I wish that I knew Nichols’
secret recipe for making me laugh out loud and cry at the same time. These are
characters you want to kiss, shake, shoot, and make love to (sometimes all at
once).
The plot mixes petty larceny and terrible crimes, guerilla warfare,
dangerous pigs, a great deal of alcohol, a little sex, and injustices that seem
even more relevant now than when the book was written.
Tragedy? Comedy? Depends
on your point of view. If you’ve seen the movie, you have seen only about a
tenth of the book. So, read it!
The Milagro Beanfield War is the first book in John Nichols's New Mexico Trilogy (“Gentle, funny, transcendent.” ―The New York Times Book Review)
Joe Mondragon, a feisty hustler with a talent for trouble, slammed his battered pickup to a stop, tugged on his gumboots, and marched into the arid patch of ground. Carefully (and also illegally), he tapped into the main irrigation channel. And so began-though few knew it at the time-the Milagro beanfield war. But like everything else in the dirt-poor town of Milagro, it would be a patchwork war, fought more by tactical retreats than by battlefield victories.…
I'm a big fan of police procedurals from other countries, and I have
always been fascinated by Basque culture. This is the first of an excellent
trilogy about a female detective in Basque country. It is steeped in the
culture, myths, language, and even weather of the place, its hard history, and its
deliberate isolation from the rest of Spain.
Midway through, a supernatural
element comes into play – one that may or may not exist only in the protagonist's mind. The trilogy unfolds into growing uncertainty about what is true,
what is real, and who any of us is.
Already a #1 international bestseller, this taut, gripping psychological thriller follows a police inspector who reluctantly returns to her hometown in Spain’s Basque Country—a place shrouded in mythology and superstition—to solve a series of eerie murders.
When the body of a teenaged girl is found on a riverbank in a remote area, the crime appears all too similar to a murder committed only months prior, igniting the worst fears of the small community of Elizondo. Homicide inspector Amaia Salazar, a strong, borderline-obsessive investigator, is assigned to the case. After all, this beautiful, peculiar backwater steeped in the blood of the…
Understand quantum mechanics? Dark matter? The malleable nature of
space-time? Neither do I, exactly. But I am considerably less confused after
reading this.
Wilczek is a Nobel laureate, but here, he is a nerd on fire with
his love of the universe. Chapter titles include things like “There’s Plenty of Space” and
“There are Very Few Ingredients.”
He writes with great clarity and even joy
about the grand mystery in which we have so briefly appeared.
“Fundamentals might be the perfect book for the winter of this plague year. . . . Wilczek writes with breathtaking economy and clarity, and his pleasure in his subject is palpable.” —The New York Times Book Review
One of our great contemporary scientists reveals the ten profound insights that illuminate what everyone should know about the physical world
In Fundamentals, Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek offers the reader a simple yet profound exploration of reality based on the deep revelations of modern science. With clarity and an infectious sense of joy, he guides us through the essential concepts that form our…
Reality television is easy to dismiss, but it is one of the most popular entertainments in the world. Despite a long history of sexist and racist casting and appalling cultural appropriation, Survivor thrives.
As it approaches its 45th season in twenty years, the show remains wildly popular, franchised into many languages. The players watch each other, the cameras watch the players, and we watch the show even as it absorbs its fans like an amoeba. Survivor is a superb example of how our culture has become one of the endless gaze.
We live, watch, and imagine ourselves onscreen and off and cannot always tell where one begins and the other ends.
