May 2010

  • "Sashenka"

    By MichaelP03 on 5/7/10 3:14pm
    Add Comment

    SashenkaSashenka

     Russia is a country that captures the romantic's heart unlike few other places in the world. For a land so amazing, with a history so complex and tragic, Simon Sebag Montefiore's 2008 epic Sashenka presents three parts of Russia's story - the ballrooms of Nicholas II's Russian Empire, the cold, windowless cells of Stalin's Soviet Union, and the uneasy freedom of Yeltsin's Russian Federation. Through it all, the titular Sashenka - first a precocious young girl, then a woman dedicated to the Communist Party and her two children, and finally a ghost reaching out through history - remains a powerful, believable, and amazing character.

    Read more >

  • Contested Will by James Shapiro

    By lisala on 5/6/10 1:25pm
    1 Comment

     

    James Shapiro.
    Contested Will.
    Simon and Schuster,
    N.Y. 2010.
    ISBN: 1416541624

    Shapiro, a reputable academic and literary scholar with particular expertise in Shakespearean scholarship, opens his preface thus:

    This is a book about when and why many people began to question whether William Shakespeare wrote the plays long attributed to him, and, if he didn't write them, who did.

    Read more >