“All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
I thought Cooney's second outing topped his first; the maturation of a writer, not only with a definite vision of the story he wants to tell, but who is absolutely having fun telling it. The gore and the lore saturate the pages, but I particularly loved the comradery between the teens. It rang true to me.
What ensues in Faye's book is a totally engulfing trip through mid-19th century America, with its still-salient issue of immigrants arriving at its shores, religious pluralism, the role of children, women, African Americans, and the poor in society, and even down to the topsy-turvy nature of brotherly love and unrequited love, too.
"Instead of causes, biology is repeatedly about propensities, potentials, vulnerabilities, predispositions, proclivities, interactions, modulations, contingencies, if/then clauses, context dependencies, exacerbation or diminution of preexisting tendencies." I potentially quite liked this book.
Choices define the unfurling of our lives, but they don't necessarily have to define us in perpetuity. The world I want to live in is also filled with grace and understanding. Boyne's book beautifully explores this. What a remarkable achievement, ambitious in scale and scope, while ultimately evincing intimacy, humor, and heart.
If you're someone who has any modicum of affection for the moviegoing experience — the thrill and awe of seeing a movie in the theater — then seeing a movie in true IMAX 70mm is something you have to experience at least once.
Nolan's "The Odyssey" is grand and spectacular, but where it triumphs is in the intimate moments, often on the face of Damon's Odysseus (let's go, Best Actor!), a much more remorseful character than his book counterpart. But a good choice as a representation of man's hubris and need for humility.
Hierarchy, newsroom tension, fatherhood, and even life and death are explosively explored in Hideo Yokoyama's 2003 book, Seventeen, which was translated into English in 2018 by Louise Heal Kawai. As a former journalist, like Yokoyama, I was enthralled by the newsroom scenes and how decisions are made, especially when covering a world historical event.
When a pugilist and a philosopher meets ruffians, rascals, and villains in 18th century London, I'm all in. David Liss' 2000 book, A Conspiracy of Paper, is a compelling, gritty, often times jovial and hilarious, Sherlockian romp through a city on the precipice of monumental change, financially and socially.
While I wasn't expecting nor desiring a paranormal thriller, given the usually grounded Natchez, Mississippi setting, Iles is such a propulsive and fun writer, I devoured another of his novels over the course of a few manic reading sessions anyhow.
With a deeply defined cast of characters and the unforgettable setting of the Adirondacks, Moore's book is a triumph of thriller and thought.
I'm Glad My Mom Died is one of the most enthralling books I've read in a long time, horrifying and hilarious at various turns. As McCurdy remarks during her mother's funeral, there has to be some levity or it would all be too much. And life is so damn absurd as it is — and McCurdy's more so within an absurd industry — that while such absurdity elucidates horrors, one also has to laugh.