This is my book club’s choice for this month. We’ve done plenty of WWII historical fiction, but none quite this epic…it spans 1915-1952 in the town of Burgdorf, Germany. Trudi Montag is a Zwerg (dwarf) woman living in Burgdorf with her father Leo who owns the pay-library. At the start of the novel, Trudi is 4 years old and newly realizing that her stature sets her apart and makes her undesirably “outsider”. Trudi also discovers that she is a natural storyteller, and her position in the […]
“The best way to know someone is to have a conversation with them.”
Neal Stephenson’s writing process must be insane. This is my third book of his and I am continually astounded by the level of obsessive technical detail present for whichever field happens to be the critical science du jour in each book. Snow Crash took great liberties with neurolinguistics, but it was still clear that Stephenson had done his homework and there was a foundation of knowledge there. Jumping straight to his most recent novel, I found Seveneves stunning, not just because of, again, the amount […]
Vonnegut’s little war book.
There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.” So basically everyone I’ve ever talked to has read this book before me, and I’m kinda pissed off about that. Why didn’t y’all tell me I needed to read this? I know most people had to […]
Keep calm and — bloody hell, it’s The Happening!
I absolutely adored this book. But not in the way I typically do. Wyndam does not paint a rich tapestry of a post-apocalyptic England, nor is he particularly adept at creating complex and layered characters. But he masterfully accomplishes what so many current writers flail at mindlessly: a believable world that feasibly explores the varying degrees in which people abandon their ideas of what society can be in the aftermath of cataclysm. But this was written in 1951. The veterans of WWII had yet to […]
Go into this great classic knowing as little as possible
This book! So good! I was pointed towards this book by the A Case for Books blog as one of her favorites of last year and I figured I’d give it a go. This novel is tiny, really it’s a short story, but it packs a huge punch. It kept me guessing the whole way through and I can’t stop thinking about it days later. It’s really, really worth seeking out (especially at that great price). I won’t say too much about the plot because […]
Look! A Good Sequel!
You guys, I think I have a problem. I really, really enjoy reading super depressing books that make me feel horrible about everything. I’m pretty sure this is not normal or healthy, but I can’t stop. Books that make me cry, books that make me curse, books that make me want to scream. Even about things that happened seventy years ago. I still want to get mad and yell. Rose Under Fire is a sequel (of sorts) to Code Name Verity, which I read and love. This […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- …
- 19
- Next Page »