“I did all I could and it still wasn’t enough.” “You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest.” Meet Oscar de León. Once … More Book Review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz
“And that, my young friends, is the story of our country, one invader after another … But we’re like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing.” Following up a great first novel is no easy task, and many writers fall victim to the so-called “sophomore slump”. Not Khaled … More Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini
A Narcissist’s Guide to 9/11 In the years since September 11th, 2001 many authors have tried their hands at the 9/11 novel, with all of its delicate subject matter, and thus far they have met with only limited degrees of success: Jonathan Safran Foer, Julia Glass, Wendy Wasserstein, and others have centered novels on the … More Book Review: The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud
Supposedly Fun 