Against the Day
“‘The fascination of what’s difficult,’ to steal from Yeats, is what first drew readers to Pynchon’s novels.” — to steal from this NY times reviewer, stealing from Yeats. As such, the best part about reading Pynchon is to tell others you read Pynchon. And the best part of reading Against the Day is to be …
The Goldfinch
Plot Summary The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is a Bildungsroman (coming-of-age story) of a boy who survives a terrorist bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The bombing results in his mother’s death and, in the haze of the aftermath, him making off with …
The Perfect Letter
I am about as close to an ideal reader could be for The Perfect Letter, a book written by Chris Harrison of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette fame. I enjoy chick lit from time to time, I’m a huge Bachelor/Bachelorette fan, I’m originally from Dallas, Texas (where the story is set), I read like a …
The Dog Stars
The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller, is set in a post-apocalyptic near future where a virulent and aggressive strain of the flu has taken the lives of most of the population of the world, leaving the rest in fear of one another and desperate for survival. The survivors are few and usually those with some …
The Keep
In The Keep, author Jennifer Egan spins her narrative yarn in in the form of two nested stories. Ray is prison inmate enrolled in a writing workshop. In his writing, we find our second story, one about two estranged cousins who are undergoing a project to renovate a centuries-old castle into a hotel. The two …