Rating: 4/5 Summary (from Goodreads): Margaret the First dramatizes the life of Margaret Cavendish, the shy, gifted, and wildly unconventional 17th-century Duchess. The eccentric Margaret wrote and published volumes of poems, philosophy, feminist plays, and utopian science fiction at a time when “being a writer” was not an option open to women. As one of the Queen’s attendants and the daughter of prominent Royalists, she was exiled to France when King Charles I was overthrown. As the English Civil War raged on, Margaret met and married […]
The Gods of Gotham
Lindsay Faye’s extraordinary The Gods of Gotham is the best novel of its kind since Caleb Carr’s The Alienist. This isn’t a unique observation, it’s emblazoned across the cover of the novel. However I agree with it. I love big city historical fiction so taking a serial killer thriller and setting it in New York City in 1845 is always going to draw my interest. Faye goes a step further by making the origin of the New York City Police Department, and beginning of the […]
Theater of the Absurd in the Mediterranean Theater
Catch-22 has infiltrated the American vernacular and is considered a classic that everyone should read. . . and it took me ages to get through. I picked it up in March and put it down a few days later because all the circular reasoning and time hopping at the beginning. I started it again at the end of May and finally finished it, I must say it gets better towards the end although it gets much darker in tone. “Sure, there’s a catch,” Doc Daneeka replied. “Catch-22. […]
I’m breakin’ through, I’m bendin’ spoons, I’m keepin’ flowers in full bloom.
This book was book club read and it really wasn’t something I would have picked up on my own. Ultimately I’m glad I did. I’m not particularly sentimental about my remains so I’ve always said I’d either be cremated or donate my remains to science. Being less than halfway through my life (if the women in my family are any indication, I may live to be over a century) I didn’t think much about it beyond that. Reading Mary Roach’s book is a detailed […]
Buffalo Soldiers in Italy
I’ve read a lot of books set during World War II, but only a couple that centered on Italy, and this is the first I’ve read that’s dealt specifically with the Army’s 92nd Division — aka, the Buffalo Soldiers. “To fight the enemy? Which enemy? The Germans? The Italians? The enemy was irony and truth and hypocrisy, that was the real enemy. That was the enemy that was killing him.” Towards the end of World War II, four soldiers with the 92nd Division get separated from […]
A castle full of odd ducks and misfits
The opening story of Castle Waiting, which explains how the castle came to be abandoned, so to speak, is a variation on Sleeping Beauty. Only once the princess is awakened from her century of sleep and the hedge surrounding the castle lets people in and out, she goes off with her prince and pretty much forgets about the place where she slumbered and the people in it. As the years pass, the castle becomes a refuge for various outcasts and odd characters, with the princess’ […]
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