This book was fantastic. I love Jon Krakauer’s clean and sophisticated writing style. I could stop there, but this would be a pretty boring review. It is, however, pretty much all you need to know. The events upon which this book was based are probably already well known to anyone who might be interested in this topic. In spring of 1996 a bunch of people tried to reach the summit of Everest, and a bunch of people died. The author was in that party of […]

I almost didn’t make it past the first third of this book. I put it down for several days, with no intention of picking it back up. Three of the four men that this book is about are very unlikable; they are arrogant, brash and had zero respect for the jungle or its inhabitants. They mistreat every animal they come across, kill things that they didn’t need to and it was the scenes of animal cruelty that caused me to skip over pages entirely, and […]

I did not know until after I finished this book that it was the retelling of a Grimm’s fairy tale, and I think not knowing enhanced what was already a beautiful and completely immersive reading experience. Sorcha is the seventh child, and only daughter, of the Lord of the Sevenwaters, and she enjoys a wild, free childhood in the mysterious forests surrounding her family’s keep. Unexpected visitors upset her idyllic life and set her on a long journey to places far away from her beloved […]

There are so many reasons for Joan Castleman to want to leave her husband, which is exactly what she decides to do in the first paragraph of this book, while on a plane headed to Finland, where her husband is to receive the Helsinki prize for fiction. Joe Castleman is self-absorbed, a womanizer and a lazy, uninvolved father to their three adult children, but he is also a talented and successful writer. It was this talent that drew Joan to him 45 years earlier, ending […]