Edie and Richard Middlestein have been married for over 30 years, enjoying their family life in Chicago. But as their relationship stops growing and Richard decides to leave, all Edie can seem to do is grow. She is obsessed with food and eating. Will the family save her from herself? Will Richard come back and continue loving every ounce of her?
Things have been complicated for Hannah Wagnor since her best friend Lillian died six months ago, because her best friends ghost still haunts her, and because someone in their sleepy town is killing girls and leaving their bodies in the woods behind Hannah’s house. Lillian has become obsessed with the murders and to appease her friend’s spirit, Hannah begins to investigate the crime scene photos developed at the photo store where she works.
I thought this was a lovely book. Clean and thoughtful.
Full disclosure: I've spent time as an existentialist (Camus said he was not existentialist, but others claim he was) and a nihilist and an absurdist. That's part of the reason I found this book neither shocking nor depressing. The whole middle of the book involves prison and a "why bother" attitude. Instead, the modernist prose was a fresh breath after the musty classics and period fiction I've been reading recently, and the solitude was a relaxing diversion from my busy and loud life.
Imagine, at the age of 30, discovering you're not typical — or rather, not neurotypical. What could have been a scary diagnosis turned out to be very empowering for David Finch. His personal story of coping with Asperger Syndrome and saving his marriage paints a picture of hard-earned possibility. Finch may be at the milder end of the Asperger/autism spectrum, but for a neurotypical like myself, I learned a lot about the life of someone whose brain works very differently from my own.
Just as powerful as Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds, The Farther Shore is the story of what happens to our military men and women when we send them to hostile countries for reasons no one really understands.
It is common knowledge amongst Star Trek fans (and most everyone else who has heard of him) that William Shatner has an ego the size of a Galaxy-class starship. From insulting trekkers and trekkies alike (“Get a life!”) to famously arguing with co-star Leonard Nimoy and the show’s creator Gene Roddenberry, Shatner’s legacy is one of both passionate intensity and an inflated sense of self.
After receiving a scholarship to attend a school of architecture in Paris, Andras, a 22-year-old Hungarian Jew, leaves his home country to pursue his dream of becoming an architect. He meets and falls in love with the beautiful Claire Morgenstern, who is also Hungarian but reluctant to share information about why she is dwelling in Paris. It’s 1939 and Hitler is shaking things up as the threat of war looms in Europe. The Hungarian Consulate refuses to renew Andras’ visa because he is Jewish, and he is forced to return to Budapest without finishing his degree.
Redshirts is a thoroughly engaging read, with interesting characters, snappy dialogue, and a plot that transports from comedic to thought-provoking at will. The story follows the adventures of a group of "Redshirts" as they fight for survival and try to unravel the mystery of a curse that plagues their ship.
