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Archive for October, 2009

Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann

By Ele Munjeli ⋅ October 27, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Justly nominated for the National Book Award, Let the Great World Spin is the best read I’ve had in while. At the end, I had to go back to the beginning to remember where it started. The story spins through narrators, each so well imagined and authentically placed, the whole book feels more truth than [...]

An Interview with David Liss

By Ele Munjeli ⋅ October 22, 2009 ⋅ 2 comments

David Liss is the author of several books, including The Devil’s Company, a mystery that explores the origins of the modern corporation in the 1700s in London. Despite it’s abysmal tally of views on YouTube, I found this interview from May 22, 2009 interesting. Liss has an education in finance, and it informs his work [...]

An Interview with Colum McCann

By Ele Munjeli ⋅ October 20, 2009 ⋅ One comment

I just finished reading Let the Great World Spin and I came across this link on Colum McCann’s website. Note he’s also a Goodreads author, so you can follow him there. The book was nominated for the National Book Award. I haven’t read all the others but it’s an interesting field this year with several [...]

The Devil’s Company, by David Liss

By Ele Munjeli ⋅ October 19, 2009 ⋅ One comment

Set in London in the year 1722, the scenery might be the point of the novel; yet, David Liss manages to create memorable and individual characters that actually carry the day. Our hero, a retired boxer of Portugese-Jewish ancestry, is also a master of disguise and a wry wit. His sidekick is a lounge lizard [...]

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

By Ele Munjeli ⋅ October 17, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

I thought it would be more exciting, but The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo actually reads like a modern bestseller thriller of clichés. There’s a May-September romance, a serial murder, Asperberg’s syndrome (my sister, a psychologist, rolled her eyes and said, “There’s always a du jour.”). Sadists, incest, mafia, financial scandal.. The hero never seems [...]

The Woman in Black, by Susan Hill

By Ele Munjeli ⋅ October 9, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

I picked this up to participate in an online discussion group, Slaves of Golconda. The ghost story is thematic for October. The book isn’t long, about 160 pages, and I appreciated the careful attention to the genre. I didn’t really feel horrified though, and the book is definitely not haunting me. Perhaps the villainous ghost herself [...]

The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson

By Ele Munjeli ⋅ October 5, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

When the Broad Street well became contaminated with cholera, it was demonstrated by a pattern of deaths radiating from the source, describing a social network. Steven Johnson eloquently uses the map of the epidemic to launch a discussion of the macro and micro; the conditions of Victorian England, and the personalities who founded the science [...]

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