There are journeys that we never know where take us. I was not impressed. I was angry, and this anger stayed with me. I found it hard to forgive Anyanwu for loving Doro. When we first meet Anyanwu she has been living for 300 years in different villages, serving as their medicine woman. She is a healer and can change her body shape at will, changing from old to young, from human to animal, from woman to man. Doro can sense her and he diverts his […]
Abominable …It doesn’t mean what you think it means
This book is like climbing a mountain, a bit slow to build in spots, very technical, full of detail, but worth the effort at the end. Dan Simmons has created a another “historical fiction” novel that is so close to the truth and history that you question if it isn’t in fact a true piece of history. He did this with The Terror a few years back which was a tale of the Franklin expedition to find the Northwest Passage – based on historical fact […]
A Serial Killer Haunts Post-WWII Italy
Bojhalian takes us on a visit to Italy’s beautiful Tuscany during one of the most horrifying periods in that country’s history, when the German occupation had splintered the nation between the resistance, the collaborators, and the majority caught in between who mostly struggled to survive without selling their souls to the devil. But beyond a thought-provoking examination of choices and consequences under wartime conditions, Bojhalian also throws us into the middle of a hunt for a serial killer 10 years after the war’s end, a […]
Creating art as children
“What will happen to us?” I asked. “There will always be us,” he answered.” Just kids is like one long shared breath; breathing in the same air as Patti breathed with Robert. Just kids isn’t an autobiography; it is the story of Patti and Robert, as they were, once lovers and artists together. Patti Smith lives at home with her parents with dreams of becoming an artist. When she becomes pregnant she knows she cannot be a mother and she gives up her baby and […]
“It was a horrible time to be alive”
In her Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen, author Fay Weldon calls the Regency era “by our standards, a horrible time to be alive.” She also writes that the class society was “fair enough if you were Jane Austen, but supposing you were the maid?” That is what Jo Baker’s Longbourn does: supposes you were the maid. And it does the supposing brilliantly. For me, this was one of those books where the reading experience is so emotionally magnificent, it seems like a […]
Fly the plane, Maddie.
I decided to finally read Code Name Verity when it was announced as the first Go Fug Yourself book club selection. It seemed like a perfectly lovely excuse to pick up a book I’d been meaning to for ages. I’m glad I did, because the book really got under my skin, and as a historian I was ridiculously pleased with Elizabeth Wein’s research and the selected bibliography she supplied at the end of the book which included a museum exhibit! *insert museum professional happy dance* […]
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