About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Edward J. Delaney
Positive Los Angeles Review of Books As well as being historically interesting, Delaney’s novel is topical because it sheds light on the current \"psychedelic renaissance\" of the past 15 years ... Delaney’s prose captures the elasticity of expanded consciousness but also the unpredictable and surreal moments that inevitably transpire.
T.C. Boyle
Positive The Los Angeles Review of Books Although Boyle’s novel is set in the early 1960s, it feels fresh because there have not been so many LSD-centered works of literature ... ambitious in the sense that it provides a genealogy of the early days of LSD ... not simply about the joys of expanded consciousness; it also explores the unforeseen perils of liberation ... Much like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance, Boyle’s novel is an affectionate satire of the utopian impulse and psychedelic culture. Boyle’s representation of the LSD experience steers wide of sensationalism (his characters do not try to fly or jump out of five-story windows) ... offers a rejoinder to the slogans of the 1960s.
Michael Pollan
Positive The Los Angeles Review of Books His trip reports are presented not as hedonistic adventures or what skeptics might describe as \'mental masturbation,\' but as Pollan’s practical way of testing the claims of psychedelic enthusiasts and the conclusions from the clinical trials conducted at NYU and Johns Hopkins ... How to Change Your Mind thus presents a sophisticated conversion narrative. A committed rationalist and staunch materialist (at least at the outset of the book), Pollan makes it his goal not to be seduced by the various psychedelic drugs he ingests. And yet he presents his reliable narrator self as ultimately powerless to deny the intensity and profundity of his mystical drug experiences. The dialogue between the committed rationalist and the reluctant mystic makes his narrative immensely engaging: the reader must weigh and juxtapose the author’s sober and dispassionate claims alongside the ecstatic reports from his first-person drug experiences ... many of Pollan’s loyal readers are likely to treat this book as an invitation: another gustatory exploration meant to entice.