A few years after losing his wife and daughter in an automobile accident, Michael Reed finds himself working at a university for a nameless humanities department with a specialty so vague it’s impossible to imagine what he does for income, if anything. Not that Mr. Reed isn’t busy. His insights into humanity’s rougher edges are realized by a relentless labor of the mind. He’s strenuously alert to the injustices of middle age, the sublime beauty of reckless youth and the absence of the two people who once defined his life.
This memoir explores the life of Waris Dirie, recognized by many for her work as a model, and by others for her advocacy for human rights and a battle against female genital mutilation. The reader follows her from her early life as a nomad in the deserts of Somalia, to her difficult and sometimes dangerous journey to Mogadishu and eventually London. Working there as an underappreciated maid for her own family, she is "discovered", and sets off on an equally nomadic life as a model. Throughout her journey, Waris has to face the world with her own wits and tenacity.
In the very near future, Trent McCauley is a 16-year-old in northern England who makes videos by cutting, pasting, and editing movies starring a dead actor he's obsessed with. This isn't just a hobby of Trent's, it's his passion (much like writing Simon Snow fanfic is a passion for Cath in Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl). But it violates copyright and pirating laws, which is why the state cuts off his family's internet access for a year.
Nothing funnier than a cross-dressing slave boy riding the circuit with crazy ole John Brown. Offensive, hilarious, violent and sad, James McBride fills the Kansas Territory with characters straight out of a Mel Brooks movie and then throws in a dash of Quentin Tarantino for good measure. How McBride managed to weave Harriet Tubman in to the buffoonery without offending the reader is beyond me. I highly recommend!
Blue lives in a family of psychics, but the only power she has is amplifying the abilities of others. On All Hallow's Eve, she visits the Corpse Road with her aunt. There, her aunt sees the ghosts of everyone in Henrietta who will die in the next year. For the first time, Blue is able to see a ghost. It's a boy about her age. When she asks his name, he says, "Gansy, that's all there is." Her aunt tells her the only way she would be able to see the ghost is if he is her true love, or if she killed him. Possibly both.
This is a coming-of-age story, a love story, and a retelling of the Iliad all in one masterfully told epic. Miller at once succeeds in adding depth and substance to Achilles and Patroclus and also preserving the dramatic feel of the war that is the backdrop to their relationship.
Jordan Romero was fascinated by a poster in his elementary school of the Seven Summits, the highest mountain peaks on each of the seven continents. When he was nine years old, he announced to his parents that he wanted to climb the Seven Summits and he wanted to start training immediately. Jordan was familiar with what training involved; his father and stepmother were adventure racers.
I am generous with 4 star ratings, but I don't give out a lot of 5 stars; I reserve those for the most exceptional books. This was an exceptional book!
Despite the blurbs on the back cover, Bret Anthony Johnston’s debut novel, Remember Me Like This, is not a thriller in the traditional sense. The elements are all here: a kidnapping, a possible murder, a family in turmoil. But to Johnston’s credit, his novel is partly about thwarting expectations—mostly the reader’s, and not always in ways that we’re accustomed to.
This film is the perfect antidote to the evening news. Rather than dwelling on the grim or sensational, it magnifies the beauty of the quotidian as it follows a single day in the life of people all over the world. Not only visually stunning, it is also emotionally impacting to see the human race in all its variety and realize how different, and how very much the same, people can be.
