Alan Bennett is most famous for his Olivier & Tony Award-winning play, The History Boys, a dramedy on the trials of high school boys heading to college. With The Uncommon Reader he veers into lightweight literary territory, distinct in his charm but low on gravitas. In The Uncommon Reader, we enter the royal household of England, where the Queen has just discovered the joy of reading on a visit to a mobile library. To accept…
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I have been writing all my life. Stories, poems, and essays. Scribbles in diaries, haiku games with friends and long, winded letters to loved ones. Every single time emotions overwhelmed the mind, my instinctive reaction was to pick up a pen and paper and just write. Falling in love, falling out of love, failing at work, getting promoted, family feuds, a show that I loved, a book I hated–all of it tumbling onto paper. And…
Like much of USA, I have been glued to the television and phone over the last few days. Afraid that this might become an unhealthy habit, I determined that a good distraction was in order. So here I am attempting to do a round-up of all the books I read in the last two months, with the hope I might pick another shortly. Kiddo started school and work picked up pace, so reading was SLOW.…
Sidewalls (Medianaras) is a quirky indie Argentinian movie that explores the explosive and divisive nature of today’s metropolises on our lifestyles. Directed by Gustavo Toretto, the film uses Buenos Aires, as the setting of the general delineation of the human culture. At the center of the movie are two millennials, Marian, an architect and Martin, a web designer, leading lonely lives in the megapolis. It is through their eyes we see the beauty of the architecture…
Thomas Cromwell Finds A Sympathetic Portrayal in ‘Wolf Hall’ In Wolf Hall, Mantel takes us back in history when Henry VIII was shaking the very foundation of the Church in his bid to marry Anne Boleyn. Fun times, huh? Historians and storytellers have already written much about one of the most reformative and turbulent periods of the Tudor rule that it is challenging for a writer to leave their own mark and bring some freshness…
Le Carrè’s brooding spy thriller is slow in execution but big in substance. At a few hundred pages it’s a quick read with a plot engaging in its simplicity. Plot Summary Alec Leamas is an aging British intelligence officer who has recently led the Berlin division during the height of the cold war. His network has slowly collapsed over time because of one person — Mundt, the leader of East Germany’s intelligence operations. The novel opens with…
The latest novel by Ann Patchett is an intimate character study of a brother and sister, abandoned by their parents and their fate often tested by life. One day the Conroy siblings find themselves motherless, as Elena Conroy leaves them for a higher calling without ever bothering to say goodbye. This abandonment by their mother, and her picking the needs of strangers over her own kids, leaves a permanent bruise. And it all started with…