I’m a bit ashamed to admit that my only knowledge of the Boxer Rebellion before reading these books came from those crossover episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel where Angel, Darla, Spike & Drusilla are taking advantage of the carnage of the Rebellion, and Spike ends up killing a Slayer (“Fool For Love” and “Darla,” in case you’re feeling like a rewatch). And really, I was more concerned with the vampires than with what was happening around them. Now that I know the context, I really […]
So full of metaphor. Guess what the sharks symbolise?
2.5 stars The Norwegian Peder Jensen is the second mate on a sailing ship, the Nepture, on route from Manilla to Marseille, in 1899. In the prologue it is revealed that six months after this ship set sail, it is still missing without a trace. In the novel we discover what happened to the ship and the crew. As second mate, and third in command on the ship, Jensen also has to be the crew medic, and spends a lot of his time patching up […]
Another Unsolved Mystery
(From Amazon) Shortly after midnight on March 18, 1990, two men broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and committed the largest art heist in history. They stole a dozen masterpieces, including one Vermeer, three Rembrandts, and five Degas. But after thousands of leads—and a $5 million reward—none of the paintings have been recovered. Worth as much as $500 million, the missing masterpieces have become one of the nation’s most extraordinary unsolved mysteries. Ulrich Boser, who has followed this case for decades, took […]
The cutest dachshund I’ve ever read about
“All men dream,” Colonel Lawrence wrote, “but not equally. Those who dream by night wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.” (245) Mary Doria Russell is one of my favorite authors. The unique thing about her, though, is that I’m always surprised that I like her books. They are invariably genres or subjects I don’t have much interest in but […]
Think “Brokeback Trojan War,” only BETTER
Maybe because I grew up in Christian private school, or because I’m just oblivious, or because Hollywood has succeeded in shaping my view of classical literature, I did not know until reading this book that many scholars agree that Achilles and Patroclus were not friends, or cousins, or brothers-in-arms, but lovers. Ooh la la! In fact, most of the time I was reading this book, I thought that the author, Madeline Miller, had taken a modern artistic liberty that was an interesting spin on the source material […]
A love story wedded to a tale of horror
Novels on the Holocaust are always difficult reading on an emotional level, and this one was no exception. Richman’s writing is simple and evocative, intimate and universal, and I got lost in the world of her two tragic lovers while sobbing at the horrors she depicted in the Nazi concentration camps Terezin and Auschwitz. Although told as a love story, Richman gives us a tale of genuine heroes, Jewish artists and musicians who struggled to keep their humanity amidst inhumanity, and who fought to […]
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