Tim

A very skillful and gentle portrait of a small prairie town and the people in it. There's a simplicity and authenticity to it, and Haruf never crosses the line into sentimentality.

I found myself invested in the characters in a way I don't usually experience. This is a genuinely Great book.

Solid crime story.

The Irish versus the Italians, some double crosses, lots of booze and guns, everything you want from this kind of book.

Winslow does his thing. Hard boiled prose, tight plotting. A couple characters had some interesting flavor, but mostly your basic mob guys doing mob stuff.

I need to brush up on The Aeneid, see if the section epigraphs match up to the story.

A review is difficult because I'm still sitting with the ending, but boy, did I love this book. It's funny, it's haunting, it's about people finding people. I expect I'll update with a real review later but for now, suffice it to say I loved it.

Page after page, this book resonated with me on a deep level. Stulberg has put into words something that I've long believed - pursuing excellence is really about working on myself. I've started buying copies of this book for colleagues at work; I think it can help them the way it's helped me.

It also is what finally got me to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - which is another life-changer, but I digress. Really glad I heard the author on a jiu jitsu podcast talking about how fear and curiosity cannot co-exist. That motivated me to seek this book out and I am the better for it.