    
Steve_s
Regular Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 287
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 | | Posted on Wednesday, August 15, 2007 - 10:57 pm: | |
Finished:
Richard Wright: The Life and Times by Hazel Rowley
Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones
New England White by Stephen L. Carter
Allah is Not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
A Death in the Family by James Agee
Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
Reading:
The Restless Journey of James Agee by Genevieve Moreau
White Noise by Don DeLillo -- Another campus novel - the main character is chairman of the department of Hitler Studies at College-on-the-Hill - and the juxtaposition with New England White is blowing me away. I recommend it as a chaser to NEW.
In my opinion Stephen L. Carter is really coming into his own as a novelist. NEW is not genre fiction but a literary novel with thriller-like tendencies. I look forward to reading his next one too.
Allah is Not Obliged is a scathing satire of everything -- religion, magic, African politics, tribalism, etc. The second half tells the history of the various dictators and warlords that have ruled Sierra Leone and Liberia in recent years, in all its brutal reality. I have no doubt that these events are not far from the truth. Thumper, thanks for the recommendation and the review; I hadn't heard of this one but I'm glad I read it. 
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