Some spoilers below. My wife attempted this book a few months ago and it devastated her. For her, it was an unremitting wasteland of degraded women that, instead of highlighting the great strides towards equality that we’ve made, emblazoned the vast distance we’ve had to travel to become a society barely cognizant of the barriers still firmly in place. To read such a visceral recitation of subservience and lack of empowerment endangered her emotional equilibrium. So, despite near universal acclaim, I was somewhat reticent about […]
Can I Please Just Get Some Peace & Quiet from all these Men’s Thoughts!?
Rating: 5/5 Summary: Todd is one month away from the birthday that will make him a man in Prentisstown. While searching for apples in the local swamp, he stumbles upon a patch of silence in the Noise. The Noise is everywhere, there cannot be patches. Thoughts stream endlessly from men and there is no stopping it. When Todd goes back to the farm, his caregivers panic and he must be sent away. A plot is unraveling and Todd is a key, he must be kept […]
I finished this book, exhaled, and flipped it over to the beginning again.
Reading the late Paul Kalanithi’s spectacular memoir When Breath Becomes Air, a meditation about love, literature and science in the face of a terminal cancer diagnosis was a strange experience “The good news is that I’ve already outlived two Brontes, Keats and Stephen Crane,” Kalanithi wrote to a friend. “The bad news is that I haven’t written anything.” He was trying to be funny, using the kind of dark humor you get from people facing the unfaceable. But it also revealed Kalanithi’s tremendous ambition. He […]
Everyone needs to drop what they’re doing and read this book
Rating: 5/5 Summary: When Eric’s friend longtime friend Sarah Byrnes stop speaking, he’s confused and desperate to help her. The only problem is no one knows why she stopped speaking, one theory revolves around the burns that mar her face and hands. Eric is not only worried about his friend, but as he finds out more about why she’s being silent he begins to question what friendship truly is. This is paralleled by discussions in his Contemporary American Thought class. I love Chris Crutcher. I’ve […]