What does it mean to love something? Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch is mostly about love and what we will do to have it, in all it’s many manifestations. This story is not about right or wrong, good choices or bad, at it’s heart, The Goldfinch is about what we will do to hold near the things we love. The Goldfinch is a wild (though sometimes overlong) ride through a life of frivolous delinquency, unintentional criminality, lapses in honesty, breaches of ethics, and misunderstood attractions. For Theo Decker, there is no thing so […]
Who were the homestead wives, who were the gold rush brides?
In which Popcultureboy is left floored by and in awe of Catton’s supreme mastery and skill as a writer and storyteller, but is ultimately forced to conclude he found the novel easier to admire than to love. So here we are at the pinnacle of the Booker challenge for 2013, with the winning book. There were some firsts with this book lifting the Booker, as it was the longest ever book to do so with the highest page count (Catton is 28, and the book […]
Also, he’s totally a closeted lush.
This was adorable, and surprisingly insightful. Of course, I’m always susceptible to books that feature socially challenged individuals, especially ones that are male, so there was probably no way I wasn’t going to like this book. I’m glad to say that not only did I like it, I very very much liked it, and I can’t wait to see the movie version (also written by Simsion — actually, I believe the script came first, and then he wrote the novel). A lot of people have […]
Another Historical Romance, But a Twofer with Displaced Princesses
New author! Juliana Gray is a very strong historical romance writer with a wonderful turn of phrase, a gift for simile, and great smolder. It is such an unexpected pleasure when a book randomly selected from the romance spinner at one’s library results in a new novelist to enjoy. I went back the next day, and the next, to get more of her books. Gray will be going on my woefully short good authors list and may well end up as an autobuy. The Princesses […]
An Old Man Remembers the Blues
It’s been a long time since I read Walter Mosley’s great Easy Rawlins mysteries, set in post-war Los Angeles. Many years ago a friend gave me RL’s Dream, Mosley’s first foray outside the detective genre. I tucked the book on the shelf to read later. Almost twenty years later I found the book on the shelf last week. Curious to see what I’d missed, I plunged into the book that was described as being about the blues. RL’s Dream is set in 1990s New […]
It Really Was All Too Brief…
My book club picked The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz for our February get together. This is the reason I love book club, because I would never have picked up this book on my own. Also, like every other female book club, we drink large amounts of wine. But we always read the book! The novel is centered around Oscar, a tragic and hopeless lame teenager, during his high school and college years. Oscar is overweight, socially awkward, and just […]
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