This book proved somewhat painful reading, but is well-plotted, well-written and packs quite an emotional wallop. Defending Jacob is half murder mystery and half courtroom drama, told from the standpoint of Jacob’s father, who is a first Assistant District Attorney at the start of the novel, and thus gets first dibs on one of the more sensational murders to hit his town, that of a 14-year-old boy found stabbed to death off a path in a popular park used by town kids to get to […]
Another Grim Dystopic Future by Atwood
Another of Atwood’s famous dystopic novels, this one the first in a trilogy based on an apocalyptic future after the genetic manipulators and profit-mongers have prompted a sort-of “Noah’s Flood” in the form of an engineered plague to wipe the slate clean. Crake, the genius who created the plague, is gone but his “children” live on as a handful of bioengineered innocents intended to repopulate the world under new—Crake’s– guidelines. Crake’s appointed “shepherd” for this flock is Jimmy, now known as the Snowman, who managed […]
Maya Angelou memoir on political awakening
This is the fourth of seven memoirs written by Maya Angelou, and it covers the period from 1957 and 1962, shortly before her departure from California with her young son Guy in tow. Maya ends up in New York City, where she enters the society of black musicians, actors, artists, writers, political activists, and discovers new depths within herself as she joins the Harlem Writers Guild along such luminaries as James Baldwin, writes for and performs on stage, becomes northern coordinator for Martin Luther King’s […]
Jack Reacher saves the world … again!
Jack Reacher needs no introduction. His larger-than-life, soft-hearted self once again gets into a mess by doing a good deed for a pretty lady–this one with a crutch. She gets snatched off the street by a trio of bad guys and Reacher gets snatched along with her. The first part of the story is devoted to long hot sweaty hours chained together in a dark van going somewhere, and the slow build of a sort of relationship while Reacher does his best to calculate […]