This book broke my heart. I literally had to stop reading at certain parts for days in order not to wallow in despair. Written by a former child soldier in Sierra Leone, in an attempt to reproduce the cadences and rhythm of his native tongue Mende, he here tells the story of the village Imperi which was destroyed in a surprise rebel attack and was sequentially abandoned. Slowly, after years of neglect the villagers return, first the elders, who take it upon themselves to clear […]
Not David Foster Wallace’s best, but that still means it’s better than most.
I’ll start with a preamble, I really like David Foster Wallace’s work, and Infinite Jest might just be my all-time favorite book. I love post-modern writing, not everyone’s preferred cup of tea I know, but give me a fragmented non-linear narrative and I will gleefully jump in. So this is almost hand crafted for me, and yet I am forced to admit that I didn’t care for it all that much. The structure of the book is a collection of non-related short stories, inter-cut by […]
For the glory of Rome!
John Williams was a professor of English literature whose previous novels dealt, In muted emotions, with the lives of very humble men. So it is with a little surprise that one picks up this book, his most critically successful novella, about the life of the first Roman emperor, Augustus, born Gaius Octavius Thurinus. Augustus (Ocatavian), a real historical figure, adopted by Julius Caesar as a young boy, who used the latter’s assassination as a galvanizing force to raise an army of his own and start […]
The Eighth son of an Eighth son is a born WIZZARD.
“They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.” Terry Pratchett is one of my absolute favorite authors, I was hooked from the first page of one of his books that I read as a wee lad so long ago. That book was “Equal Rites”, I picked it up when I was five years old, I understood maybe one word in five, I had to check the dictionary every few lines, or, […]
No country for old men (or anyone really).
“The freedom of birds if an insult to me”. The Judge Based loosely, very loosely, on historical events, the book tells the tale of a violent youth, known only as “the Kid” who joins a gang of outlaws hired to collect Apache scalps, 100$ a pop. The story isn’t really important though, it simply serves as a framework for McCarthy to showcase and exhibit human violence, and let’s be very clear here, this book is an absolute blood bath. No one is exempt from […]