Neil Gaiman: “Crossover Artist” or simply a good “Storyteller”?
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…
View original post 946 more words
Book review: Midnight’s Children
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…
View original post 407 more words
Every Day is for the Thief by Teju Cole
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…
View original post 192 more words
The Gettysburg Address: A Graphic Adaptation, by Jonathan Hennessey and Aaron McConnell
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…
View original post 385 more words
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
Jhumpa Lahiri was one of my favourite new discoveries in 2013 so I have really been looking forward to reading her latest novel, ‘The Lowland’ which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize last year and has recently been longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. It tells the story of two brothers, Subhash and Udayan, who grow up in Calcutta in the 1950s and 1960s. While Udayan’s involvement in an underground Communist movement ultimately results in his death, Subhash starts a new life in the United States, later marrying his widowed and pregnant sister-in-law, Gauri, and taking her with him back to New England.
View original post 244 more words
Spotlight + GIVEAWAY: The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
Wow, I was floored by the intense interiority in Olive Kitteridge. I’m looking forward to The Burgess Boys.
Thanks to Simon & Schuster UK, I’ve got a copy of Elizabeth Strout’s The Burgess Boys, due out in paperback in the US on April 8th, to give away to one lucky winner. Check out the book description and author information below, then read on to see how you can enter to win!
Jim and Bob Burgess return to their Maine hometown of Shirley Falls, many years after they first escaped its narrow confines following the death of their father in a freak accident. They have been asked back by their sister Susan, who needs help with her troubled son, Zach.
But as the Burgess brothers return to the landscape of their childhood, the long-buried tensions that have shaped and shadowed their relationship begin to surface in unexpected ways that will change them forever.
In The Burgess Boys, Elizabeth Strout again demonstrates the brilliant storytelling, exquisite prose and remarkable insight…
View original post 154 more words
Amber Nicole Brooks 