Great book with a disappointing ending that makes me hesitant to recommend it. This is a hard book to review. It’s about the crash of a private plane with eleven people on board. Only two of the passengers – a middle-aged painter who was a last-minute invite on the flight and the young son of […]
Summer-type of novel that kept my interest and was fun to read. It’s a mystery about a family of mathematicians (grabs you right away, doesn’t it?) wherein the patriarch – and the most accomplished mathematician – dies under mysterious circumstances. The book tells the story of trying to find out why and how he died […]
This book should have been better. It’s all about time – how we live with it, how we track it, how it dominates our lives, how people in history viewed it compared to now, what changes there’ve been over the centuries that affect our interactions with it, and how there are so many contradictions in […]
The Osage Indians of the plains met the same fate as most Indian tribes in the 19th century – they were forced from their land and made to resettle in a place no one else wanted. In their case, it was in a rocky area of Oklahoma. When they were resettled, however, the Osage did […]
The subtitle of this book is “The Hidden Lives and Lessons of American Child Prodigies.” Sounds interesting, doesn’t it? I thought the subject matter was fascinating and I had high hopes for it. As a parent (NOT of prodigies [no offense, kids!]) finding out how parents dealt with extraordinary kids in some extreme circumstances sounded […]
I keep a “To-Read” list on my phone. When I read a positive review of a book or hear about something that sounds interesting, I add it to the list. The list is fairly long and oftentimes there’s a significant lag between adding a title and actually reading it. That means that I sometimes pick […]
The book tells the story of the killing of Osama bin Laden. As is typically the case with any Bowden book (and I’ve now read four, I think), it’s incredibly well researched and well-told. He gives a blow-by-blow account of all the planning, searching, sleuthing, and luck that went into finding and killing bin Laden. […]
Mostly enjoyed this book. Parts were really interesting, parts were a little less interesting, parts read like a US History text book. I actually had to go back and re-read some sections because I realized I had just sort of glazed over them. When I re-read those sections, I actually enjoyed the book more. The […]
Total beach/vacation book. Easy read, no messages, no deep meanings. It’s a science fiction story about a conspiracy in a settlement on the moon. The story keeps your attention and if you’re planning to be on a beach soon – and you like science fiction (and you’re a guy, as it’s a total guy book) […]
Exquisitely written, cleverly structured, powerfully resonant to the very last line. . . . A profoundly intelligent and empathetic novel of privilege and poverty, advancement and entrapment. – Wall Street Journal Simply gorgeous. . . . A State of Freedom is a marvel of a book, shocking and beautiful, and it proves that Mukherjee is […]
thegamutblog 