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A man steps from a bedroom out to the landing and finds himself on a precipice. Looking down, he sees an endless chasm. Looking up, he sees a tiny circle of sky high above him, pouring down the sides of the chasm like a waterfall. A house feels unusually warm. To the discerning eye, little tongues [...] …they couldn’t all want Archetypes coming down on them, not if they were like most of the religious people he had met. They also probably liked their religion taken mild — a pious hope, a devout ejaculation, a general sympathetic sense of a kindly universe — but nothing upsetting or bewildering, no agony, no darkness, [...] Today I have the honor of being a guest contributor at 5 Minutes for Books. My thoughts on A Thousand Splendid Suns appear there in a regular Sunday feature titled “On Reading.” Click here if you’d like to stop by! Robin McKinley’s Chalice has taken me several tries to get through. Much though I’ve liked this author’s other books, this one didn’t make a serious grab for my attention till about 150 pages in. Till then, there was something too sleepy and passive about the prose, and just a little too unreal about its fictional [...] After I closed A Thousand Splendid Suns, I sat speechless, trying to come to terms with what I’d just read. “This is the reason books exist,” I realized. By turns, this story of two women living against the backdrop of the last 40 years of Afghanistan’s turbulent history horrified me, inspired me, informed me, and broke [...] Westmark was published in 1981, but it’s a new Lloyd Alexander find for me. I’ve read the Prydain Chronicles, but hadn’t ever delved into this author’s other books. There are quite a few, and perhaps I didn’t know where to begin. Westmark has some of the same qualities I loved about the Prydain Chronicles: a flawed but [...] I tried to choose just one quote for the Week in Words carnival, but here are a few more, all on different topics, that have struck me lately. ***** These two are from what my daughters call “The Talking Heads and Shoulders” on the Newshour. They’re actually from last week, in a discussion about President [...] Thanks to Amy, I’m aware of this new weekly carnival at Breath of Life. It involves sharing some words from your reading. Melissa explains, “Playing along is simple, just write a post of the quote(s) that spoke to you during the week (attributed, of course) and link back here. They can be from [...] By turns, The Hunger Games reminded me of “The Most Dangerous Game,” Gladiator, Ender’s Game, and The Truman Show. “The Most Dangerous Game” involves a big game hunter preying on another man for the challenge — the game — of it. Gladiator recalls the bloodthirst of the Romans, who thought murder and mayhem were good sport. [...] Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help was a bargain at the recent publisher’s book sale in my locale, but it would be a bargain at any price. It leaves me with plenty to think about. Set in Jackson, Mississippi, and rotating among three narrative points of view, The Help brings to life the complex racial tensions of [...] |
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