I read the novel Cloud Atlas when I was back in San Francisco visiting my family. It took me almost a week to plow through, because it’s massive and complex and it can be a tad long-winded. But to my surprise, I really enjoyed it. You see, I didn’t expect to like Cloud Atlas, mostly because […]
I recently finished Alan Hollinghurt’s The Line of Beauty, winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for fiction. It is an excellent and intimidating book: excellent in that it’s exquisitely plotted and crafted, intimidating for the very same reasons. One of the reviewers on the back cover (Publishers Weekly) raved that it is “almost perfectly […]
My husband and I have an ongoing friendly debate about who was nerdier as a child, which always gives way to a debate about what actually makes one a nerd. Al advocates for a more narrow, traditional definition of the word “nerd.” He’s a nerd originalist. In his book, a nerd is someone who is […]
Since I’ve been off the radar for a week, I feel that I must make up for it by giving you some bang for your blogging buck. Today, I want to talk about a series of books I recently finished, the so-called The Giver Quartet, by Lois Lowry. Four book reviews for the price of […]
For my thirtieth birthday, Al bought me a genetic testing kit – you can send it away and find out what percentage of Neanderthal DNA you carry, for example, and you can also discover all the hideous genetic diseases you might unwittingly pass to your children. I know it’s not the most romantic gift, but […]