The Luminaries is a big book that requires a lot of you attention. So let me preface this review by saying that you should absolutely read The Luminaries. An easy read? No. But a very rewarding one. The plot is fairly straight-forward and, like so many things, borrows heavily, knowingly and jestingly from Victorian tradition. The place is New Zealand, the year is 1866. The New Zealand Gold Rush is in full swing in the tiny coastal town of Hokitika. Stranger Walter Moody, hoping to […]
“Truth is, you save me, child. You save me as sure as the sun rises.”
I downloaded this audiobook thinking it would be fairly light material. After all, the main character is a nine year old girl. I was wrong, to say the least. “My daddy says that when you do somethin’ to distract you from your worstest fears, it’s like whistlin’ past the graveyard. You know, making a racket to keep the scaredness and the ghosts away. He says that’s how we get by sometimes. But it’s not weak, like hidin’…it’s strong. It means you’re able to go on.” Set […]
The reward of true service, surely, is to be asked for more.
At long last, we reach the end of the “Temeraire” series. Hot dang, it’s been 9 books… where would our heroes travel? how would they encounter Napoleon? would Laurence have complicated feelings about women in the military? would Temeraire rake his giant claws into the ground in distress over something? where would they settle down for retirement? all these questions had to be answered, and more! It’s no secret that I’ve adored this series, even though it became deeply repetitive and predictable. And in a surprising […]
“When she was eight she had fallen in love with Ichimei with all the intensity of childhood passions; with Nathaniel it was the calm love of later years”
I’ve read quite a few Isabel Allende books, but The Japanese Lover is the first I listened to as an audiobook. While it’s certainly not the high-paced story-telling that lends itself well to going for a run/staying awake on my commute, I did find that the way that an audiobook forces you to enjoy every moment of writing really works wonderfully with Allende’s style. “I’m fine here, Lenny. I’m discovering who I am without all my ornaments and accessories. It’s quite a slow process, but a […]
Mary Jane-ing the Pacific Theatre, one atoll at a time
There are good war novels, and there are bad war novels. And occasionally, a well-intentioned reader like myself gets saddled with an excruciating mess like Never Too Old to Cry. This is a fictionalized memoir of D. G. McWilliams, a veteran of the 1st Marine Division, which fought in the Pacific Theater of the Second World War. McWilliams’ endeavor was to try to document the war from a very intimate perspective, primarily through the eyes of a small cadre of Marine recruits. Paramount among them […]
Whereby SEALs are complete badasses and the liberal media is almost as bad as the Taliban
At first, an admission: I’m starting my CBR run terribly late. I intend to catch up, and I just might. I’m a bulimic bibliophile, insomuch as I devour books in bingeing bursts, then go several months without reading much more than Buzzfeed listicles and back-of-the-can recipes. If I can sustain this binge for the next four months, I have a reasonable chance of hitting my target of 26. Lone Survivor is the war memoir of Marcus Luttrell, covering his training as a US Navy SEAL […]
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