Too Many Books, Too Little Time

Nathan Englander isn’t exactly a household name, but few writers of short stories are. That he has won prestigious awards – The Pen/Faulkner Malamud Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kauffman Prize to name just two – should indicate that maybe he should be, particularly considering he won the Pen/Faulkner at [...]

Adam Johnson could not have picked a more precipitous time to release his new novel, The Orphan Master’s Son. The December death of North Korea’s despotic leader, Kim Jong Il, immediately preceded the book’s January release, just as world attention was turned to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Johnson has pulled back the cover [...]

While the events of 9/11 are never specifically mentioned, The Submission is the story of New York City’s attempt to construct a memorial to the thousands who died in a horrific attack perpetrated by Muslim terrorists. The novel opens as the jury selected to judge submissions for the memorial come to a consensus on the design. [...]

Perhaps because I know that I will never travel to India – the very thought of it overwhelms me – I am fascinated by and addicted to books about India. Living in a neat and orderly Southern California suburb as I do, it’s hard to imagine a life among the crowds, noise, smells, and raw [...]

I have to admit it – in spite of the poor reviews of this book, I had to have it. I pre-ordered it and received it on my Kindle the day it was released. Then I read it cover-to-cover in just a few days. Janet Maslin of the New York Times writes: Although most of [...]

First published in 1955 and recently re-released by the New York Book Review, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne has been identified by UK’s The Guardian as “one of the 1,000 books you should read in your lifetime.”  Judith Hearne is a character who, superficially, seems to be an anachronism – a thing of the [...]

                                                                       Last year we all watched the dramatic rescue of the Chilean miners with bated breath, hoping against almost insurmountable odds that the 33 men trapped half a  mile underground could be saved. When they emerged from that mine, the world breathed a collective sigh of relief. Now Jonathan Franklin has written a detailed and [...]

The finalists for this year’s Man Booker Prize were announced last week. They are: Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape – Random House) Sebastian Barry On Canaan’s Side (Faber) Carol Birch Jamrach’s Menagerie (Canongate Books) Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers (Granta) Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues (Serpent’s Tail) Yvvette Edwards A Cupboard [...]

For me, the unreliable narrator always makes for a fascinating read. Make the unreliable narrator the prime suspect of a murder mystery and the plot, as they say, thickens. Take the murder mystery and add intelligent and well-informed writing, making it that most elusive genre – a literary thriller – and you have a real [...]

This novel tells the story of a priest who gets caught in the child molestation accusations in the Catholic church  throughout the past decade. This was almost enough to cause me to pass it over; I don’t enjoy stories in which children are injured or endangered. However, I happened to read Greg’s review at The [...]