A very expensive book to read. Not an expensive book to buy, mind you, but expensive to read, because you're going to wind up on Amazon or Abe looking to buy a lot of the poets whose works are anthologized herein – especially once you get beyond the basics like Longfellow, Millay, Sarton, and E.A. Robinson.
4½**** rather than 5*****, though, because there are always going to be a few entries in any anthology of this sort that won't catch your fancy. I particularly liked being introduced to Elizabeth Coatsworth and Betsy Sholl.
4½**** rather than 5*****, though, because there are always going to be a few entries in any anthology of this sort that won't catch your fancy. I particularly liked being introduced to Elizabeth Coatsworth and Betsy Sholl.
A convenient assembly of the Testament along with some of the fables, with the original Middle Scots texts on the verso pages. I give the book itself only 2**, however, and perhaps I'm being a bit parsimonious, but I dislike the quality of Heaney's translations. Going from Middle Scots (a fifteenth century dialect of Middle English, not the Gaelic of the highlands) to modern English should be easier than going from Chaucer's century-older dialect into modern English; but Heaney gets too creative and does not adhere to the strict rhyme that he should have employed to mirror Henryson's rhyme royal.
And really, all you need to read Henryson is a decent marginal (or footnoted, but not inconveniently endnoted) glossary of unfamiliar vocabulary and occasional unfamiliar syntactic structures. Do that and Henryson is no more difficult a read than Wuthering Heights with its Yorkshire dialect of Heathcliff's servant Joseph.
Heaney's translation did the service of popularizing Henryson to a degree with modern readers. But if you want to read Henryson, find a text (not that hard to find, and Heaney makes reference to such in his introduction) of Henryson in the original with the appropriate glossing.
Note that I've known the Testament for over half-a-century, going back to my college days. In fact, I used to have a running debate (very friendly) with Villanova University's medieval English lit professor, Joe Reino, as to the greatest Troilus story after Chaucer's. We both agreed that show more Shakespeare's play was one of his weaker, but Professor Reino chose Boccaccio's Il Filostrato second while I went with Henryson (but, in fairness, not knowing Italian then or now, making a judgment based solely on a prose translation of Il Filostrato). I'd never gotten around to any of the fables, however, so this volume was a useful Henryson supplement for me.
Incidentally, there's also an opera by William Walton dating back to the 1950s which I got a CD of many years ago. If I can't find it, I might get hold of another copy on eBay or Abe, though I don't have all that fond a recollection of the opera and it doesn't seem to have a lot of popularity today.
2** to Heaney, though to Henryson himself (in my opinion, the greatest Scottish poet, surpassing Burns) I'd give 5*****. show less
And really, all you need to read Henryson is a decent marginal (or footnoted, but not inconveniently endnoted) glossary of unfamiliar vocabulary and occasional unfamiliar syntactic structures. Do that and Henryson is no more difficult a read than Wuthering Heights with its Yorkshire dialect of Heathcliff's servant Joseph.
Heaney's translation did the service of popularizing Henryson to a degree with modern readers. But if you want to read Henryson, find a text (not that hard to find, and Heaney makes reference to such in his introduction) of Henryson in the original with the appropriate glossing.
Note that I've known the Testament for over half-a-century, going back to my college days. In fact, I used to have a running debate (very friendly) with Villanova University's medieval English lit professor, Joe Reino, as to the greatest Troilus story after Chaucer's. We both agreed that show more Shakespeare's play was one of his weaker, but Professor Reino chose Boccaccio's Il Filostrato second while I went with Henryson (but, in fairness, not knowing Italian then or now, making a judgment based solely on a prose translation of Il Filostrato). I'd never gotten around to any of the fables, however, so this volume was a useful Henryson supplement for me.
Incidentally, there's also an opera by William Walton dating back to the 1950s which I got a CD of many years ago. If I can't find it, I might get hold of another copy on eBay or Abe, though I don't have all that fond a recollection of the opera and it doesn't seem to have a lot of popularity today.
2** to Heaney, though to Henryson himself (in my opinion, the greatest Scottish poet, surpassing Burns) I'd give 5*****. show less
Real killer of a concept; but the prolonged and sometimes interminable execution tends, if not to be deadening, at least to drag a bit.
The author, an economist (former Belgian Finance Minister) and conservative Belgian politician, has written a fairly short but quite dense work on the use of such techniques as "qualitative easing" by central banks to prevent catastrophic deflation and consequent economic depression resulting from the liquidity crisis of 2007-08 and the subsequent COVID epidemic, at the same time warning against serious inflationary risks from such techniques which can lead to negative interest rates, investment bubbles, and other dangerous consequences. The author is an admirer but not a slavish devotee of Milton Friendman.
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Collection of essays/articles by veterans critical of recent wars, particularly Iraq and Afghanistan, edited by Andrew Bacevich (founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft) and Daniel Sjursen. The authors are generally not pacifists but lean toward anti-interventionism, supporting only U.S. wars of actual self-defense. Particularly interesting that, unlike many non-veteran anti-interventionists (for example, many associated with the Antiwar(dot)com website), who tend to oppose conscription on libertarian principles, those authors in this book who address the issue tend to see conscription as preferable to a volunteer army. Bacevich himself, in his introduction, views a volunteer army as the same as the "standing army" generally opposed by the framers of the Constitution themselves.
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bonesMilton's Sonnet 18, "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont."
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones;
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all th' Italian fields where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who having learnt thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
But there is a great deal more to the Waldensian heritage than the massacre of Easter 1655. Waldensians themselves would likely look upon the "Glorious Return" of 1689 as their most famous moment, when their fighting pastor Henri Arnaud (a Waldensian but also an officer in the Dutch army of William of Orange) led a small contingent back from their Genevan refuge to briefly reoccupy their Piedmont homeland and hold off a massive Catholic Savoyard force that might otherwise have reinforced Louis XIV and England's deposed James II in combat against the forces of England's new sovereigns, William and Mary.
The Waldensians, contrary to Milton's belief, were not descendants of the earliest Christians of the days of St. Paul. They were founded in the late 12th century by Waldo of Lyons as the "Poor of Lyons," coming into show more conflict with the Catholic hierarchy not, however, because of any practice of apostolic poverty but because of their tradition of lay preaching, which challenged the clerical monopoly. With their increasing alienation from Rome, the Waldensians became the first of the proto-Protestant sects, predating both Wycliffe and Huss.
After a long history, the Waldensians finally achieved religious liberty from the House of Savoy in 1848, at which point their numbers began growing and created an "Amish problem" of too little farmland, leading to migrations, some to Uruguay and others to the United States. Italian Waldensians are affiliated with the United Methodists (likely, I think, because of the tradition of lay preaching) while their congregations in the United States affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA), sharing Presbyterianism's self-governing polity as a reformed church.
Most Waldensian congregations in the United States have passed on, but there remains one vibrant Waldensian Presbyterian Church in Valdese, NC, in the PC(USA)'s Western North Carolina Presbytery. The author of With Their Backs Against the Mountains is the now-retired pastor of this congregation, and the book is written as a series of sermons which he delivered on Waldensian history.
Note: This book appears to have been self-published. Copies are available in very limited numbers on ABE (though I suspect it might be for sale in the Waldensian Museum in Valdese), but it can be easily obtained on Amazon Kindle.
Waldensian Presbyterian Church of Valdese
Waldensian Heritage Museum (Valdese)
"Visit Valdese" show less
Reread of the originals, first read of the Gardner annotational work.
Easy 5***** to the Lewis Carroll originals, the greatest fantasy works ever written. 4**** to Martin Gardner's annotations, though, which sometimes meander on to the extent that Gardner seems a bit to be throwing in trivia for the sake of padding. Still, Gardner's annotations are overall quite worthwhile and I'm planning to go on to his annotated edition of Snark.
Easy 5***** to the Lewis Carroll originals, the greatest fantasy works ever written. 4**** to Martin Gardner's annotations, though, which sometimes meander on to the extent that Gardner seems a bit to be throwing in trivia for the sake of padding. Still, Gardner's annotations are overall quite worthwhile and I'm planning to go on to his annotated edition of Snark.
If your interest is in les aventures amoureuses de M. François-Marie Arouet, then this may well be the book for you; and the author's self-proclaimed success at reading over 15,000 of his subject's letters should assure you a compendium of trivia. If, however, your interest is in Voltaire le philosophe, dramatist, prose-fiction writer, and otherwise man of letters, then it's going to be a disappointment. In fairness, though, Davidson does disclaim any intent at writing a "literary biography," so I suppose I sot what I paid for.
The one aspect I did find of interest was the discussion of Votaire's turn toward social/judicial reform late in his life. But for further interest in Voltaire, I'll turn to some of his original writings.
The one aspect I did find of interest was the discussion of Votaire's turn toward social/judicial reform late in his life. But for further interest in Voltaire, I'll turn to some of his original writings.
First published just a few years after Eliot's death – authored by a younger American friend of Eliot and intellectual founder of post-WW2 American conservatism – this may still be the best general introduction to Eliot. My only quarrel, and hence knocking of ½*, is that Kirk's analysis of The Waste Land is skimpy (for that I would recommend Cleanth Brooks's 1938 essay), but his summary analyses of the other poems (especially the Quartets) and the plays is excellent.
Kirk himself, like Eliot, was more a cultural than a political conservative; and this literary biography also includes substantial discussion of Eliot's essays on culture and education, the latter a particular interest of Kirk's that he wrote on in his own magazines (Modern Age and The University Bookman) after he, a lifelong anti-interventionist, started drifting away from Buckley and National Review during the Vietnam era.
Kirk himself, like Eliot, was more a cultural than a political conservative; and this literary biography also includes substantial discussion of Eliot's essays on culture and education, the latter a particular interest of Kirk's that he wrote on in his own magazines (Modern Age and The University Bookman) after he, a lifelong anti-interventionist, started drifting away from Buckley and National Review during the Vietnam era.
Despite the author's disclaimer, this book is to a degree memoir – and thus it helps to have read at least the most important of the author's own theological work. The last two chapters, though, with the author addressing issues of Black theology and Third World theologies, then Black theology and Marxism and feminism.
Never heard of this series until I stumbled across it on an LT group discussion mentioning one of the new books in the series. This first installment isn't bad, but I'm glad I bought it on Kindle and don't plan on going further with the series. Lynley and Havers aren't exactly my cuppa.
Should definitely be read in the Oxford World's Classics edition for the sake of the glossary of historical personages as well as the excellent endnotes essential to a novel in which Dumas does depart from historical accuracy. The map of Paris, however, would have benefited from better printing clarity.
Had all three volumes of the "Best of the Grapevine" around the house for some twenty years or so and finally got around to reading this first volume. Highly recommended, as including several articles by Bill, one by Bob, some articles by doctors like Silkworth, Bill's correspondence with Carl Jung, and an article by Lois.
What I especially liked, though, was the twelve articles, randomly scattered through this volume, each pertaining to a different one of the Traditions, often tying a tradition in to some aspect of individual recovery – a subject rarely encountered either in meetings or in print.
Hoping to get around to the other two volumes in the next few months or so.
What I especially liked, though, was the twelve articles, randomly scattered through this volume, each pertaining to a different one of the Traditions, often tying a tradition in to some aspect of individual recovery – a subject rarely encountered either in meetings or in print.
Hoping to get around to the other two volumes in the next few months or so.
One of those collections with some selections better than others. The title story itself wasn't that impressive – a rather weak version of the "double" theme handled more successfully by Dostoevsky. The Fatal Eggs (also available in The Fatal Eggs and Other Soviet Satire, trans Mirra Ginsburg) is more successful, though far from the quality of Bulgakov's novella Heart of a Dog (not included in this collection but separately available in a Ginsburg translation). The Raid and The Crimson Island are a couple of the other better entries in this Diaboliad anthology.
Overall I'd give this one 3***; but considering the volume's interest for the sake of Bulgakovian completeness, I'll give it 3½***.
Overall I'd give this one 3***; but considering the volume's interest for the sake of Bulgakovian completeness, I'll give it 3½***.
Eggnog Murder 2**, Death by Eggnog 1½*
Both cutesy and with little "mystery" appeal. Death by Eggnog was particularly annoying with its interruption of the story on several occasions to include recipes, rather than simply holding the recipes until the end of the story.
Nogged Off 4½****. Very clever twist to this "Maine Clambake" installment.
Overall, this three-in-one of stories would barely rate 3***, but I'll give it 3½*** for the quality of the "Maine Clambake" installment, which was my own interest in buying this Kindle in the first place.
Both cutesy and with little "mystery" appeal. Death by Eggnog was particularly annoying with its interruption of the story on several occasions to include recipes, rather than simply holding the recipes until the end of the story.
Nogged Off 4½****. Very clever twist to this "Maine Clambake" installment.
Overall, this three-in-one of stories would barely rate 3***, but I'll give it 3½*** for the quality of the "Maine Clambake" installment, which was my own interest in buying this Kindle in the first place.
Give it 4½**** for the charming depiction of the characters in this last of the twelve-book series, which I've read in order. But no way would I give a mystery – any mystery – 5***** if I was able to guess the culprit as early and as easily as I did.
I absolutely do not recommend this book as a first-read in the Maine Clambake series. You really should start from the beginning and read straight through, and all the books are easily available on Kindle. Anyway, if this were a book coming midway through the series, I wouldn't have rated it as highly as I did.
I absolutely do not recommend this book as a first-read in the Maine Clambake series. You really should start from the beginning and read straight through, and all the books are easily available on Kindle. Anyway, if this were a book coming midway through the series, I wouldn't have rated it as highly as I did.
Being a little generous with 4****. The mystery itself isn't all that good in its conclusion, but it's a nice story of Julia's family, especially Page and a couple of her friends.
Being very generous, and only because it's Bulgakov, 3***. Someone who has a real interest in Stanislavsky may find the satirical description of his to be amusing, but that's about it. Otherwise, too many of the figures satirized in here are Bulgakov's contemporaries whom few if any of us have heard (or care) about today.
Irish Coffee Murder 2**: Not much Maine "local color" (which is what I got this Kindle read for) – more just a run-of-the-mill small town mystery, and the outcome was rather forced.
Death of an Irish Coffee Drinker 2**. A little more "Maine-y" than the first story, but not much better. The ending is quite contrived.
Perked Up 5*****. Really outstanding. A clever variation – a "ghost story" that leads to a debate over who the guilty party really was in a century-and-a-half-old murder. The kind of a story that, with its telling over drinks during a March power failure, has something of a Dickensian or Jamesian tone to it.
On the whole, 2** + 2** + 5***** divide-by-three averages out to 3***. Since I really got this Kindle book for the third story, the "Maine Clambake" story, and since that story was so outstanding, I'll add on another ½* for the anthology.
3½***
Death of an Irish Coffee Drinker 2**. A little more "Maine-y" than the first story, but not much better. The ending is quite contrived.
Perked Up 5*****. Really outstanding. A clever variation – a "ghost story" that leads to a debate over who the guilty party really was in a century-and-a-half-old murder. The kind of a story that, with its telling over drinks during a March power failure, has something of a Dickensian or Jamesian tone to it.
On the whole, 2** + 2** + 5***** divide-by-three averages out to 3***. Since I really got this Kindle book for the third story, the "Maine Clambake" story, and since that story was so outstanding, I'll add on another ½* for the anthology.
3½***
Ugh. Wendt's an extraordinarily distinguished Pacific writer, especially for Leaves of the Banyan Tree, but Black Rainbow just doesn't work. I have a sense that he wanted to write something along the lines of Kafka, and that he also wanted to take consideration of racial attitudes associated with the history of indigenous peoples, but this is one book that just doesn't succeed. 2** is probably a bit generous, but I do have a lot of respect for Wendt and so I'm giving him a perhaps slightly generous rating on this one.
I consider Racine the greatest French playwright (sorry, Molière fans), and I consider Phèdre and Britannicus his two greatest plays. My quarrel here, and hence my low rating of 2½**, is with the translation – specifically, Richard Wilbur's use of heroic couplets which, despite some add-on enjambment, still make Racine sound too much like John Dryden.
Nothing against Dryden, mind you, but I think Wilbur would have been better advised to go with blank verse for a playwright who engages in tragic set-pieces. I'm going to get on to Wilbur's Molière translations, though, where heroic couplets (assuming that's what Wilbur used for Molière) might give a sing-song effect more appropriate to comic satire.
Nothing against Dryden, mind you, but I think Wilbur would have been better advised to go with blank verse for a playwright who engages in tragic set-pieces. I'm going to get on to Wilbur's Molière translations, though, where heroic couplets (assuming that's what Wilbur used for Molière) might give a sing-song effect more appropriate to comic satire.
This one was a bit odd in its quality. The first half of the book is text co-authored by Pagels and King, and there I would give it at best 3½***. Not bad, but this textual discussion of this heterodox second-century scripture is a bit light-weight. It's not really so much an analysis of the scripture text as it is a multi-chapter general introduction running roughly a hundred pages.
What's really excellent, though, is the second portion of the book, consisting of King's translation of Judas accompanied by a fairly comprehensive end-note commentary on the text by King (substantially longer than the scriptural text itself), and here I'd give it at least 4½**** or even 5*****
Judas would have been written in the mid-second century. It couldn't have been later because it is one of the heterodox scriptures condemned by St Irenaeus of Lyon in Against Heresies {Wikipedia}, which itself was written around 180CE, Irenaeus dying a martyr just about the turn of the century; and it definitely postdates the canonical gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John) because it was written in response to and criticism of these canonical gospels.
There seems to be some expectation that Judas could be an antidote to the sometime anti-Semitism of the canonical gospels (especially John), but that's not the case. In fact, there's no reference in Judas to a Roman execution of Jesus – the Jewish leadership alone is implicated. Judas also might prove offensive to current-day readers for its snide show more references to homosexuality.
The significance of Judas is that it condemns orthodoxy's glorification of martyrdom, equating this to "blood sacrifice"; rejects atonement theology (Jesus died for the sins of the world), seeing this as a hideous "child sacrifice" theology; and denies a physical, bodily resurrection of the dead. Instead, resurrection is a spiritual resurrection (which isn't necessarily entirely contrary to the resurrection theology of the genuine Pauline letters) – but this isn't docetism {Wikipedia}, which denies the humanity of Jesus or of the suffering of his human body.
It would be too lengthy and complicated a discussion to completely summarize King's treatment of Judas. Suffice it to say that this heterodox scripture treats the "traitor" apostle as the only one who really "got it right" – he "betrays" Jesus at Jesus's own direction in order that Jesus can fulfill his destiny of dying to give an example of exactly how a spiritual resurrection will occur. Those who truly understand this message and live a life consistent with it will themselves be spiritually resurrected while the rest of humanity will simply die (i.e., no eternal lake of hellish fire, or whatever).
Judas, though, seems not to reject martyrdom entirely. Yes, die if need be as a result of your spreading the message of Jesus (Judas himself is finally stoned by the other apostles); but don't expect it to be an "express ticket" to heaven or to any bodily resurrection, don't claim that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church," and reject atonement theology. show less
What's really excellent, though, is the second portion of the book, consisting of King's translation of Judas accompanied by a fairly comprehensive end-note commentary on the text by King (substantially longer than the scriptural text itself), and here I'd give it at least 4½**** or even 5*****
Judas would have been written in the mid-second century. It couldn't have been later because it is one of the heterodox scriptures condemned by St Irenaeus of Lyon in Against Heresies {Wikipedia}, which itself was written around 180CE, Irenaeus dying a martyr just about the turn of the century; and it definitely postdates the canonical gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John) because it was written in response to and criticism of these canonical gospels.
There seems to be some expectation that Judas could be an antidote to the sometime anti-Semitism of the canonical gospels (especially John), but that's not the case. In fact, there's no reference in Judas to a Roman execution of Jesus – the Jewish leadership alone is implicated. Judas also might prove offensive to current-day readers for its snide show more references to homosexuality.
The significance of Judas is that it condemns orthodoxy's glorification of martyrdom, equating this to "blood sacrifice"; rejects atonement theology (Jesus died for the sins of the world), seeing this as a hideous "child sacrifice" theology; and denies a physical, bodily resurrection of the dead. Instead, resurrection is a spiritual resurrection (which isn't necessarily entirely contrary to the resurrection theology of the genuine Pauline letters) – but this isn't docetism {Wikipedia}, which denies the humanity of Jesus or of the suffering of his human body.
It would be too lengthy and complicated a discussion to completely summarize King's treatment of Judas. Suffice it to say that this heterodox scripture treats the "traitor" apostle as the only one who really "got it right" – he "betrays" Jesus at Jesus's own direction in order that Jesus can fulfill his destiny of dying to give an example of exactly how a spiritual resurrection will occur. Those who truly understand this message and live a life consistent with it will themselves be spiritually resurrected while the rest of humanity will simply die (i.e., no eternal lake of hellish fire, or whatever).
Judas, though, seems not to reject martyrdom entirely. Yes, die if need be as a result of your spreading the message of Jesus (Judas himself is finally stoned by the other apostles); but don't expect it to be an "express ticket" to heaven or to any bodily resurrection, don't claim that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church," and reject atonement theology. show less
I'd heard about this one so often but had no idea what it was about, so I decided on it as a quickie Kindle read. If I hadn't gotten through so much of it, and if I hadn't wanted to finish it at that point for the 75 Books Challenge for 2024, I would have applied the Pearl Rule because it's nothing more than "Gothic Harlequin." Rather than read the remainder of the series, I did a quickie plot review on Wikipedia. Definitely not the kind of fictional place that I want to go.and 1* is probably generous.
This course deserves a high rating for the quality of the instructor, but it has some serious flaws which reduces my rating to (a perhaps generous) 3***.
- It's roughly twenty years old and isn't really up-to-date on Neanderthals. More recent research contradicts the instructor's assertion that Home Sapiens Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapiens Sapiens could not interbreed. In fact, current DNA research indicates that all human races share some small percentage of Neanderthal genes (with the exception of sub-Saharan Africans, since Neanderthals developed outside of the African continent). Additionally, Neanderthals (despite this instructor's now-dated assertion) were in fact artistic and apparently had some form of spirituality.
- The instructor's assertion (and granted, he's an archaeologist, not a linguist) that Indo-Aryan more likely developed in India rather than being imported to the subcontinent by migrants is, to say the least, a minority view – one that I tend to associate with the Hindutva movement.
- His contrast between Brahmanism and Buddhism in India ignores the important role of folk religions, especially among pre-Aryan inhabitants of the subcontinent.
- Although this isn't entirely a "talking head" video and there are some illustrations, there could have been more.
- The close captioning is often sloppy, not coordinating well with the spoken word.
Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church Is Transforming the Faith by Diana Butler Bass
Read this for a church reading group and it was good for its purpose, but read solo I think it would probably be a bit light-weight. I do have one very real quarrel with it, and that is with the chapter on Healing, with its favorable discussion of Reiki as a healing touch – a practice that, in a church setting where there is an imbalance of power between clergy and members, can pose a danger of boundary violations, which is not recognized by this author.
A very trite "dark academia" supernatural that I'm glad I got on Kindle so it won't clutter a bookcase. I won't be reading the rest of this trilogy.
Piece of junk. Some poems better than others (it does include, e.g., Shakespeare and Emily Bronte) but it's an eclectic mix of some fifty-some pages and its one merit is that it only cost $7.99. Also, sloppy editing with careless typos. Into the trash it goes.
I'm giving this very generously 3*** in recognition that a lot of other readers might like it more than I do. If you're thing is scifi with a combo of horror and thriller, you'll probably like it. Personally, it's not my cuppa and I'll probably not go on to the author's other books. It was a quick Kindle read.
The ending, I might add, was disappointingly inconclusive, perhaps as a set-up for a sequel. Again, it's a sequel I won't be reading, but best wishes to a competent writer and to her admirers.
The ending, I might add, was disappointingly inconclusive, perhaps as a set-up for a sequel. Again, it's a sequel I won't be reading, but best wishes to a competent writer and to her admirers.
Wendt's first published book, I believe, and not bad for a first effort but not comparable to The Banyan or to the better stories of the Miracle Man anthology. Coming-of-age story of a Samoan young man in a relationship with a European New Zealander young woman and fairly conventional on the interracial romance.
The Housemaid: An absolutely addictive psychological thriller with a jaw-dropping twist by Freida McFadden
Subtitled, An absolutely addictive psychological thriller with a jaw-dropping twist. More appropriately subtitled, An absolutely sicko psychological thriller with a silly twist. 2**, because at least it was a fairly quick read on Kindle, and I have read worse; but the idea that this thing could be carried over to a trilogy is crazier than the characters in it, and I won't be reading the sequels.