Once again, I’m one of the last of the bloggers to weigh in on the best books of the year. The great news is that, unlike last year, which was a bleak year for my reading, this year was much better. My ten best books are all from 2018—no backlist! They’re a varied lot, ranging from mythology to miracles to food to marriage. The only constant in the majority of them is humor. ... Read More...
The Silence of the Girls
Whether you read The Iliad in the original Greek, in an academic translation, or watched Brad Pitt and Eric Bana glisten as they warred on a sandy beach what everyone knows of the Trojan War is the men. And why not? It’s a story of men told by men. Author Pat Barker is having none of that. Instead, she’s looks at the war that lasted nine years and was set off by one man’s pride ... Read More...
What I’m Reading Now (8/20/18)
Hosted by Kathryn at Book Date To say that last week knocked me on my reading butt is an understatement. I began the week trying to recover from a reading hangover and foolishly stuck with a book that did me no good. Worse, I finished it, making it a 'hate read'- because I knew it was not a good book, but was determined to see it through (I have no idea why). By midweek I ... Read More...
The Map of Salt and Stars
Making maps is the fulcrum for Jennifer Joukhadar’s debut novel, The Map of Salt and Stars. Rawiya and Nour are young women who tell their stories side by side even though they are separated by almost a thousand years. Rawiya is a sixteen-year-old in ancient Ceuta who longs to see the world beyond her village so she leaves home in the guise of a young man and becomes an ... Read More...
Circe: A Novel by Madeline Miller
No matter what else you might think about them, no one knows how to do drama like the gods and goddesses of Greek mythology. And no one knows how to translate this drama for the modern mind like Madeline Miller. In her last novel, Song of Achilles, she showed the softer side of the god famed as a warrior. Now she is back with Circe, the story of the daughter of Helios (the sun ... Read More...
The Song of Achilles
While it’s tempting to adopt an intellectual attitude, in this case I’m going to go with honesty and risk losing everyone’s respect: to date, my greatest interest in the Battle of Troy came when actors Eric Bana and Brad Pitt ran around fighting with no shirts on. There, I admitted it. I’ve never read Homer’s Odyssey or The Iliad. I’m a sexist cretin—until now. Author Madeline ... Read More...
