I loved the way Jeffrey Eugenides wrote this because he wrote it like he was being completely honest with someone he completely trusted.
The thoughts we had when we were teenagers aren't always thoughts we're comfortable sharing, and the older we get, the harder it is to admit those thoughts and feelings, even to ourselves. But nothing shapes us quite the way our teenage years shape us, and, in order to be honest about who we are, we must be honest about who we were. This is an honest novel.
Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience - classics which will endure for generations to come.
That girl didn't want to die. She just wanted out of that house. She wanted out of that decorating scheme.
The five Lisbon sisters - beautiful, eccentric and, now, gone - had always been a point of obsession for the entire neighbourhood.
Although the boys that once loved them from afar have grown up, they remain determined to understand a tragedy that has defied explanation. The…
I loved this book because it so perfectly captures what it's like to care so much about someone (or something) over which you have zero control.
Reese desperately wants his dad to be a part of his life so that he -- and his mom -- can have a happy family. Cochran's novel exerted a magnetic pull on me because Reese's dad wants a happy family, too. Reese's dad has a lot of love to give. But Reese's dad is an addict. Reese's dad struggles to solve the addiction problem, so there's no way Reese can solve it.
What makes this book a real favorite of mine is that Cochran captures all this darkness without trapping readers in darkness. Reese rallies around himself and his mom while coming to terms with what is and isn't realistic for his dad. I loved the way this story balances trying to be positive with trying to be realistic.
Reese is a seventh-grader in rural North Carolina who loves drawing, basketball, his hardworking mom, and his charming, charismatic dad. But then one day, he comes home to his worst nightmare - his dad on the floor, lips turning blue, overdosed. Again. Reese calls 911 and gets his dad out of danger, and he expects to go on as before. But for his mom, this is the breaking point, and she declares that she and Reese are leaving until Reese's dad gets real help with his addiction. They move to a rundown trailer outside of town, where Reese is furious…
I loved the way Caro takes an enormous amount of detail from a portion of Lyndon Johnson's life and weaves it into a digestible -- albeit large -- depiction of the complexities that made Lyndon Johnson what David Halberstam called "a politician the like of which we shall not see again in this country."
Those who overestimate the reach of social science, and those who overestimate the extent to which statistical correlations can enlighten us, can be guilty of dismissing historians and biographers as people who traffic too extensively in anecdotal evidence. But when so many anecdotes are brought to bear so skillfully in telling the tale of an outlier like Lyndon Johnson, we are reminded that a writer like Robert Caro is in an elite category of intellectuals who can explain to us what is beyond the comprehension of most explainers.
In "Means of Ascent", Caro covers the years 1941-48, years in the wilderness for Johnson, who had been devastatingly defeated for the Senate in 1941, but years of fascination for the biographer and for anyone interested in the more extreme grotesqueries of American politics. For this is the period when Lyndon Johnson and his wife Ladybird made themselves rich, Texas-style rich. And it is the period when Johnson won his first seat in the US Senate, in an election whose corruption was legendary even by Texas standards. Caro has tried to expose the details of Johnson's financial dealings, so long…
Annie Kurtz joins the Marines, deploys to Afghanistan, and has to make a split-second decision. She can follow her orders. Or she can follow her conscience. Nick Willard is a journalist who has pined for Annie since they were in prep school together. While doing his job, he discovers what Annie did.
Together, Nick and Annie battle the half-witted strategies that made the wars on terror so frustrating, wrestle with conflicts between law and morality, and explore the tensions between love and friendship.
