It is the end, or maybe the beginning, of another story. Every story begins and ends with a woman, a mother, a grandmother, a girl, a child. Every story is a birth… To round out my ten African books of the year, I picked up this novel by Ishmael Beah, known for his previous non-fiction, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of A Boy Soldier. After reading this, I definitely want to pick that one up, too. This is fiction, but it’s obviously based on truth. […]
The Best War Reporting I’ve Encountered
War, as the title suggests, is the best war reporting I’ve encountered in my reading thus far. Like everyone’s favorite war-ish cliché, War is visceral. It is heartbreaking. It evokes rage. It harbors contempt. It loves. In the summers of 2007 and 2008 Junger embedded with Battle Company 2/503 Infantry Regiment in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. He was joined by photographer Tim Hetherington. Junger stated that his goal was to just report and even said “It’s a completely apolitical film. We wanted to give viewers the […]
Baldacci gets it right with The Whole Truth
After the last few years’ relative duds by Baldacci, I picked up The Whole Truth at a yard sale and reminded myself that my once favorite author definitely has what it takes, but needs to get over his own popularity and his publisher’s pressures to churn out the moneymakers, and go back to writing good books. This 2008 novel about a neo-Cold War cooked up by a psychotic arms dealer and a “perception management” firm had shivers running down my spine. I won’t say this […]
Eggers does it again — a face-to-face sit down with society’s failings
Stylistically, Eggers’ newest novel is a total departure from all of his earlier ventures, as it is entirely a set of dialogues between a disturbed young man named Thomas and his various abductees, all of them being held at an abandoned military base not far from the town he grew up in along the California coast. But Fathers is fundamentally a morality play transplanted into the 21st century and, as such, is not unlike his earlier novels such as Hologram for the King and The […]
Like Justified, but with less moving pictures
This is my first Elmore Leonard read, and it will not be my last. I was introduced to Leonard through the show “Justified” which is based on his stories, and because of the unwavering devotion I have to the series, I suspected I’d enjoy his works, and I was right. With rich dialogue, unique characters and a twisty plot, Leonard tells a story you just can’t put down. George Moran lives a quiet life as a hotel owner in Miami who through a chain […]
It’s a YA book based on a principle of game theory. But with kissing!
For YA, The Winner’s Curse is very good. And if that just isn’t a ringing endorsement! I’m to the point now where I only read YA books if they come heavily recommended (or if they’ve been lauded as so terrible that I just have to read in order to satisfy my insatiable curiosity). And The Winner’s Curse came pretty heavily recommended. I follow a disturbing amount of YA book bloggers, and they all LOVED this thing. (Of course, they also all seem to be convinced […]