Current Reviews
Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, by Lea Ypi
Free is a curiously hard book to review, for it asks questions of the reader which are complex and difficult. The author, Lea Ypi is a professor of political theory in the London School of Economics. She was born in Albania when it was under the Soviet empire and then saw Albania change with the fall of the Berlin wall. The first half of the book is about her life, her family and her country under the rule of the Peoples Socialist Republic in Albania and the second half is about her life, her family and her country under an attempt at democracy and, later, in civil war.
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Mad Honey, by Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Boylan
This is a charming book; easy to read and very informative--esp. about three particularly interesting topics: bees and beekeeping; domestic abuse; and, what it is to be transgender. The story is told through alternating voices of a trans girl and the mother of her boyfriend (who is herself a battered woman). The underlying foundation of the novel is a murder mystery. But, do not be intimidated; the story is not complicated or so didactic as to be challenging.
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The Camera Girl: The Coming of Age of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, by Carl Sferrazza Anthony
There have been many books written about Jackie Kennedy (1929-1994) but this one is about her years as a young woman trying to work out the course of her life and offers a portrait of the future First Lady as an aspiring journalist.
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The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (ver-GEESE) is a superb novel, the best I've read in many years. Covenant, a story of India, begins in 1900 in what is now the State of Kerala in southern India. A marriage has been arranged between a twelve-year-old girl and a forty-year-old widowed farmer, beginning a family saga of some ten decades to 1977. The family's dark secret is that, in every generation, at least one member has drowned unexpectedly, even though the family members who fear the "Condition" try their best to stay clear of the water.
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