Just a warning: This review will spoil a main plot point of the novel, because I don’t know how to talk about it at all without mentioning it, even though said plot point doesn’t occur until about halfway through. If you don’t want to be spoiled (and really, in this case, I think you should be so you know what you’re getting into), here is a brief summary of my feelings on this book, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things: Extremely well written. Puts you […]
Book Club Reads Non-Western Literary Fiction – Voting!
Voting for this #CannonBookClub is now closed. The selection is In Praise of Hatred by Khaled Khalifa. Buy it online at amazon, and please join us on September 13 for our discussion. Who’s ready for an ambitious summer read? Here at the #CannonBookClub we are always on the lookout to expand our horizons and try new and different genres, so this summer we are going to go in the direction of Literary Fiction. Our twist this time is that we will be focusing on Non-Western authors. […]
The Review of the Great Books
I really, really liked Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, which is an incredibly blase way to compliment a book so raw and confrontational and, well, brilliant. The remaining three books in the Neapolitan Novels series build on the strong momentum established by the first and, in the process, continue to be some of the most poignant reading I’ve experienced in ages. The feelings that these books provoked in me were strong and visceral, inflamed and tender in their ebb and flow. These are not feel-good […]
In which I take another step toward beatific acceptance of my plebian taste
This probably qualifies as another lit-fic fail for me, by which I don’t mean that the book was a failure; I mostly likely just failed to appreciate it. It’s one of those oniony books that has a lot of layers, and characters who relate to each other on levels both appropriate and otherwise. Set in the 1960’s, there’s a story of a young woman who finds out she is of European Jewish descent, and finds herself digging into her history by way of trying to […]