The Circle by Dave Eggers

A Little Blog of Books

After battling my way through ‘The Luminaries‘ by Eleanor Catton recently, I wanted to read something which was the absolute polar opposite of historical fiction and settled on ‘The Circle’ by Dave Eggers. It tells the story of Mae Holland, a twenty-something graduate who starts a new job at The Circle – a social media conglomerate the size and power of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and every other major tech company combined. Although Mae is impressed by what she finds there, the wider implications of how the company is developing soon become apparent.

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May 19, 2014 0

Oscar Wilde in Prison

A R T L▼R K

On the 19^th of May 1897, Irish writer Oscar Wilde was released from prison after serving a two year sentence for criminal sodomy and “gross indecency”. He had to go through hard labor and major deprivation, a very problematic situation for a hedonist accustomed to his creature comforts. His experiences in prison were the basis for his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol(1898).

In a bid to understand the reasoning behind Wilde’s imprisonment, Neil McKenna’sThe Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (2003) systematically investigated all available evidence about Wilde’s amorous liaisons, his lifelong erotic attraction to men and his subsequent support of Uranianism. The latter was a 19th-century term which referred to the actions of a person of a third sex, neither entirely male, nor female, someone with “a female psyche in a male body” who is sexually attracted to men, later extended as a definition…

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May 19, 2014 0

On Virginia Woolf and Mrs Dalloway

Interesting Literature

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway was published on this day, 14 May, in 1925. In honour of this, we thought we’d offer a few little facts about this novel, and about Woolf herself.

The action of the book takes place over just one day – a ‘moment of June’ in 1923 – although there are flashbacks to events that occurred in the characters’ lives over the previous five years, in the immediate wake of WWI. The original title of the book was ‘The Hours’, a title that Michael Cunningham would go on to use for the title of his novel about Woolf, which weaves together events from Woolf’s own life and events from Mrs Dalloway. The book was filmed, in 2002, starring Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman (the latter of whom famously wore a prosthetic nose to portray Woolf).

Mrs Dalloway wasn’t the only novel Woolf wrote the action of…

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May 15, 2014 0

“To Any Reader” — Robert Louis Stevenson

Biblioklept

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May 12, 2014 0

Neil Gaiman: “Crossover Artist” or simply a good “Storyteller”?

The Book Wars

Neil Gaiman – made popular by the macabre comics The Sandman but who has said that he really began writing with picturebooks that never got published – is a self-professed “crossover artist”. With textual works that vary from adult fiction/fantasy like American Gods to the Carnegie and Newbery Award winning The Graveyard Book. Pushing even farther into crossover Gaiman wrote Coraline the text that inspired a stop-motion animation film, he has written episodes of Dr. Who and, he co-wrote the script for that oddity of a film Beowulf and, yes, ALSO Batman comics!

Whew. Need a breathe. I’m sure I’m missing things…

Gaiman, as evidenced by the above paragraph, has inspired many a post here on The Bookwars and all four of us are fans of his works and, though this impressive resume could inspire a many more a post (“many a more post” ?), I think that…

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May 12, 2014 0

Book review: Midnight’s Children

Book of words

When I finally completed Salman Rushdie’s bestselling novel “Midnight’s Children,” I was truly, truly relieved that I persevered till the very last page for it truly is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece that left me marveled and humbled by his ability to blur the lines between magic and history.

Set in the postcolonial era, this novel is as much the autobiography of protagonist Saleem Sinai as well as the story of India. Saleem, who was born at the stroke of midnight on India’s independence, inexplicably shared his life’s triumphs and disasters with the fate of his nation. This coincidence also endowed him magical powers in his large cucumber nose to sniff out danger when others were unable to and telepathic powers to connect with other children like him who were born in the early hours of independence, a group which he called “midnight’s children.’

“It is the privilege and the curse of…

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April 24, 2014 0

Every Day is for the Thief by Teju Cole

Of Books and Reading

Title: Every Day is for the Thief
Author: Teju Cole
Publisher: Faber and Faber, Penguin UK
ISBN: 978-0571307920
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 176
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Teju Cole burst on the scene with “Open City” a couple of years ago. A unique voice is needed all the time, to wake the literary circle, so to say. “Open City” had a deep impact on the sensibilities and emotions as well. There was something unique about it and at the same time, it was quite ordinary. That is the charm of Teju Cole’s writing. He makes the mundane come alive.

“Every Day for the Thief” is a sort of a literary memoir. It is not a memoir and yet sometimes feels like one. A young Nigerian goes home to Lagos, after living away from it, in New York for close to fifteen years. The unnamed narrator moves from the places in…

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April 24, 2014 0

AFTERPARTY: Truly Mind-Bending Science Fiction

BookPeople

Afterparty by Daryl Gregory
Reviewed by Raul

Gregory’s exhilarating new book, Afterparty, draws you into an engaging story that plays on some powerful themes. The underlying idea of what people seek in religion is exactly what makes this story so powerful. Is God real or just a thought in our heads? Parables highlight the background of the characters and enhance the religiosity. That the Godhead is perceived by them with the use of a drug named Numinous suggests the best of Aldous Huxley and Philip K. Dick.

Lyda Rose is not your typical religious zealot. Having been there at the creation of Numinous, and also one of its first overdoses, she is an addict in recovery. Other members of Little Sprout, the company that manufactured Numinous, have pledged never to make it again. So after seeing a fellow patient kill herself when weened off the drug, Rose’s only concern is to stop whoever is…

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April 24, 2014 0

The Gettysburg Address: A Graphic Adaptation, by Jonathan Hennessey and Aaron McConnell

Blogging for a Good Book

How many schoolchildren do you suppose have memorized The Gettysburg Address, then forgotten it? How many adults can complete the phrase “Fourscore and …”, but don’t understand what Lincoln meant by it? Jonathan Hennessey, author of this sesquicentennial interpretation of Lincoln’s immortal speech, does both students and adults an immense service in breaking down the speech line by line to show what a radical statement the Gettysburg Address really was at the time.

Abraham Lincoln was not the featured speaker at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg four months after the three-day long bloodletting that is called the high tide of the Confederacy. He was added to the program as a courtesy, but audiences nonetheless expected the kind of hours-long oration that served as inspiration and entertainment in the pre-broadcast days. Lincoln had proved himself a master of the craft during his debates with Stephen Douglas in the 1858…

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April 11, 2014 0

Literary Devices — Grant Snider

Biblioklept

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April 11, 2014 0