We have a problem with policing in this country. Hopefully this isn’t a surprise, although many people have only started to notice this since the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson last month. People in many communities, for years, have been more fearful of the police than of the criminals in their communities; this is especially true for black people, who can be shot for having a BB gun, a toy sword, or nothing at all. Mr. Balko has written a book that unfortunately is […]
A historical romance with a maths genius
Young Rose Sweetly is a computer in Victorian England. This means she works for a male astronomer, doing amazing feats of arithmetic and calculation to help him in his work. She lives with her pregnant sister, taking care of her while waiting for her brother-in-law, a naval doctor, to return from abroad. Preferably before the baby is born. She’s also very much in love with her neighbour, the infamous author and columnist Stephen Shaughnessey. Yet she heeds her sister’s advice. He is a legendary scandal […]
The further adventures of Jamie and Claire Fraser – we’re getting closer to the American Revolution
3.5 stars This is the sixth book in the Outlander series, and really not the place to start reading. You will have missed out on literally thousands of pages of plot developments, intrigue and characterisation. If you are interested in checking out the series (which thanks to the current TV show, I suspect more and more might be), start at the beginning with Outlander. Ok, where do I even begin to summarise the plot here. The mass market paperback is over 1400 pages long and the action spans […]
Things do, indeed, fall apart
This was another of the classical books that I felt like I was supposed to love, but never quite did. It was as though the people paraded before my eyes and whether they were loving or killing, it was a dance movement that I as a chair could never grasp. It is the first African book to receive international critical acclaim. Published in 1958 it’s one of those books that seem to be part of a collective culture; the books we hear of but have […]
“Things could change so entirely, in a heartbeat; the world could be made entirely anew, because someone was kind.”
I love Jane Austen. I know she’s not for everyone, but I definitely have a soft spot for the author. Due to this soft spot I limit what I partake of in the Austen companion materials, no matter how long they’ve been a part of the Austen experience. The one that seems to have the most is Pride and Prejudice. I read Mr. Darcy’s Diary for Cannonball Read IV, but that experience and reading less than stellar reviews has kept me from reading Death Comes […]
Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss
Darin Strauss states right off the bat that his novel, Chang and Eng, is just that: a novel. He has taken real historical events: the birth of the conjoined twins in Siam, their kidnapping by the king, their return to their family only to be sold to an American entrepreneur, their gradual retirement from the “freak show” life and subsequent marriage to two sisters in North Carolina, followed by dozens of children and decades of sadness; he takes all this and weaves a narrative around it […]
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