(Reviewed by JD Jung) “my father spared my eyes from Saddam's sins so I could experience real horror, torture in the hands of my parent searing my skin at the age of seven I found his redemption— why can’t I find mine?” (Excerpt from "White Shroud") In 1990, young Ali Nuri was forced to flee…
(Reviewed by J.D. Jung) After reading one of my favorite books, The Italian Lover, I just wanted to grab anything related to it and its characters. Author Robert Hellenga wrote a book about the protagonist’s lover, classics professor Alan "Woody" Woodhull, in a previous novel published in 1999, The Fall of a Sparrow. Woody’s…
Compra questo libro Last month, I reintroduced you to The Italian Lover, a sensual work of literary fiction. After reading that wonderful book, I just had to grab Robert Hellenga’s earlier novel, The Sixteen Pleasures. This book recounts the beginning of Margo’s adventure in Italy, whereas The Italian Lover picks up the story 25 years…
(Reviewed by JD Jung) “Thérèse, residing in damp obscurity, in gloomy, crushing silence, saw life expand before her in all its nakedness, each night bringing the same cold couch, and each morn the same empty day.” “But inwardly, she lived a burning, passionate existence. When alone on the grass beside the water, she would lie…
(Reviewed by JD Jung) "And now the people where gripped by the ancient fear that the spider might carry off an unbaptized infant, the pledge of their old pact. The woman was beside herself, she had no trust in God, so her heart was all more filled with hatred and revenge." In a farmhouse along…
(Reviewed by JD Jung) “The move from Casablanca to Queens was the biggest bet of my parents’ life. It came with wounds: betrayal by loved ones and poverty in the greatest country on earth. There was chaos in the upending of norms—what it means to be a husband or wife, how many countries can fit…
(Reviewed by Pat Luboff) There are a few books I’ve read that have had this effect on me. I look forward to my reading time, usually nap time or bedtime, because the book is there waiting for me. And, as I near the end of the book, I begin to feel sad because I…
(Reviewed by Don Jung) It surprises me that legendary basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has now written fifteen books since he retired from sports. His fascination with the Arthur Conan Doyle books has him writing his third installment in a series on what it would be like to be a young Sherlock Holmes. This story takes…
(Reviewed by JD Jung) "It’s never the pain at the moment that hurts us. It’s that we are always going to have it, always going to carry it with us. “ Rick Phillips never fully recovered from a high school shooting. Though he lived through it, the emotional and physical scars remained with him. After…
(Reviewed by JD Jung) Margo Harrington, an American expatriate living in Italy, is excited to hear that her memoir, The Sixteen Pleasures, will be made into a feature film. The book details her experiences when she first came to Florence. While working in a convent, restoring irreplaceable books damaged in the flood of 1966, she…
