I read The Circle back in August while on a family vacation in San Francisco/Silicon Valley. Needless to say this made Dave Egger’s exploration of life and culture in a dystopian, data-centric near-future all the more depressing. Mae Holland is thrilled when a good friend from college recruits her to come to work at The Circle. Mae starts at the bottom, as a call center customer service rep who fields calls from world-wide clients to help make sure their experience of Circle products and services […]
In 1866, the South Island of New Zealand was the hottest frontier for those who wanted to find their fortunes in the unexplored territories of the Southern Hemisphere. The California gold fields were mostly played out, so Europeans who had missed the opportunities of the fledgling West of America were booking passage to Dunedin, then on to Hokitika for a chance to strike it rich in the newly discovered gold fields. This exotic and diverse world becomes the setting for Eleanor Catton’s Booker Prize winning, expansive novel The […]
How Hannibal Became a Cannibal
Having never read Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris, when it was published in 2007, I thought I would go back and finish up the series, mostly to familiarize myself with the entire Hannibal cannon and potentially to help me have more information at hand as the television series continues in 2015. The reviews for the book when it came out, were not kind, and many thought Harris had crossed a line in the sand by establishing his imagined reasons for Hannibal Lecter’s childhood trauma and resulting descent […]
Animal Farm meets Hitchhiker’s Guide; Hilarity Ensues
In an effort to not make this review longer than the book itself, I will just say that The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil is a story that could have been written by the love child of George Orwell and Douglas Adams. George Saunders’ flawless writing will remind readers of Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but his themes echo the sly political satire of Orwell. Mrs Smith Reads The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders
This Book Was Delicious: Hannibal
Prompted by the impending second season finale of “Hannibal” I decided to go back and re-read Hannibal by Thomas Harris. Much of this season had been culled from this particular book, so I thought it would be interesting to see how and where the story diverged from the original, since showrunner Bryan Singer does not have the rights (yet?) to the Clarice Starling role and she is a major character in the novel. I actually liked Hannibal better the second time around. Singer was brilliant to develop the TV series […]
So Much to Recommend It, But It Didn’t Live Up: Guests on Earth
Lee Smith’s Guests on Earth had so much to recommend it. I love books about my home state, North Carolina; it promised Zelda Fitzgerald as a main character, and was centered at the Highland Hospital, a mental institution which burned to the ground in 1948, claiming the lives of nine women; one of them the world-famous Zelda herself. That sounded interesting to me, so I dove in with high hopes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as great as I’d hoped, but it wasn’t as awful as it could […]
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