There There: A novel, by Tommy Orange Brilliant, innovative, lyric. Tommy Orange’s stunning fiction debut is all those things, but trying to describe this eclectic, very personal, and contemporary novel in adjectives doesn’t do it justice. Called “groundbreaking, extraordinary” by The New York Times, and garnering praise from People Magazine […]
Manitou Canyon William Kent Krueger Atria Books Release Date: September 6, 2016 ISBN 978-1-4767-4926-6 Cork O’Connor, former sheriff and now private investigator in the North Woods of Minnesota sure has longevity; well, for a literary character. Manitou Canyon is the 15th book in the Cork O’Connor series by William Kent […]
LaRose Louise Erdrich Harper Release Date: May 10, 2016 ISBN 978-0-06-227702-2 Last year, Louise Erdrich was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, honoring a body of work that has spanned over 30 years. In 2014, she won the PEN/Saul Bellow Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize […]
Windigo Island William Kent Krueger Atria Books Release Date: August 19, 2014 ISBN 978-1-4767-4923-5 Windigo Island is the 14th book in William Kent Krueger’s “Cork O’Connor” detective series, which follows the exploits of the former sheriff of Tamarack County, Minnesota. Cork is not only a north woods sleuth, he’s also […]
Recently, I read an article on Slate about how they were no longer going to refer to Washington’s NFL team as the Redskins. In the article, Slate‘s editor David Plotz stated, Changing the way we talk is not political correctness run amok. It reflects an admirable willingness to acknowledge others […]
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.