I know Isabel Allende from Daughter of Fortune and Zorro, so when I saw The Japanese Lover (2015) at Costco, I was immediately interested. Alma Belasco is a young, privileged, Jewish girl in Poland. As WWII ramps up to its destructive beginnings, Alma’s family sends her to her rich uncle in San Francisco, where she is safe, but alone, lonely and miserable. Her two companions become her cousin, Nick, and the Japanese-American son of the family’s gardener, Ichimei Fukuda. Alma and Ichi soon become inseparable. After the bombing […]
“Lafayette, we are here.”
The American Revolution seems to be experiencing a resurgence in popularity. Between Hamilton on Broadway and Turn on AMC, pop culture is re-examining the eight years between the battles of Lexington and Concord and the Treaty of Paris. As an Alaskan, I can tell you that America was invaded and occupied by Japan during World War 2. However, since Attu is a tiny island at the edge of the Aleutian chain, most Americans don’t know that. If you don’t grow up where history happened, it is […]
‘It’s the kind of winter that will remind us we are mortal,’ he said. ‘Mortal and alone.’
Cecilia Ekbäck’s Wolf Winter is one of those novels that tries to balance a real life crime with supernatural elements, like most of what I’ve read by Jennifer McMahon. And like Jennifer McMahon’s novels, it’s….mostly successful. “You have this trait… of looking for the mysterious and letting yourself be overcome.” Set in Swedish Lapland in 1717, Maija, Paavo and their daughters Frederika and Dorotea have arrived at a new homestead, hoping to find more success than they did in their native Finland. Soon after moving to the mountain, they realize […]
Don’t let the colors fool you
ODY-C is based on Homer’s Odyssey in a world where Zeus has killed off most of the men. ODY-C is a genderbent interpretation that’s completely warped out of its own mind in a psychedelic sci-fi god-ruled outer space. I mean the whole thing is nuts. Crazy colors, and sexual innuendos all over the place; think women breaking down doors with giant phallos’ and vagina-like spaceships. But don’t let the colors fool you. This is not an explosion of a book, it’s a slow, heavy journey. […]
The Divine Phryne…
After my re-read of Amelia Peabody, I was in the mood for a historical mystery with a little more spice, so what better than Miss Fisher? Like all red-blooded humans, I’m pretty obsessed with Phryne. For those who may not know (how? why? examine your life choices, people) the Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries are an Australian-set series of books about a lady detective in 1928. She is fabulous, adventurous and super sexy. There are also 3 seasons of TV based on the series. (Netflix. Watch […]
Premise of US orphan history: awesome. Book: less awesome.
This was the first selection of the new year for my book club, chosen somewhat for length, something short to start off the year, and because there were book club questions in the back of the book. I have picked books to read for worse reasons, so away we went. Though fiction, this book is the fictionally telling of what to me was an unknown part of American history From 1854 to 1929, orphan children in New York were placed on trains by a group […]
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