This book begins as a recollection typed out by Jake Mishkin, an intellectual property lawyer, who is holed up in a cabin on a lake in upstate New York, waiting for some very bad men to come and fetch something that must be very important. Mishkin’s story contrasts with the more straightforward narrative of Albert […]
The Book of Air and Shadows – Michael Gruber Read More »
Read for the RIP V Reading Challenge. A man is involved in a horrifying car accident, and is burned so badly he faces a long recovery in the burn ward of the hospital. While there, he meets a woman named Marianne Engel. Marianne insists that they’ve met before – that they were lovers in medieval
The Gargoyle – Andrew Davidson Read More »
Read for the Complete Booker 2010 and TBR Lite 2010 Reading Challenges. The Welsh Girl is the story of Esther, a girl from northern Wales, whose village is home to a POW camp during WWII, as well as Karsten, a German soldier who ends up in the camp after surrendering during the invasion of Normandy.
The Welsh Girl – Peter Ho Davies Read More »
I started The Mulberry Empire for the Complete Booker Reading challenge. It seemed like a promising story: the events surrounding the failed British invasion of Afghanistan in the early 19th century. I’ve abandoned the book a quarter of the way into it (first abandoned book since 2007). I just couldn’t get into the story. There
The Mulberry Empire – Philip Hensher Read More »
Read for the 2010 Complete Booker Challenge. Black Swan Green is a year in the life of Jason Taylor, a thirteen-year-old growing up in a small Worcestershire village in the early 80s. I really enjoyed this book. It had a very different tone than the other book I’d read by this author (Cloud Atlas), though
Black Swan Green – David Mitchell Read More »
Read for the 2010 Complete Booker Challenge Katie is unhappy in her marriage – not for any one reason, but for a million and one things that have built up over twenty years. Her husband is the self-professed “Angriest Man in Holloway”, and their life together has begun to wear on her. She’s even having
How to Be Good – Nick Hornby Read More »
Read for the 2009 YA Reading Challenge. Sixteen-year-old Sam’s life is going pretty well. School’s not bad, he’s actually starting to think about what he might want to do with his life, and he’s dating Alicia, a really cool and pretty girl who he wouldn’t have thought he had a chance with. And then she
Slam – Nick Hornby Read More »
Read for the TBR Lite 2009 Reading Challenge. Cloud Atlas has a little bit of story for everyone. There’s the 19th century clerk on a ship in the South Pacific, an early 20th century aspiring composer trying to worm his way into the home and life a musical genius, a reporter from the 1970s investigating
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This is a great book. Started out as a balcony read, which I kept reading late on my last night on vacation, and read in the airport and on the airplane, despite being under the effects of a nearly 12-hour sleep deficit. I couldn’t put it down. Set in Victorian times, this is the story
Fingersmith – Sarah Waters Read More »
Read for the TBR Lite Challenge. When 13-year-old Briony witnesses the flirtation between her older sister Cecelia, and Robbie, the son of their housekeeper, she thinks that by witnessing this act, she’s finally crossed over in the world of adulthood. Unfortunately, her lack of adult understanding of what she has seen causes her to commit
Atonement – Ian McEwan Read More »
