Fiction Book Reviews, Book News and Reading Suggestions
Chuck Palahniuk’s inexorable rise to cult status has continued unabated since the widespread success of his first published novel Fight Club, which was later made into an equally widely acclaimed film.
Published in 1996, Survivor followed up this success and also cemented Palahniuk’s growing reputation for originality and sharp satire.
Read on for a full review…. (more…)
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.
Anyone can play along!Just do the following:
My Teaser Tuesday is from page nine of The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger – “I am feeling bored and sorry for myself. In fact, I am feeling old, in the way only a twenty-eight-year-old can after staying up half the night drinking overpriced vodka and trying, without success, to win himself back into the good graces of Ingrid Carmichel.”
The brutal and authoritarian military dictatorship of Burma, perhaps receives less than its fair share of column inches in the international media, possibly losing out to more recent conflicts. I think it is also fair to say that many national governments have a vested interest in deflecting attention, as over the years they are the ones responsible for supplying the Burmese government with the weapons to cruelly repress its own people.
The more exposure and publicity the Burmese situation receives, the better the chances of achieving the freedom and democracy that the country’s people deserve. Karen Connelly’s extensive travels in Burma and its surrounding regions have amply equipped her to write a compelling and at times heartbreaking story in The Lizard Cage, which tells of one man’s imprisonment and solitary confinement in the extremely violent and harsh Burmese prison system.
Karen Connelly won the Orange Award for New Writers in 2007 for The Lizard Cage.
Read on for a full review…. (more…)
Gregory David Roberts was born in Australia in 1952, and following the breakup of his marriage and loss of access to his daughter he became a heroin addict, a habit which he fed by a life of crime.
Shantaram tells the story of his life on the run, and by any standards it is an epic and extraordinary tale.
After the first two manuscripts of the novel were destroyed, Roberts finally succeeded in getting the book published in 2003.
Read on for a full review…. (more…)