Trond Sander has moved to “a small house in the far east of Norway,” beside a lake. Here, with his dog Lyra, he plans to live the remainder of his life alone, mindfully filling his days with tasks and chores, and keeping himself company. Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses offers a rewarding journey with Trond, …
This book is an account about a fascinating condition, synesthesia, in which music can have color, words can have taste, and time and numbers float through space. Ward takes the most recent research and uses it to develop theories of why it is certain people’s experiences with the world is extremely different from the normal …
John Newhouse’s Boeing Versus Airbus introduced me to the fascinating and dangerous world of air industry: the inside story of the greatest international competition in business. As America’s most succesful and admired corporation from inception, Boeing aircrafts dominated the commercial airplane market until the European startup Airbus entered the game in 1980s. Since then, it …
Though lesser-known than his masterpieces The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore, After Dark is another of Murakami’s brilliant novels with imaginative and thought-provoking prose and an unpredictable plot line. The story begins near midnight at a Denny’s in Tokyo with Mari, a quiet student who feels overshadowed by her attractive, popular sister. …
More than any other of the great opera composers, Wagner studied philosophy, and he was greatly influenced by the main philosophical currents of mid-19th century Germany. Three philosophers in particular had an effect on his thinking and his work: Feuerbach, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, although the latter was perhaps more the influenced than the influencer. But …
To me, this book is the Walden of running literature. As I was preparing to run my first 5K in about 10 years, I searched for this book but was sad to find it had gone out of print. Luckily, the Library had a copy. There is wisdom and advice to be found on every …
Halldór Laxness’ Independent People is a timeless tale of poverty and pride. Set in early twentieth-century rural Iceland, this epic novel tells the story of Bjartur, a sheep farmer, who is determined to escape the bonds of peasantry regardless of the cost to himself or his family. Bjartur’s brusque stubbornness often repels first-time readers, but …
“Out Stealing Horses” is not Per Petterson’s first novel, nor will it likely be his last. His character, Trond Sander, deals with continued loss as the story moves from the cramped city to the rural countryside of Scandinavia and from late World War II to the present day. Like many novels about loss in some …
Published in 1959, Goodbye, Columbus won the 1960 National Book Award and began the career of Philip Roth, one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Goodbye, Columbus is a collection of six short stories, each of which concentrates on an unusual, although not unfamiliar, scenario surrounding the Jewish-American experience. Its …
I read the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao for my Caribbean Literature class with Professor Nadia Celis. Written in a colloquial, street-smart Spanglish, the book introduces us to Oscar, an overweight Dominican teenager living in New Jersey. A nerd who loves reading science fiction, fantasy and comics and enjoys writing, Oscar is desperately trying …