Quick Book Reviews Blog

Though we assume we know who the power truly belongs to in the United States, there are secret organizations out there the might of which will never be known to us, and in Hidden Order by Brad Thor, one such organization is the Federal Reserve . Though officially they are part of the U.S. government, the extent of their power far surpasses that of anyone else in America, and the reality behind them is hiding in the shadows, to be seen by no one.

When asked as to which countries the United States are at war with, most people will probably answer Yemen or Afghanistan. However, what many people ignore (besides the fact that the U.S. is involved in many more armed conflicts around the globe) is the fact that the country has been waging a secret war against Iran… for more than thirty years now.  In his book The Twilight War , David Crist explores in great depth how the conflict evolved over the years, from the Iranian revolution all the way to the current crisis with the country’s nuclear program.

The very descriptively-titled book, The 100 Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson follows the life of a man about to become a centenarian, who did exactly what the title said.  While everyone was preparing for his birthday, Allan Karlsson couldn’t care less and decided that despite his age, it wasn't too late to start his life over again.

In the last few years Daniel Silva has made a name for himself as the author of various exciting thrillers and mystery novels, many of them revolving around a recurring protagonist, Gabriel Allon, master Israeli intelligence officer and art restorer extraordinaire. After finishing a case where his ridiculously-useless (for intelligence work of course) talent turned out to actually have a purpose, Gabriel Allon finds himself entangled in a whole different kind of web in The English Girl .

C.S. Lewis is rightfully known in the literary community as being one of the most ingenious authors of all time, always finding original ways to convey his thoughts, hypotheses and ideas. The Screwtape Letters are certainly a very good example of what he can achieve. It is a short and very simple novel with only one actual character: the devil called Screwtape.  The story revolves around the letters Screwtape is writing to his beloved nephew, Wormwood, and in them he provides advice on how to better tempt humans into following devilish ways rather than angelic ones. Lewis uses this set up to explore a number of different topics revolving around the eternal battle of good against evil, including where morality, faith and temptations fit into the scheme. 

When we look back on the Second World War , we always see Germany as being the bad guys, but what we often forget is that many of the German people were opposed to the concept of Nazism, but they were forced stop professing their views, in one way or another. In Arch of Triumph by Erich Maria Remarque, we follow the story of one such German, who found himself exiled from Germany for his different political views in the late 1930s.

Most of us are lucky enough to have had someone in our lives who served as a guide, as a teacher who showed us how life is to be navigated. For some people, that person was a grandparent, a parent, a teacher, or perhaps even a peer. In nearly every case, it is someone older and wiser who knows what he or she is really talking about. For celebrated author Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from more than twenty years ago.

When The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence opens up, we are straight away presented with Alex, a British teenager who has been arrested for the possession of 113 grams of marijuana, and just to make things a bit weirder, an urn full of ashes. Though none sympathize with him and dub Alex as a criminal, he is nevertheless convinced that he did the right thing.  The story then goes back to a few years earlier, when Alex was nothing but a 10 year-old child who got hit by a meteorite, becoming both a scientific genius and a social outcast. As you can guess, the rest of the book is about how Alex came to be in the position he was in at the beginning.

A couple of months ago a certain mysterious man by the name of Robert Galbraith released a novel titled The Cuckoo’s Calling . After getting plenty of good reviews, J.K. Rowling (author of Harry Potter for those who don’t know or don’t care about her) came out and admitted that it is indeed her book and she used a pseudonym.

The United States claim themselves to be the home of the free, but in recent years many Americans believe that the concept itself has been trampled on without mercy.  Nevertheless, many still believe that they maintain their freedom regardless of what happens, and that’s a notion James O’Keefe is looking to challenge in Breakthrough .

If I Stay is, if I dare say, a somewhat unusual novel written by Gayle Forman, and it takes place entirely through the perspective of a young girl named Mia who, at seventeen years of age, is fighting for her life.  In the blink of an eye she suffers an accident, and she has no memory of what happened. The only memories which remain are the ones before the accident, and the story takes place entirely in her head, for she can only do two things: think and see.

It seems that given enough time, virtually every character from every franchise will make it into space sooner or later. Case in point, it has already happened on numerous occasions to various movie franchises, including Leprechaun , Friday the 13th and Hellraiser (seems mostly horror franchises are affected by this). 

Jesus of Nazareth is arguably one of the most important historical figures on this planet, for he contributed more than anyone to the creation and spread of Christianity . Those who follow on of Christianity’s religious paths see Jesus as the son of God, a savior who preaches peace, compassion and understanding. For what I am about to discuss here it is important to make a distinction between Jesus as a historical figure, and Jesus as a religious figure; the former one refers to the man who existed in first-century Palestine, while the latter one refers to the meaning attributed to him in religion.

Time travelling is a very complex concept to grasp, especially considering that the debate rages on as to whether or not it would actually be possible in the real world. For this reason, whenever you read a book or see a movie that deals with the subject, it is best to simply suspend your sense of disbelief, forget about all the apparent paradoxes, and enjoy the show.  This is the approach you ought to take with The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, for it deals with a time-traveling killer hell-bent on snuffing out the lives of the “shining girls”, very bright women with unlimited potential.

In 1990 one of the most grandiose museum heists in history took in place in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum . A Number of works of art were stolen, and they include The Concert by Vermeer, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt five drawings by Degas , and a few more.  Unfortunately, the culprits were never apprehended, even though the FBI claims to know their identities. While in the real world such crimes seldom lead to exciting conclusions, in the domain of fiction things can change radically, and so it happens in The Art Forger by B. A. Shapiro.

With there being plenty of books about how women should navigate this world and find success in it, there is a surprising lack of literature of such advice directed towards men. It is assumed that because double-standards exist men have it very easy, but the truth is no matter where we live, the world remains quite a competitive place for us.  If we are to be successful we must also learn to navigate it properly, and for most of us, that consists of adhering to the image of the “real man”. But what is the real man in the first place? Well, Eric Metaxas attempts to answers that question in his latest novel, Seven Men .

When he was still a kid, Adam Brown’s dream was to wear his high school’s team jersey as he was growing up in the quiet town of Hot Springs, Arkansas. Throughout his younger years Adam Brown developed a certain attraction to daredevil activities, perhaps even becoming somewhat of a risk and adrenaline junkie. Unfortunately, he fell in with the wrong crowd and his risk-taking behavior escalated up until the point where he got thrown in jail. Having touched the bottom of the barrel and fighting his demons, Adam set a noble goal for himself: to become Navy SEAL. 

John Corey, the NYPD’s best homicide detective, is taking a well-deserved rest as he recuperates from the grievous wounds he received while in the line of duty.  However, it seems that our heroes can never get even a bit of rest as Corey is hired as a consultant on a very strange case: the murder of two biologist brothers who worked at the site of animal disease research for the Department of Agriculture, on a paradise known as Plum Island .

Humanity’s future is far from being certain or etched in stone, which is actually quite hopeful and downright frightening at the same time; things could get better, but it seem as if human nature would like for them to get worse.   George Orwell has become one of the most renowned and respected authors in the entire world, and 1984 is arguably his most widely-recognized work. As some of you may already know, in 1984 Orwell depicts in a novelized fashion what he believes the future may look like considering the human nature.

Recently James Patterson has stared co-authoring pretty much all of his novels. Though some people were disappointed by such a career choice, others were delighted, and the way I see it, it paid off beautifully with Second Honeymoon . We see the return of suspended FBI agent John O’Hara as he is paired up with the new kid on the block, agent Sarah Brubaker.

It is no secret that the Middle East is one of the most turbulent places on this entire planet we call Earth, with there constantly being tensions between different religious and cultural groups, with ever-present clamors for either modern reforms or reverting to traditionalism.  Though we may hear news of all the deaths that are happening over there, grasping the true importance and impact of events taking place so far away is a difficult thing to do. 

In my personal opinion, Franz Kafka is one of the most interesting. original, talented and fascinating writers to ever pick up a pen. Those of you who have heard about him probably know him for The Trial , a very surrealistic story about the nightmare of bureaucracy.  The most special aspect of his stories, at least according to me, is that he didn't really care about realism. In other words, the story was always a beautiful, vivid and though-provoking metaphor, allegory or parable that was meant to be taken in any sense but the literal one. 

It seems that practically every famous detective and sleuth in literature must, at one point or another, solve a case from a long-forgotten past. I guess there is some kind of mysterious attraction to such topics; as time passes by, events get increasingly blurred and there are less and less ways of finding out the truth. However, such things never stood in the way of famous Belgian sleuth, Hercule Poirot, especially not when he was solving the murder Amyas Crayle in Five Little Pigs , written by none other than Agatha Christie.

Though most of us have a happy childhood, we slowly but surely figure out that the world isn’t nearly as pretty as it’s made out to be. Many of us living in peaceful countries do not even realize how lucky we are to be relatively sheltered from the cruelties Man can inflict on Man.  There are others, however, who make this discovery very early and in a brutal fashion, and that’s the theme, or at least one of the main ones, in Jeannette Walls’ The Silver Star . 

Before I read the book, I had no idea who Jim Gaffigan was. For those who are in the same boat I was, he is a stand-up comedian who doesn’t shy away from any subject, be it bacon, or as is the case with his book, Dad is Fat , his five children that dragged him through heaven and hell countless times. I didn't know what to really expect when I opened up this book (other than that it was about parenthood and supposed to be hilarious), and I found myself drawn into it from the opening lines. 

Quite recently it seems that a bigger division was created between “believers” and “non-believers” (for lack of better words), mainly due to Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett who basically started the anti-religion wars by scrutinizing the beliefs people have been holding dear to heart for over a thousand years now.  Though many people like to think of Richard Dawkins as a bully, it cannot be denied that the man seeks to learn the truth through the scientific method, and in his book The God Delusion , he examines the whole concept of religion through the scientific lens.

Many of us know Alexandre Dumas as being the author who brought to us great classics such as The Count of Monte Christo and The Three Musketeers . However, what many people do not know is that Dumas didn't just pull those stories out of his head, newspaper articles, or even first-hand observations… rather, many of the heroic events taking place in his stories were inspired from his father, General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas (for the purpose of simplicity, the father will be referred to as General Dumas from now on).