Quick Book Reviews Blog

As children, we all probably remember at least one of our teachers, at one point or another, telling us how special and full of potential we were… and it wasn’t exactly inaccurate. It is something every child needs to hear in order to have the motivation to move onwards in life and make something out of their potential. However, in Never Let Me Go , by Kazuo Ishiguro, the “special” kids who live at the mysterious boarding school of Haisham in countryside England are more than your regular type of special… however, none of them knew how or why.

The Kennedy assassination is a topic which I've already prodded on a number of occasions here, and not without reason. After all, it was perhaps one of the most high-profile killings of the century, and after all these years, let’s face it, we aren’t any closer to getting any conclusive answers.  If anything, the web of intrigue has become ever more convoluted, with questions piling up with nobody to answer them. Nevertheless, people haven’t given up on trying to find out what happened and perhaps unearth some kind of breakthrough, and many would argue that Crossfire by Jim Marrs is, at the moment at least, the best source of information on the subject.

Wool by Hugh Howey, like many novels today, takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, though thankfully it’s pretty void of zombies. More precisely, it follows the lives of certain people living in an underground silo, a few hundred stories deep. None have gone to the surface for ages now, and it has come to the point that not going outside is the most important rule to follow.

Though we like to believe that humanity has become relatively civilized during the twentieth century, there are many instances of immoral and uncivilized actions perpetrated by first-world countries, such as England’s desire to maintain its dominion over India, one it achieved through brute force.  Fortunately, it seems as that eventually, in some cases, good does prevail over evil, as it did in August 15, 1947 when India finally obtained its independence. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie is a humorous and yet eye-opening look at the events which transpired in the next seventy years, through the story of Saleem Sinai, a child who was born at exactly midnight, when India gained its independence.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is a very ambitious (and might I say, successful) attempt at creating a comedy on a grand scale. It takes place in a not-so-distant future where entertainment is literally everything people strive towards… in other words, a successful life is one during which you have been entertained as much as humanly possible.  Reflecting the absurdity of the world are the characters, and though Wallace glosses over many of them, the main ones we follow are in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy.

A Delicate Truth by John Le Carre begins as a secret counter-terrorist operation is being prepared in Gibraltar, with its purpose being the capture of a high-level jihadist target. The main participants of the plot are a foreign office minister, a private defense contractor, and a shady CIA operative.  The operation is so secretive and sensitive that even Toby Bell, the minister’s own secretary, is not allowed in on it. Everything goes without a hitch, the heroes return home and all is well… until three years later, when a disgraced special forces operative comes back to haunt everyone, bringing up the possibility that rather than being a success, the operation was a complete disaster and a tragedy, one that has been carefully covered up. 

Though I imagine most of us like to limit our societal contributions to paying our taxes and not breaking the law, there are other people who have gone far beyond that, as Robert Ripley did for instance.  Those of you who have heard the name probably know him as either a famous cartoonist, or that guy who hosted the “Believe it or Not” shows. However, as Neal Thompson showcases it in his biography of Ripley, titled A Curious Man , the man was more than just an artist… he was a living oddity.

There are different kinds of war novels out there, and generally I prefer to classify them into three distinct categories: works of fiction, novelized and dramatized writings based on facts, and completely dry and factual accounts of military events and operations.  To be frank, I prefer the second type of novel, as it offers the best of both worlds; it keeps you interested in the events all while feeding you real and interesting information at the same time. I have read a fair share of these novels, and I have to say that very few of them can claim to reach the level of The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien.

Very few of us have managed to grow up without hearing the name Ernest Hemingway being thrown around, especially in high school. Regardless of whether you have come to love or hate him, you cannot deny the impact he had on American literature, nor can you deny that some of his books can be objectively described as timeless classics and masterpieces.  The Sun Also Rises is definitely one of them, and first published in 1926, it not only pushed literature forward, but it also had an impact on people as a whole. To give you a brief idea of what it’s about, The Sun Also Rises follows Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley, a rather unusual couple that undertakes an odyssey of self-discovery around Europe, right after the end of the First World War. 

Some of you may remember Jessica Buchanan’s name from the news, and with good reason; while on a humanitarian aid mission in Somalia (and hoping to settle there), she and a colleague were kidnapped by Somali pirates and held hostage for ninety-three days until a rescue operation was ordered.  Determined not to remain silent about her experience, Jessica Buchanan, along with Erik Landemalm and Anthony Flacco wrote a first-hand account of the experience, and titled it Impossible Odds .

Though we know about as much as the government is willing to allow us to about the wars that it is leading openly, those of us who have bothered to look into the matter know about the phenomenon of shadow wars; operations executed with complete discretion and under everyone’s radar.  As you can guess, the United States has been suspected of leading its fair share of shadow wars , and if anything, Hunting the Jackal confirms the suspicions of many. It was written by author Tim Keown and CIA legend Billy Waugh, who himself dedicated a major part of his life to eliminating the country’s worst enemies in complete secrecy.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter is a bit of an unusual novel, one that takes you on a journey through time and space, beginning in a little Italian town called Port Vergogna and following a young and ambitious man named Pasquel who has big plans for himself and his little quaint coastal village, mainly revolving around his family-owned hotel.  As a young and beautiful actress as well as a mysterious man come to stay at a hotel, we begin to learn about how their lives unfolded, who they affected and how they are interconnected.

Best Kept Secret is the third part of the Clifton Chronicles by Jeffrey Archer, and contrary to what some people believed, it isn’t the last one. As a matter of fact, chances are that Archer himself has no idea how many more of them he will be writing. Just like the second part , this one takes off after the last one’s end as the House of Lords has to vote on who will inherit the Barrington family fortune and Giles prepares to make his case and defend his seat.

Many of us only know the name Agatha Christie in association with known works of literature, such as Death on the Nile or And Then There Were None , imagining her as being this entity that churns out one murder mystery after the other without ever seemingly getting tired. Unfortunately, it seems that most schools put very little emphasis on her works or her life, and as a result countless people grow up deprived of knowing anything about one of the twentieth century’s literary titans.

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson opens with a first-hand look at three different criminal cases from the perspective of those who were on the scene. The first one is that of a girl who disappears in the middle of the night. The second case revolves around a young woman becoming the victim of a seemingly-random attack by some kind of maniac. The third case is that of an impulsive husband causing bloody mayhem in his own home.

The Sins of the Father is the second book in the Clifton Chronicles written by Jeffrey Archer, and it picks up where the last one left off as Harry Clifton has joined the Merchant Navy. Unfortunately, his ship ends up being attacked by a German boat and gets sunk, with most of the people aboard drowning. Fortunately, an American cruise liner passing closely by rescued the remaining sailors, with Harry being amongst them. Aboard that ship Clifton makes the acquaintance of an American officer, Tom Bradshaw, who unfortunately passes away during the night. Seeing the perfect opportunity to get rid of his past, Clifton assumes Bradshaw’s identity, being blissfully ignorant of what awaits the officer upon his return to New York.

Researchers have for a very long time now posed the question as to how a person’s mind comes to be formed. How much of the process can be attributed to genetics? How much of it can be attributed to the environment which nurtures that person? Does one’s cultural background and place of birth play a role in it? Naturally, questions such as these are hard to answer and will require many more years of research to produce conclusive answers, but Hazel Rose Markus and Alana Conner take a stab at it anyways in their book titled Clash!:8 Cultural Conflicts That Make Us Who We Are .

Only Time Will Tell is the first part of the Clifton Chronicles written by Jeffrey Archer, author of bestsellers Kane and Abel and A Prisoner of Birth . In it, the curious life of Harry Clifton is presented to us, starting with his life as a lowly dock worker in 1920s Britain. Never having known his father, Harry has little hope for a glorious future, but all of that changes when he mysteriously receives a scholarship to a boys’ school.

The Rite by Matt Baglio, also made into a movie with Anthony Hopkins, is a harrowing and yet captivating look into the darker side of the Christian faith, namely, exorcism . The book’s author, Baglio, is actually a journalist who followed Father Gary Thomas from California all the way to the Vatican, where he was trained in the rite of exorcism.  In other words, this is a book where Baglio basically chronicles what it is like to become an exorcist, digging deep into an aspect of religion most of us know best through Hollywood fantasies.

In UFOs, JFK and Elvis known standup comedian Richard Belzer digs into some of the most popular conspiracy theories that have popped up over the last decade. Before reading on though, keep in mind that this isn’t an attempt to provide a single right answer to them, but rather, an attempt to get you to question authority, especially when it comes to “official stories”.  Belzer looks into theories surrounding events such as the death of Elvis, the assassination of JFK , the mystery surrounding Area 51, the Roswell Crash, the discoveries the astronauts made on the moon, evidence of extraterrestrial visits, and of course, the link between Nazis and the United States Space program.

Though mountain climbing may be one of the most dangerous sports/hobbies in this entire world, we don’t hear much talking about climbers. However, what happened on May 1996 on the Mt. Everest sent shockwaves rippling across the entire world as five people lost their lives to a storm. Many questions popped up surrounding the events which transpired on that infamous day, with the main one being: whose fault really was it? Well, this is something Jon Krakauer attempts to elucidate in his first-hand account of the events in Into Thin Air .

There is currently a very heated debate amongst Americans in regards to gun control; though The Constitution clearly outlines the “right of the people to bear arms”, the recent mass shootings and gun violence statistics have convinced many people that gun control laws should be made much stricter. As reforms are being planned, a sizable chunk of the population has expressed its concern that in reality, stricter gun control laws are about controlling the people and taking away their means of self-defense. In Control , Glenn Beck explores this argument using facts and hundreds of reputable sources.

Ruth Behar is known internationally as being not only a good anthropologist, but also a great storyteller with plenty of interesting things to share with everyone. More precisely, she describes herself as an anthropologist who specializes in the concept of homesickness, and amongst many things, she discusses her thoughts and discoveries on the subject in an autobiographical novel she titled Traveling Heavy . The book is mainly a portrayal of her entire life through a bunch of fun and touching stories that make for quite a light read. For instance, she describes in detail her experiences as an immigrant child , her paradox which combines a love of travelling and a fear of flying, the strangers who have made an impression on her life, her own successes and failures, and more.

Joe Hill is known by some as being one of the best contemporary horror authors, especially when they have supernatural elements to them. In NOS4A2 , Joe Hill tells us a story centered around three characters: Charles Manx, Victoria McQueen, and her son. Charles is a somewhat special person who likes to take children aboard his 1938 Rolls-Royce and take them to a downright horrifying amusement park called Christmasland, after which they are never heard from again.

David Sedaris is known in the world of literature as being one of the most unique and talented writers out there, always offering a unique perspective on things, whether they are extraordinary or banal. Though he hasn't released an essay collection in a few years, Sedaris has recently revisited the genre with Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls , and as I believe it, he has outdone himself this time around. While some of the essays are hysterical anecdotes from Sedaris’ own life, others are more of a fictional nature, but really, it doesn’t deter from it. Each of the stories has quite an intriguing plot to it, somewhat akin to reading a novella.

David Baldacci has made a name for himself over the years for the action-packed thrillers he kept on delivering, and while recently some may have qualified his writing as having declined in quality, he recently came back in full force with The Hit . Once again, we follow Will Robie, a highly-trained assassin working for the government, as he is sent to take out Jessica Reed, another assassin who has recently gone rogue and proceeded to eliminate her former colleagues.

The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout, for those who haven’t heard about it, is a very popular New York Times bestseller, with a story revolving around two brothers, Jim and Bob Burgess. While Jim is a successful corporate lawyer who constantly belittles his brother, Bob, being a successful legal aid attorney himself, takes it all quite well. The brothers have left their hometown long ago because of complex relationships, but quite soon their sister calls them back to Shirley Falls, where they grew up and left a lot of skeletons buried.

The twentieth century may very well be one of the most turbulent ones: countless wars and failed political regimes plague the past century, such as both World Wars and the fall of communism. Perhaps it is because we finally developed effective mass media and communication systems, but it remains that the twentieth century has a lot to teach us, with many phenomena still to be explored.  In The Warmth of Other Suns , Isabel Wilkerson does just that and looks into a part of American history many do not bother with: the huge wave of immigrants that was pouring in from 1915 to 1970. However, this isn’t a boring history lesson... Wilkerson knows better than that. Instead, the author preferred to a factual and historically-accurate but novelized story following three separate individuals.

Paris is one of those cities pretty much everyone has heard of; one of the global capitals of the world, it has a very long, rich and turbulent history behind it. Walking through its streets is like setting foot in a time machine, with practically every square inch of the city having some kind of story to tell.  However, many of us will never have the time to settle in the city and explore all it has to offer, which is the goal of Paris , an epic novel by Edward Rutherfurd which covers over seven hundred years of the city’s history, starting with the building of Notre-Dame in 1261 and going all the way to the riots of 1968.

Most of us know about the major wars that took place over the century, such as the First and Second World Wars, the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War, the Gulf War…etc... etc...However, there are other types of wars that won’t and never will enter your history books, the wars that aren’t documented, the wars that on paper, never really took place.  This is pretty much what Dirty Wars by Jeremy Scahill explores, looking more precisely at the CIA’s Special Activities Division and the Joint Special Operations Command , elite soldiers of which are covertly assigned to more than a hundred different countries around the world.

Daddy’s Gone A Hunting is yet another captivating mystery brought to us by Mary Higgins Clark, revolving around two sisters, Hannah and Kate Connelly. They both come from a rich family which owns plenty of old furnishings and antiques, all stored in a museum. One night, however, the museum inexplicably goes up in flames and pretty much explodes, destroying not only itself but also damaging many of the surrounding buildings.