I picked up this book in my ongoing love affair with fiction about the natural world. I also really enjoyed Patchett’s “Commonwealth” and I wanted to read more of her stuff. A little bit “Heart of Darkness” and a little bit “Poisonwood Bible“, Ann Patchett’s “A State of Wonder” explores maternal love, the big business of pharmacology and the ethics of interfering with indigenous people. There’s a lot going on in this book. When a letter arrives bearing the news that Dr. Anders Eckman has […]
Marriage is, as she says, a peculiar institution
I had this title on my radar but didn’t sit down to read it until it became this month’s pick for my book club. My book club consists of women ranging in age from 50-something to late 20’s. Four of us are married, 3 of us have children, 1 is pregnant with her first child , one is recently engaged and one is single after a decade long relationship. Each of us will be coming at this from different vantage points in terms of marriage […]
Because this is not a house for the faint of heart
CBR BINGO: Farenheit 451 While I was fishing around trying to find a banned or controversial book for this review, I stumbled across several articles written in 2016 about a 15-year-old girl in a school district near me. When Jeannette Walls’ memoir, “Glass Castle” was removed from the 9th grade reading list at her school, this young woman was having none of it. She challenged her school district at a board meeting and very succinctly pointed out that the material that the parents were objecting to […]
History isn’t something that’s done with, it’s what’s happening right now
CBR10 BINGO: Home, Something, Home. This is about as close to home as I can get. Having lived in Pittsburgh since the mid 1980’s, I probably should have read this native author before but somehow he wasn’t on my radar. He is now. First, I think I need to get into a little history here. In this novel, O’Nan writes about a specific community in Pittsburgh’s east end: East Liberty. During the 1960’s, the Urban Redevelopment Authority hatched a plan to build a pedestrian friendly […]