The Laughing Monsters Denis Johnson Farrar, Straus and Giroux Release Date: November 4, 2014 978-0-374-28059-8 If you feel a bit over-saturated with holiday cheer, and need something to counterbalance the saccharine sweetness of the last few days, have I got just the book for you! It’s not a horrid book, […]
The Invention of Wings Sue Monk Kidd Viking First Edition: January 7, 2014 ISBN 978-0-670-02478-0 Sarah Grimké, who is the main character in The Invention of Wings, was a very real person. Born in 1792, she was the second eldest daughter (from a family of 14!) of a wealthy plantation […]
Submergence J.M. Ledgard Coffee House Press First Edition: April 1, 2013 ISBN 978-1-56689-319-0 It’s an age-old story: boy meets girl, they fall in love then are separated by obligations, with the question of whether or not they end up together in the final chapter. However, J.M. Legard’s novel Submergence is […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.