It is a tour-de-force, a novel that telescopes 80 years of American history through the lives of four characters. A Presbyterian minister who loses his faith. A young man who fears the world and so settles for the routine of mail delivery. A Hollywood star. A joiner of a religious cult. What conn...

In The Beauty Of The Lilies (1997) by John Updike
Book

Bech at Bay (1999)

"Bech at Bay" is the last of Updike's Bech trilogy, tales of the life of his libidinous "Jewish" author-persona.After three books, I still have not accepted Bech as a genuine, successfully-realized literary character, much less an authentic Jewish author. I'm still not sure why Updike chose to em...

Bech at Bay (1999) by John Updike
Book

Bech: A Book (1999)

Revisiting this work after more than a decade since my first unsatisfying time through, I have reassessed it. I previously rejected it as dull, uninteresting stories about a character about whom I could care less. This time through I found it a pleasant if mostly uninspiring read, a nice perio...

Bech: A Book (1999) by John Updike
Book

Roger's Version (1996)

www.emergenthermit.comDivinity professor, Roger Lambert, seems to have a great deal of problems. Being hassled and annoyed by a young science-minded evangelical student named Dale about a grant for a project involving the proof of God’s existence is a minor inconvenience on the scale. It would se...

Roger's Version (1996) by John Updike
Book

The Centaur (1996)

”It must be terrible to know so much.”A pause.“It is,” my father said. “It’s hell.” Chiron depicted in Roman art. The Greeks always depicted him with human front legs. Chiron educated the children of the gods and goddesses so he is an apt mythological creature for George Caldwell to identify wit...

The Centaur (1996) by John Updike
Book

The Witches of Eastwick (1996)

Read Summer 2010; Re-read January 2011Summary: Wickedly entertaining. The Witches of Eastwick is about three divorced women in the New England town of Eastwick who discover that after being abandoned or divorced from their husbands, they have supernatural powers. Alexandra Spoffard, the sculptres...

The Witches of Eastwick (1996) by John Updike
Book

Rabbit, Run (1996)

I confess I haven't read much of John Updike's work. About thirty years ago I flipped through "Couples" for the prurient interest it sparked at its publication. I laughed through "The Witches of Eastwick"--the movie, not the book. But I never read any of Updike's Rabbit Angstrom novels. My we...

Rabbit, Run (1996) by John Updike
Book

The Afterlife and Other Stories (1996)

When John Updike recently passed away, he wrote a poem suggesting that the world would forget him.After his life, I read the Afterlife and found that despite death, the human echo can be as meaningful as the words spoke when the voice was alive. (barf).Regardless, Updike crafts a short story coll...

The Afterlife and Other Stories (1996) by John Updike
Book

Loving / Living / Party Going (1993)

Loving by Henry Green is about the goings-on between the servants and masters in a castle in Ireland during WWII. It's a pretty simple tale, but there isn't much plot. There's a sort of love triangle between the butler, Charlie, his "man" (aka assistant) Albert, and a chamber maid, Edith, a missi...

Loving / Living / Party Going (1993) by John Updike
Book

Museums & Women And Other Stories (1972)

FIRST LINE REVIEW: "Set together, the two words are seen to be mutually transparent; the e's, the m's blend -- the m's framing and squaring the structure lend resonance and a curious formal weight to the m central in the creature, which it dominates like a dark core winged with flitting syllables...

Museums & Women And Other Stories (1972) by John Updike
Book

The Music School (1966)

This is one of the best short story collections I have read in a long while. "It seemed that he and Joan were caught together in a classroom where they would never be recognized, or in a charade that would never be guessed, the correct answer being Two Silver Birches in a Meadow.""All my life peo...

The Music School (1966) by John Updike
Book

Rabbit Redux (1996)

A year ago I vowed to myself (and you, if you had read my review of Rabbit, Run) that I’d read a Rabbit novel annually until I’m done with the four-novel series; the idea being that I could look back and see how I’d changed in the past year, comparing the changes in my life with those incurred by...

Rabbit Redux (1996) by John Updike
Book

Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism (1991)

I wasn't actually planning to read this all the way through: I borrowed it from the library just to have a flick through it. However, I then came across Updike's comment in the introduction that only a ''chairbound agoraphobe'' would be able to read it cover-to-cover: well, that sounded like a ch...

Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism (1991) by John Updike
Book

Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories (1996)

Despite its seeming brevity this is by no means a book to wolf down but rather is one to savour. The stories do tend towards the shorter end of the market, so consuming one per sitting is quite do-able and rewarding. Initially I was a little resistant to the prose - it made me work harder than ...

Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories (1996) by John Updike
Book

Rabbit Is Rich (1997)

having finished the third Rabbit book I can tell you that john updike thinks a lot about blowjobs. a lot. and i don’t think it’s just that he’s a horny bastard obsessed with facefucking bookish young gals (which he is, of course) -- it's also that the blowjob mirrors other currents in society. i ...

Rabbit Is Rich (1997) by John Updike
Book

The Coup (1980)

when extolling the virtues of capitalism -- “the worst economic system, except for all the others” -- to the commies, pinkos, marxists, fags, and anti-americans i pal around with, my favorite defense was formerly the fool-proof statement that ‘nobody washes a rented car’. the final section of the...

The Coup (1980) by John Updike
Book

Gertrude And Claudius (2001)

This short novel serves as a prolegomenon to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, an interpretation and distillation of three distinct historical documents covering the lives and events that lead up to the play’s first scene. Updike does not deal with the matter in his usual lapidary fashion, giving vital shap...

Gertrude And Claudius (2001) by John Updike
Book

Marry Me: A Romance (1996)

It's been at least a decade since I've read Marry Me, but I'll give it a whirl...In the next-to-last chapter, Jerry (like the prodigal he is) returns home. Courtly love/romance has ended appropriately; knowing what to expect with Ruth and maintaining his house--in cards, a marriage--have trumped...

Marry Me: A Romance (1996) by John Updike
Book

Trust Me (1996)

tJohn Updike is a master short story writer, and there are several gems in “Trust Me: Short Stories” a 1987 collection of stories from 1962 to 1987, most having appeared in The New Yorker.tI had read only one story before: “Unstuck” which originally ran in the Feb. 3, 1962, The New Yorker. It is ...

Trust Me (1996) by John Updike
Book

Seek My Face (2004)

The blurb on the back of this edition describes the book as "the triumphant story of postwar American art." I don't know if that's how Updike intended it, but as he presents it, there was nothing triumphant about it...just a boys' club of self-important, pretentious freaks, many of whom had litt...

Seek My Face (2004) by John Updike

Do You like author John Updike?

Write Review

(Review will shown on site after approval)