Like many in the early 2000
Combat Corpsman: A Navy SEAL Medic in Vietnam
In which Siege climbs back on the CBR horse with a tale of a young medic’s adventures in Vietnam.
A Story of the Future Set Mostly in the Past
Mistaken assumptions – Victorian literature – house party mysteries – fictional detectives – the timelessness of history – the unreliability of perception – love at first sight – the nature of cats – this conversation has happened before – this conversation will certainly happen again – the indomitable will of a woman on a mission – Ned really needs a vacation. First and foremost, To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis is a fun read. It is a smart, comedic, time-traveling Sci-fi novel […]
True-Life Fiction About Who Pulls the Strings of Terrorism
An exciting thriller of terrorism, psychosis and high-level corruption in Italy, Hewson’s City of Fear is also a barely-veiled political expose of the infamous Gladio network that was created by the CIA’s Alan Dulles in the post-WWII period with the backing of the US and several European governments. The idea of the Gladio network was initially to have a clandestine “stay-behind” network of partisans in place should a Soviet takeover of Italy and Communist encroachment on the rest of Western Europe be attempted. However, the […]
Jen K’s Review #6 – In the Shadow of the Banyan
I’ve been looking forward to reading this novel for a while, even if other books kept getting in the way. I would like to visit Cambodia one day, mostly to visit Angkor Wat, and a friend of mine lives there. As a result I was very interested to read about this darker period of Cambodian history which I had only a vague inkling of. Ratner is a descendant of one of the Cambodian kings so this novel is very much drawn on her actual experiences […]
Puritan Prattle
We celebrate them at Thanksgiving, we revile them when we read The Crucible, but what do we really know about that first generation of religious malcontents to reach New England? Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates gives us portraits of these strangers known as the Puritans who came to New England during the Great Migration, in between the Mayflower and the Salem witch trials. It is infused with Vowell’s pop culture references and Gen-X snarkiness. I like her style just fine, some people find it annoying. […]