"Bookish" - 5 new articles
When Will There Be Good News? by Kate AtkinsonWhat a pleasure! An interesting array of characters and plenty of action, but that is not all.The central character is Joanne, who suffers a great loss when she is six. We get to pick up on her life thirty years later, where we find she has become a doctor, is married and has a baby son she adores - and may be threatened by the same man who destroyed her family 30 years before. Joanne is kind and American Wife, by Curtis SittenfeldI read voraciously, yet it is rare for me to enjoy a book so thoroughly as I enjoyed this one (this blog does not contain reviews of all the books I read; only the ones I consider notable for some reason).Sittenfeld, after reading a biography of Laura Bush, realized that the former first lady is a complicated person, an interesting person. Her life seems like a novel. So she decided to write it. House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus IIIOh, the choices we make!A story of a house that isn't really about the house, but instead about three people from different worlds, all flawed in serious ways. The three become bound together the day one of them, Deputy Sheriff Lester Burdon, shows up at the house of Kathy Nicolo, another of the three, to tell her that her house is going to be auctioned off by the county to pay a bill that, in Falling, by Christopher PikeSome might call it a "wild ride", for that it certainly is. But that description leaves out interesting details.This is a tale where even the good guys can't be trusted. We don't know until the end if they will do the right thing or be caught up in their obsessions. For obsession is the name of the game here. Obsession, love, betrayal. One instance after another of betrayal and prevarication.Matt Running with Scissors, by Augusten BurroughsI really enjoyed this book. It's a family biography with a sharp edge, tempered by humor. I read Burroughs' "real" memoir, The Wolf at the Table, before reading this one. The Wolf concerns itself with the early years, the years Augusten spent with both parents, and most particularly with his father. We soon come to realize how cruel his father was. There are episodes in that story that made my More Recent Articles |
