Defenders Will McIntosh Orbit Books Release Date: May 13, 2014 ISBN 978-0-316-21776-7 Sometimes, after reading so much literary fiction, so much esoteric literature, so much finesse and its various accoutrements, a gal just has to have a helping of good old fashion military science fiction. Alien invasion! Plucky resistance! Mankind […]
The Adjacent Christopher Priest Titan Books Publication Date: June 20, 2013 ISBN 978-1-78116-943-8 The Adjacent was a frustrating read. A glorious, wondrous, frustrating read. You see, I’m not all that good with puzzles. Things that are linear, sure, but when they start jumping around and requiring sideways or deductive reasoning […]
Ghost Moth Michèle Forbes Bellevue Literary Press Release Date: April 16, 2013 ISBN 978-1-934137-60-4 Ghost Moth is a beautifully deceptive book. It feels light, ethereal, gentle and precious. Yet it deals with such momentous issues as religious intolerance, infidelity, illness, death. The truly perilous moments glance by, whereas innocuous times […]
The Almond Tree Michelle Cohen Corasanti Garnet Publishing Publication Date: September 30, 2012 ISBN 978-1-859643-297 It is so easy to dismiss conflict and strife when it’s halfway across the world. It’s also easy to read about strife and conflict when you know it’s not real, when you can regulate it […]
Words are powerful. No doubt about that. Whole civilizations have risen and fallen on the power of words. Words can move mountains; they have the power to heal, or the power to destroy. Our ability to communicate through words is part of what makes us human. But sometimes, their power […]
A Fort of Nine Towers Qais Akbar Omar Farrar, Straus and Giroux First Edition: April 16, 2013 ISBN 978-0374157647 When my daughter was seven years old, she was in 2nd grade in the Minneapolis public school system. She was a good student, struggled in math some, occasionally had to deal […]
Last November, I reviewed an amazing book about an amazing occurrence in an amazing place. The name of the book is Shakespeare in Kabul, co-authored by Stephen Landrigan and Qais Akbar Omar. Ever since I read the book, it has simmered in my mind and heart. With LitStack featuring William […]
Shakespeare in Kabul Qais Akbar Omar and Stephen Landrigan Haus Publishing Ltd May 15, 2012 ISBN 978-1-908323-08-8 —♦— In March 2005, a chance meeting in Kabul between a French actress and an American playwright allowed for something amazing to happen: a first ever theater production of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost […]
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.