It’s honestly a pretty draining prospect to read 26 Raymond Chandler stories. Here’s why: he was so remarkably consistent that the stories are thorough, thoughtful, a little repetitive–along a few common paths–, and they are long. Each of these stories is between about 45-60 pages (using Everyman Library pages at that), and so the grand total of 26 of his stories is about 1300 pages. And so I have been working on these a lot. If there were more variety, I would be more excited […]
Simply charming
In early 1946, author Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a man on Guernsey, who happens to own a book that was previously hers. They strike up a correspondence, and through that she learns about the German occupation of Guernsey during the war and the titular Society. Intrigued, Juliet wonders if this might be the subject for her next book. Told entirely through letters, we get to know the characters and fall in love with them as Juliet does. There’s Dawsey, who has Juliet’s old […]
Attention!
This highly acclaimed, award-winning 2016 novel is a provocative look at a fictional “small bomb” blast at an open air market in India in 1996 and the aftermath for the victims and the perpetrators. Karan Mahajan explores racism, religious intolerance, problems of assimilation, the notion of justice, and the work of activists — whether peaceful or terrorist — as his characters deal with their losses over the next seven years. The novel is full of surprises, especially when we see how similar the two sides […]
No Danger of a Simple Story
Like many books that I pick up, An American Marriage by Tayari Jones ended up on my to-read list after I heard a story on NPR. Interviewed by Karen Grigsby-Bates last February, Jones said she had done a lot of research on criminal justice and race to prepare to write a book but that nothing was clicking until she went home to visit her mom over the holidays and overheard a conversation in an Atlanta mall: JONES: The woman was beautifully dressed, and the young man, he […]