Books and Breads Blog

April 29, 2010

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut ** (of 4)

As a twenty year old soldier Vonnegut was one of the few people to survive the allied bombing of Dresden in World War II. For...

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April 29, 2010

The Secret River by Kate Granville *** (of 4)

The British caste system of the 18th century was unendurable for average citizens and petty crime was often a necessity. Read Dickens, for example. In...

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April 29, 2010

Saturday by Ian McEwan ** (of 4)

Both of my parents, and the critics, raved about this book, so take my review cautiously. The story revolves around the meticulously described single day...

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April 29, 2010

Red Sea by Emily Benedek *** (of 4)

A well-researched post 9/11 thriller with Middle Eastern jihadists sending dirty nuclear bombs toward American ports while being hunted down by an Israeli secret agent,...

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April 29, 2010

QBVII by Leon Uris *** (of 4)

About a trial of a libelous author who writes about Nazis, autobiographical. Uris is a class-act story teller making big books go by in quickly.

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April 29, 2010

The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason

A novel about tuning pianos in 1856 British Army in Burma. I found it painfully slow and predictable. A remake of the Heart of Darkness....

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April 29, 2010

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz *** (of 4)

A larger-than-life father, a household dictator, terrifies his 1920s Cairo household into submitting to his divine will. Divine, in the sense, that his actions are...

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April 29, 2010

Old Men at Midnight, by Chaim Potok *** (of 4)

Enigmatic. I went back and forth between thinking the three short stories were too simple, too typical, not completely unique recountings of Jewish suffering in...

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April 29, 2010