by Flynn Berry. Arrested Snow Flake Development. This English woman who becomes a general physician is stuck in her childhood in more ways than her obsession with a murder of the past. She has limited maturity and seems to think like a young girl, hard to fathom that she could get through med school. Her interactions and investigations are fraught with self-centered magical thinking. I did like Berry’s voice for the most part, but the ending was just a modern day hackneyed snow flake job. It was okay until the… Read more A Double Life →
by Cristina Alger. A formulaic quick beach read. Loose connection to current events and a lack of depth about international banking. Travelogue of touristy European landmarks. Flimsy mystery with two women protagonists who are superficial stereotypes and barely distinguishable. And. Please. Don’t translate French or Spanish from the Google. Not idiomatically correct. Are all the editors at the beach, too?
Man Booker Longlist announced today. Dystopia and Disruption. Signs of the times to be sure. But. I want to escape all that. It’s clearly a good year for Canada’s Michael Ondaatje. His 1992 The English Patient won the Golden prize for the best work of fiction in the past five decades. Warlight made this year’s list. I didn’t love it as much as one of my all time faves, The Cat’s Table. Not sure about the others on the list. In general, not the most upbeat subject matter. So. https://themanbookerprize.com/resources/media/pressreleases/man-booker-prize-2018-longlist-announced
One of Book Trek’s favorite authors, Richard Russo’s essay in today’s New York Times discusses how difficult it has been and remains to write about school shootings. Russo’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Empire Falls was published after Columbine, yet was written years before. It culminated in a scene in the local high school where a lone bullied boy turns his anger on classmates. Since then that scenario is all too common with little changed in the character of the shooter or reasons for his alienation. Broken Record Alert! Until America Loves… Read more Empire Falls Revisited →
by Julian Barnes. Love as Albatross. Exhausting self-indulgent pompous musings on “love”. If this is love, it’s the most masochistic self-loathing version of it ever written. I did get through it despite it becoming more ponderous and plodding as it went so slowly and depressingly along. Wow. Alcoholism aside. Martini. Please!
Emily Jane Fox & Friends. Hawking her new book, Born Trump. Hanging out with Maureen Dowd and other media glitterati and the Vanity Fair crowd at Ludlow House downtown. Ridiculing Ivanka as no longer an elite. That’s rich. Irony notwithstanding. Trashing Trumps is fun for the vain coastal cocktail contingent. But. Beware. In the end deplorable Fox & Friends viewers will outfox the punditry again. With votes.
by Tara Isabella Burton. Ghosting. Literally. Louise, a social media-savvy millennial psychopath uses her skills to survive. And then some. She takes over the life of young, rich narcissistic Lavinia and fools everyone who knows her. Almost everyone. Plausibly modern twist on a thriller. Evil fun.
Book-Treks favorite, Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton. Glass Castle-esque memoir. Gabrielle Hamilton learns butchering and natural cooking from erratic eccentric parents in a ramshackle Pennsylvania silk mill. When she… Read more Blood Bones & Butter →
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