Kevin H Souza
“The Japanese Garden” by Sophie Walker is a comprehensive and visually stunning exploration of Japanese garden design spanning over eight centuries. It offers an informative perspective on the Japanese gardens through a series of essays ranging from authors to architects and showcases 100 featured gardens, ranging from ancient Shinto shrines to contemporary Zen designs.
Perhaps one of the most powerful and difficult books I have ever read. I have to put it on my “top shelf” of all time reads but this book is not for everyone.
This is a detailed story about the love and friendship that four men share from college into late middle age and it centers around one of the four, Jude, who is a severely broken person stemming from an unimaginable childhood. However he finds grace in a transformative relationship with someone who loves him so deeply you will often be on the verge of tears.
Don't go lightly into “A Little Life,” but go you might.
A well written and solid story about Cage Weatherby, a poet and businessman who befriends Lincoln during the years of his early political career in Illinois. Opening with the Blackhawk War through the establishment of Springfield as the capital, the California gold rush and the civil war. Harrigan set down solid characters, particularly women, in this tale of the friendship of men.
My father was deployed to France and Germany after the Normandy Invasion. I have a lot of photographs he took as he journeyed from the northern coast of France through Germany, where his regimen helped liberate concentration camps and onto Obersalzberg. I really enjoyed The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah as I did All the Light You Cannot See for their ability to immerse me in a time that had MAJOR impact on my parents and the world I was born into.
My rating of 4/5 means I would recommend this book to any avid reader.
The sexual revolution is often attributed to the 1920's. The 1950's saw a return to traditional male/female roles as America tried to recover from the war and men felt the need to re-assert their legitimacy in a country that had been superbly run by women during war. But the 1950's saw the evolution of more frank conversations about sexual roles and practice as we see in the conversation in The Price of Salt between Therese and Richard when Therese asks him, the man she had been dating, about the possibility of two women or men falling in love as a man and woman do.
Patricia Highsmith's novels are full of tension and this novel is no exception, though it is subtly executed in a very sophisticated style. Since most 1950's gay and lesbian fiction was published in the pulp-fiction style, this novel was published under a pseudonym and with a wonderful lurid pulp fiction cover. This novel has come out of the shadows and provides an important glimpse into the un-apologetic love of two women at a transitional time in our history.
A rating of 3/5 means I enjoyed this novel and recommend it to those who are interested in this particular genre or author.
The Buried Giant by [a:Kazuo Ishiguro 4280 Kazuo Ishiguro https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1424906625p2/4280.jpg] is like a warm comfortable bard's epic tale told around a warm fire. Like other epic tales of a quest the story is more about the journey and relating the deeds of legendary characters than about the characters themselves. Like ancient epic tales born out of an oral tradition, The Buried Giant's characters are fairly two dimensional, but I argue that this is keeping with the genre of this novel. As you read, imagine the narrator talking not only to you, but to a small gathering on snowy night. With the mood set and some explanation about the structure of the book, I'll note that The Buried Giant is a story of the long and complicated love between a couple who move through fear to acceptance of their fates by way of a great journey filled with knights, warriors, dragons, and a boatman. A note about my rating system: 5 Stars = Among the greatest books. Recommend to anyone.4 Stars = A great book that I would recommend to most, even if it is a genre they don't normally read3 Stars = I liked this book but would only recommend it to those who like the genre or the particular author. 2 Stars = I dont like this book, but for whatever reason I finished it. 1 Star = Rubbish and could not finish.
A fascinating story about the creation of the modern world through the unlikely survival of a manuscript by Lucretius (99 BC – c. 55 BC) “On the Nature of Things,” that “ presents the principles of atomism; the nature of the mind and soul; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena. The universe described in the poem operates according to these physical principles, guided by fortuna, “chance”, and not the divine intervention” - Wikipedia.
If you love history and connections then you will love SWERVE.
A thoughtful and compassionate memoir about Kerman's time at Danbury prison and a revealing depiction of life for women in prison. Most interesting is the light she shed on illogical circumstances that land most of them there. This is not the story of the Netflix series and anyone who watches it should definitely read this non-sensationalist story of what really happened.
It takes a lot for me not to like a food novel and this one certainly has some wonderful moments where you can feast on the descriptions of food, but overall this book is disjointed and directionless. The center portion of the book is where you find the most delightful narrative. Here the main character is living opposite a fine French restaurant and coming into his own as a chef. I assume the upcoming film is a retelling of this portion of the novel, though I hope it is not as evil.
The end of the novel just spins off into crazy directions like an out of control firework. One that leaves you burned in the end.
I stumbled upon Crossings by Chuang Hua because it was referred to by Ruth Reichl as an important food novel. Not a food book per se, but considered to be the first modernist Chinese American novel and what an extraordinary work of writing. Hau only penned this one book (1968) and then retreated from society.
The writing is very unconventional in its use of (or often lack thereof) punctuation and paragraph structure. During a single paragraph she may take you from the present to the past and even into fantasy. You have to stay on your toes!
“The past continues to speak to us. But this is no longer a simple, factual “past,” since our relation to it, like the child's relation to the mother, is always-already “after the break.” It is always constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth. (p224)”
This short book is worth a read, if not two; a fascinating, haunting, erotic and mouth watering journey for the character Jane, middle daughter of an upperclass Chinese-American family in the mid 20th century.
Ruth Reichl's first novel has received very mixed reviews and I'm here to say I really enjoyed it. It was a tasty read from start to finish. is it a “great novel?” No. Is it a fun, food infused, mystery, with romance and crazy New Your characters? Yes. The main character is a superhero in my opinion because she can discern any flavor/ingredient in a dish, but a dark secret keeps her out of the kitchen. Lucky for us that is what propels her right into the novel's mystery.
Read...relax, enjoy and have a slice of ginger cake, or two.