Blogs

Sometimes a novel traffics such beauty it feels foolhardy to assign descriptors, analogies, adjectives. It becomes a visceral thing. Sure it evokes a myriad of emotions beneath, but what you’ll also notice is tight and lumpy and hard throats. Red welled eyes. Quickened breath. A disregard to your environment. Time stops or time flies but you can’t discern the difference. Patrick Thomas Casey’s debut Our Burden’s Light is such a novel. The writing is brave and formidable.

Lynette facilitiates the book discussion group at the Helmerich Library. At each meeting they read books on a particular topic or books by the same author and share their opinions. What follows is a recap of their March meeting.

With George Mann’s The Affinity Bridge I made my first foray into the Steampunk genre, an offshoot in the tradition of SciFi, that looks to the past-albeit an alternative past- rather than the future. Steampunk is characterized by using the era of steam power, often Victorian England, as the setting.

Beaches and bikinis or eco-tourism and zip lines? Europe and castles or Africa and wild animals? I am planning a vacation and I am struck and disappointed with the common place offerings. Been there, done that and have the t-shirt to prove it, or need a bank loan to even attempt it, seem to be my only options. Books have always been my respite, my instant holiday, and author Jasper Fforde extrapolates some new vacation destinations I would book right now!

Books that confront as much as they comfort are among my favorites. Maybe that’s why I love Sherman Alexie so much. One minute I am smirking at his self-deprecating, ironic humor; I’m feeling on the inside--a part of his demographic-- and laughing at the same things. Then, one sentence later, I realize that I’ve become the butt of his jokes. His humor has a sharp edge, and no one is exempt from being exposed as “frail and finite”—a phrase used multiple times in his latest collection War Dances .