buddy read: the little friend

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
Vintage, 624 pp.
Published October 22, 2002

Bestselling author Donna Tartt returns with a grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence and evil.

The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother’s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents’ yard. Twelve years later Robin’s murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robin’s sister Harriet - unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson--sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her town’s rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her family’s history of loss.

Several years ago I read and enjoyed The Secret History. Not long after finishing it I got Donna Tartt's second novel, The Little Friend, and allowed it to languish unread ever since. Thankfully Evelina of AvalinahsBooks invited me to do a buddy read and this was one of the books our TBRs had in common! I say thankfully not only because Evelina was one of the first to welcome me into the book blogging community and I consider her one of my dearest friends in the community, but also because...this was kind of a difficult book to finish. While it provided a lot of good discussion topics for our Twitter messages, the narrative ambled around with little momentum for much of the 600+ pages. Tartt is a strong writer with genuine talent for wordcraft and characters, but the plot here left something to be desired. Even so, there's still plenty to discuss about The Little Friend and you can read my answers to Evelina's questions down below! Once you're done, don't forget to read Evelina's answers to my questions right here too!

book review: fates and furies

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
Riverhead Books, 390pp.
Published September 15, 2015

Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.

At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed.

book review: seven pillars of wisdom

Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence
Anchor, 784 pp.
Published 1922

"There are no lessons for the world, no disclosures to shock peoples. It is filled with trivial things, partly that no one mistake for history the bones from which some day a man may make history."

More than seventy years ago, T.E. Lawrence—universally known as Lawrence of Arabia—wrote these self-effacing words in the introductory chapter to his monumental epic, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Not even a man as hopeful for immorality as he could have predicted how enduring a place in twentieth-century English literature his extraordinary memoir would claim.

Lawrence tells the story of his role in the Arab revolt against the Turks, a minor, diversionary theater of war for the British immersed in World War I, but a profoundly meaningful struggle for the Arabs. He draws amazingly evocative portraits of the principal players, and it is doubtful if anyone else writing in English has ever described the vast and beautiful Arabian terrain with such power of detail and subtle shading. Not only a consummate military history, but also a colorful saga and a lyrical exploration of the mind of a great man, Seven Pillars of Wisdom has become an indisputable classic.

What has lent the book its lasting fascination is Lawrence's passionate account of the Arab people and of the Arab nation struggling to be born. The parallels to be drawn with the ongoing conflict in the Middle East are undeniable. Whether this masterpiece is read as a thrilling military history, a timeless adventure story, or prescient narrative, Seven Pillars of Wisdom is destine to enthrall generations to come.

book review: the alienist

The Alienist by Caleb Carr
Random House, 496 pp.
Published March 15, 1994

Summary (via Goodreads): The year is 1896. The city is New York. Newspaper reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned by his friend Dr. Laszlo Kreizler—a psychologist, or “alienist”—to view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy abandoned on the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge. From there the two embark on a revolutionary effort in criminology: creating a psychological profile of the perpetrator based on the details of his crimes. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who will kill again before their hunt is over.

Fast-paced and riveting, infused with historical detail, The Alienist conjures up Gilded Age New York, with its tenements and mansions, corrupt cops and flamboyant gangsters, shining opera houses and seamy gin mills. It is an age in which questioning society’s belief that all killers are born, not made, could have unexpected and fatal consequences.

2018 TBR Pile Challenge

Hosted by Adam at Roof Beam Reader

The Challenge: Within twelve months, read 12 books that have been sitting on my bookshelf or "to read" list! The list of books to read must be posted by January 15, 2018.

Each book must have been on my shelf or TBR list for at least a year (published before January 1, 2017). Up to two alternate choices are allowed, in the event some of the original dozen can't be finished. Books may be read in any order. Crossovers with other challenges are allowed, as long as you haven't read the book before and it was published prior to 2017.

Whenever I finish a book on my list, I will mark it as read and link the title to a review post on my blog!

My 2018 TBR Pile Challenge List

1. Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov (1936)
2. Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence (1922) REVIEW
3. Suttree by Cormac McCarthy (1979)
4. Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (2015) REVIEW
5. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016)
6. The Alienist by Caleb Carr (1994) REVIEW
7. The Little Friend by Donna Tartt (2002) REVIEW
8. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (1995) DNF
9. Blindness by José Saramago (1995)
10. Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky (2004)
11. Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas by Stefan Helmreich (2009)
12. One Hand Clapping by Anthony Burgess (1961)

Alternates

1. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty (2014)
2. The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (2008)

Progress: 4 of 12 complete