reviews

War, History, Meaning Author: Leo Tolstoy Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace is the Everest climb of literature – the true quest only hardcore readers take (and pass). With its thousand plus pages and supposedly difficult language, it has haunted me for years. The ultimate challenge. Finally, I was ready. The story opens just prior to the French invasion of Russia and the following Napoleonic wars, resulting in Napoleon’s final capture and then loss of Moscow. In between the famous general’s tactics, Russia’s failed military responses, and the revolt of the peasants to the ways of “gentlemanly” warfare, we follow both the [...]

The Trauma of Menstruation Author: Walter Greatshell Lulu and her mother live in their own little world – eating out, sleeping in, and stalking the guy who might be Lulu’s father. It’s sort of squalid and sort of idealistic. Meanwhile, the two women miss out on the apocalypse, which has come and gone, seemingly without them. You see, a virulent something sneaked out of a laboratory – Agent X – and is turning menstruating women into blue-skinned monsters or xombies. Lulu and her mom may be late to the party, but Agent X gets everyone in the end . . . [...]

Good Twin, Bad Twin Author: Rose Carlyle Summer is the good twin, the blessed twin. She got married to the perfect man, has the best and cutest little step-son, is wealthy, and owns her sister’s beloved yacht, Bathsheba. Iris is the bad twin: jealous, focused on her father’s legacy, resentful, removed from a broken marriage, driven by ambition and revenge. The girls’ relationship was always complicated, but when their father died and announced in his will that his entire 100 million dollar empire will go to his first child who marries and conceives (and the man has seven children across two [...]