Book Specs Author: David Mitchell Publisher: Random House Publishing Date: 2004 Number of Pages: 509 Genre: Metafiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy Synopsis A postmodern visionary who is also a master of styles and genres, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian love of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending philosophical and […]
Tag: 1001 Books You must Read Before You Die
Book Review # 90: The Blind Assassin
Book Specs Author: Margaret Atwood Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Date: 2000 Number of Pages: 521 Genre: Historical Fiction Synopsis ‘Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.’ Thus begins The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood’s stunning new novel. Laura Chase’s older sister Iris, married at eighteen to a politically prominent […]
Book Review # 89: The English Patient
Book Specs Author: Michael Ondaatje Publisher: Vintage International Publishing Date: December 1993 Number of Pages: 302 Genre: Historiographic metafiction Synopsis With unsettling beauty and intelligence, Michael Ondaatje’s Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an abandoned Italian villa at the end of World War II. The nurse Hana, exhausted by death, […]
Book Review # 87: Disgrace
Book Specs Author: J.M. Coetzee Publisher: Secker & Warburg Publishing Date: 1999 Number of Pages: 220 Genre: Literary Fiction, Novel Synopsis David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, is a scholar fallen into disgrace. After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, he has an impulsive affair with a student. The affair […]
Book Review # 85: The Sea, The Sea
Book Specs Author: Iris Murdoch Publisher: Vintage Publishing Date: 1999 Number of Pages: 502 pages Genre: Psychological Fiction, Philosophical Fiction Synopsis The sea: turbulent and leaden; transparent and opaque; magician and mother. When Charles Arrowby, over sixty, a demi-god of the theatre – director, playwright and actor – retires from his glittering London world in order […]
October Book Wrap-Up: A Dive into the Deep World of Magical Realism
A Topsy-Turvy Month If there is one word that is to describe what kind of reader I am it would be “impulsive” because that is the type of reader that I am. I tend to read whatever book that comes to mind, regardless of the author and regardless of the author. That is why I […]
Book Review # 79: Of Mice and Men
Book Specs Author: John Steinbeck Publisher: Pearson Education Limited Publishing Date: 2011 Number of Pages: 118 Genre: American Fiction, Modern Classic, Tragic Realistic Fiction Synopsis Of Mice and Men is a poignant tale of the extraordinary friendship between two itinerant workers in the harsh depression years of 1930s America. George and his large, simple-minded friend […]
Book Review # 77: For Whom the Bell Tolls
Book Specs Author: Ernest Hemingway Publisher: Quality Paperback Book Club Publishing Date: 1993 Number of Pages: 471 Genre: War Novel Historical Fiction Synopsis Written in the late 1930s, when democracy faces its greatest peril, For Whom the Bell Tolls is Hemingway’s masterful novel about love, death, honor and betrayal. Set amidst the tragedy of the […]
Book Review # 76: Sputnik Sweetheart
Book Specs Author: Haruki Murakami Translator: Philip Gabriel Publisher: Vintage Publishing Date: April 2002 Number of Pages: 210 pages Genre: Magical Realism, Romance, Suspense Synopsis K is madly in love with his best friend, Sumire, but her devotion to a writerly life precludes her from any personal commitments. At least, that is, until she meets […]
Book Review # 75: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Book Specs Author: Douglas Adams Publisher: Del Rey Publishing Date: 2005 Number of Pages: 216 Genre: Scientific Fiction, Adventure Novel Synopsis Seconds before Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Perfect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide […]
