Some were naked and carrying their clothes; others half-naked, or more or less dressed, in school uniforms, grey, blue, fawn, jacketed, or jerseyed. There were badges, mottoes even, stripes of color in stockings and pullovers. Their heads clustered above the trunks in the green shade; heads brown, fair, black, chestnut, sandy, mouse-colored, heads muttering, whispering, [...]
Posts under ‘Five-Ten Star Books’
Running the Rift – Book Review
If you stretch a spring long enough, far enough, the metal will fail and the spring will snap. The same with a human body. The same with a human heart. The same, even, with a country. – from Running the Rift, page 231 – There are many horrific events in the historical record. The Rwandan [...]
An American Hero – Celebrating Martin Luther King
Today we celebrate Martin Luther King day and I thought it would be appropriate to talk about some of the best books I have read about the African-American experience. First, take a few minutes to listen, once again, to the historic “I Have A Dream” speech: Here are the novels I recommend which revolve around [...]
The Street Sweeper – Book Review
Ghandi, Harlem, Christ, Jews in Europe, a block man living over there on Broadway in the Union Theological Seminary in 1930: you never know the connections between things, people, places, ideas. But there are connections. You never know where you’ll find them. Most people don’t know where to find them or even that there’s any [...]
Best Books of 2011 – The Long and The Short Of It
In 2011 my reading led me on a trek with a tiger, brought me to the Australian countryside during WWII, took me to Mauritius, brought me to a small town where a whale took center stage, allowed me inside the walls of a New England college, and introduced me to memorable characters such as Esch, [...]
We The Animals – Book Review
We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our ears ached with the shouts of angry men. We wanted more music on the radio; [...]
Jesmyn Ward on NPR
Readers to my blog will know by now that I loved Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, a book which won the 2011 National Book Award (read my review). This is not an easy book to read, but it was so incredibly written, so honest, and so powerful that I have continued to want to [...]
The Marriage Plot – Book Review
She used a line from Trollope’s Barchester Towers as an epigraph: “There is no happiness in love, except as the end of an English novel.” Her plan was to begin with Jane Austen. After a brief examination of Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility, all comedies, essentially, that ended with weddings, Madeleine was [...]
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