This book was a random acquisition and comes with a bit of backstory. I was reporting in Mandalay, central Burma, on a number of stories, and one of them required me to interview a comedy troupe that is known for staging vaudevillian shows that harpoons the country’s authoritarian regime. Now that Burma is considered a democracy, this comedy troupe is still putting up nightly shows for tourists, making fun of the fact that the current government is really a puppet for the military. One of […]
The Way Out
It’s been a long time since I was so thoroughly sucked into a fictional universe as I was with Wool. Honestly, that’s what I miss about fantasy, historical fiction and sci-fi books — while the writing may be good, it is rare that I would feel totally enfolded into the history, the context and the world that an author creates. I think the last time that happened was with the first book of the Chaos Trilogy, The Knife of Never Letting Go. Hugh Howey does this for […]
Who do ya call? Jack Reacher!!
This is my first Lee Child book, and I’ve heard quite a lot of buzz about him, especially right around the time that Tom Cruise movie came out. You know the one, where he steps out of a movie car into a crowd of people waiting for the bus and doffs a cap given to him by a helpful bystander. Anyway, Deep Down came in a series of e-books gifted to me by my friend (This Is How You Lose Her was another one) and […]
A guide to love from a chronic cheater
This Is How You Lose Her is a series of short stories that deal mostly with men’s infidelity in relationships, with the exception of one of the stories being from a women’s point of view. Readers of Diaz’s first book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, will recognize Yunior, who appears repeatedly in the stories in relationships with different women. A running theme throughout these stories is how men don’t often see women as a real person. Like Yunior’s dog brother, Rafa, who sees […]