The Wind Knows My Name
I think Isabelle Allende is a Very Good writer, deep and heartfelt, and the book a topical and compelling story of immigration and the toll it takes, especially at the US border. I don’t think she is a Great writer,...
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The Books Of Jacob
A favorite trope of mine is the sprawling geneological novel, painting a picture of a culture and its transformation over time through the story of a particular family throughout several generations - it is a trope I don’t have many...
Teaching To Transgress
As a not-teacher who has lived most of his life outside the humanities academy, this book is perhaps not super relevant - but it’s good. I enjoyed reading about and thinking about what goes into education and Freeing the Mind,...
Master And Commander
A bit of an odd coincidence, I did not realize when reading His Majesty’s Dragon that it was basically just Master and Commander with dragons. And to be frank, I think the dragons did improve it a bit. I mean,...
Waiting for Godot
I’ve been seeing references to Borges’ story Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote around a bit, for whatever reason (it is the one about Pierre Menard, through diligent scholarship, rewriting and recreating Don Quixote, line for line). And classic Borges...
If Beale Street Could Talk
Most books I read which strive to be about the Black experience living in America are ultimately about trauma, for obvious reasons. If Beale Street Could Talk also has its fair share of trauma and no happy ending - but...
Shadow Country
The term shadow cousins refers to family members that are excommunicated, not spoken of and ignored. At least in the parlance of the book; I suppose in real life as well, although I have not heard of it elsewhere. The...
His Majesty's Dragon
One of my favorite book’s growing up was My Father’s Dragon, which I remember little about now - but did bias me pretty strongly against His Majesty’s Dragon. I am an adult now! This looked like the lowest form of...
Butterflies
A cute and lovely collection of prose on butterflies. The poetry - I’ve read some of Hesse’s poetry before, and I can’t really tell if he is a bad poet or it doesn’t come across in translation? For a writer...
Life Lived Wild
Rick Ridgeway’s writing has a bit of a rough-hewn, simple style that I don’t think will win many awards - and at first, that I didn’t think I liked that much. But there is also a deep, earnest sincerity to...