And guess what else, I did the damn Orwell double feature. As my many admiring fans may have noticed, I just read Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, and the library had no waitlist for Animal Farm, so I said LET’S RUN IT BACK!!! George Orwell’s Animal Farm is an interesting exploration/parable that was almost definitely informed …
Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell’s account of the Spanish Civil War. Originally signing up to cover the war as a reporter, Orwell almost immediately enlisted to fight against fascist forces in Spain, and this book recounts his experiences about six months after he fled the country. You know, I didn’t realize that Orwell was …
The Housemaid by Freida McFadden is a book that was written. This is a book I didn’t think I would like going into it, and it turns out I was right. Everybody else also thought I wouldn’t like it, and it should have come with a label that read, “Ryan, do not read.” Fun fact: …
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes is an intriguing novel that I ultimately found disappointing. This is a story and exploration of memory, how we remember things, and how we view ourselves. Tony, the narrator, shares parts of his life, particularly revolving around a friend made in youth, Adrian, his first relationship with …
When I started Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, I picked it up, read the first chapter, flipped through the pages, noticing how many chapters were less than a page, and thought, “Oh nice, this will be a breeze.” I was so insanely wrong that there should be a prison sentence attached to my …
Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe is a book I thought I would enjoy… but, guess what, I did not. Is something wrong with me? I have read so many popular “it” books over the last year, the kinds of books you might find on the featured table at a Barnes & Noble or …
Review: Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe Read More »
There was enough that I liked in Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City. The premise, about the building the Chicago’s 1893 World Fair and a serial killer who also happened to be there, is a bit of a hodgepodge, which lends itself to the chaotic result of the fair; however, it was disjointed …
How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr was a pretty good deep dive into the legacy of the United States as an imperial power (in the first half). In school, I, like others, never learned a thing about the U.S. colonies, such as the Philippines, Puerto Rico, or its many islands. Even Native American …
Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing is a dramatic journalist retelling of the conflict in Northern Ireland during the Troubles beginning in the late 1960s. DAMN! That stuff is all really crazy. Keefe is a really fantastic writer: he brings in so many characters over the course of many decades, weaves them in and out of …
Herman and Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent is an important piece of political analysis of the American project. I agree with the overall breakdown of the arguments and evidence and the author’s conclusions, and surely this was a landmark work in the media analysis at the time it was written. To me, reading this in 2025, I …
Review: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky Read More »
