I could not put down this epic 500-page novel about people (you might call them eco-terrorists) who try to save ancient trees—redwoods, sequoias, and Douglas firs, some more than 1,000 years old—from the lumber companies who want to clear-cut old-growth forests.
What I loved about the book is that it not only made me look at trees in an entirely new way, but it inspired me in my own work. It’s beautifully written, a masterpiece.
The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of-and paean to-the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers's twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours-vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see…
This is a novel for writers, though you don’t have to be a writer to appreciate it.
The “friend” is an enormous Great Dane the narrator, a writer and teacher, inherits when the dog’s owner, her lifelong best friend and a famous writer, dies by suicide.
The narrator lives in my New York City neighborhood, in an apartment building that forbids dogs. This is a setup for hilarious complications, and the descriptions of her budding relationship with the dog (he likes being read to) made me want to have a dog, though I’m not a dog person.
I also loved Nunez’s cynical takes on the writing business and on college creative-writing programs.
Not being a fan of detective stories, I came late to Agatha Christie, turned on to her by a neighbor whose taste generally runs to 19th-century British novels.
At first I was a little put off by the book. It sounded like a game of Clue: Colonel Mustard did it with a candlestick in the parlor, that kind of thing. But swept along by Christie’s descriptions of the eccentric Hercule Poirot, I got caught up in it, trying to figure out who the murderer was. I did not figure it out, and the surprise ending was brilliant.
I found this book so entertaining I ended up reading three more Christie novels—a guilty pleasure.
The classic "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd", finally at a fair price!The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in June 1926 in the United Kingdom. It is the third novel to feature Hercule Poirot as the lead detective.
In 2013, the British Crime Writers' Association voted it the best crime novel ever.
By all appearances, John Lennon was working on a tell-all memoir in the final years of his life. Every day he poured into diaries his raw thoughts and feelings—about his jealous rivalry with Paul McCartney; his tumultuous marriage to Yoko Ono; his love for his sons, Julian and Sean; his hatred of the music business; his escape into programmed dreams; his acerbic opinions of England and America.
Written by one of the few people to have read those diaries, and based on decades of research, Nowhere Man takes you on a journey through Lennon’s consciousness. Covering a range of topics close to John’s heart, from Abbey Road to the zodiac, the book offers vivid insights into his extraordinary life.
