Last year, I read and reviewed the first four novels in The Patrick Melrose series, and it was, without a doubt, some of the most eye-opening books I read last year. At Last is the final book of the series, and finishing it makes me so sad. My friend who introduced these books to me once said, “I am so jealous that you are getting to read these for the first time,” and I understand now what she means because I feel so sad that […]
The Lady, in All Her Shades of Grey
If you need a book that can explain to you the context of Burma’s burgeoning transition to a democracy (or at least a nominal democracy), this book by Bertil Lintner is a good one. Not only is it a relatively short look at the modern history of Burma, now known as Myanmar, Lintner’s profession as a journalist makes this read very easy to digest. As the title of the book suggest, a lot of it concerns Aung San Suu Kyi, and how the people in […]
NYC in the eyes of magical creatures
This book has been favorably reviewed by many, including Cannonballer Jen K, so I bought it on my recent trip to Bangkok, where they have an expansive Kinokuniya. I was intrigued by the idea of a golem — have always been intrigued by them since it was first mentioned in Michael Chabon’s Kavalier and Clay as a character in a graphic novel by the protagonist Josef Kavalier — but this was the first time I’ve thought of them as a Jewish equivalent to a djinni, […]
Jews With Swords
The novel centers around two friends, Amran and Zelikman, who have been traveling across the Caucasus. Zelikman – a very skilled, very thin physician with a hat fetish – is from the country of Francia (wherever that is in made-up Europe); Amran is an Abyssinian, or African in this context, who has a huge sword called Mother-Defiler, and is very good at a game I surmised was the Chabonian version of chess. Throughout their travels, they have to resort to certain tricks to cheat money […]
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