Equal Rites

Terry Pratchett

Reviewer: Toriaz

The Third Discworld Novel...

They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

The last thing the wizard Drum Billet did, before Death laid a bony hand on his shoulder, was to pass on his staff of power to the eighth son of an eighth son. Unfortunately for his colleagues in the chauvinistic (not to say misogynistic) world of magic, he failed to check that the baby in question was a son. Everybody knows that there's no such thing as a female wizard. But now it's gone and happened, there's nothing much anyone can do about it. Let the battle of the sexes begin...

STATUS: Reading.

A Promised Land

Barack Obama

Reviewer: bikerbuddy

The memoirs of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States...

Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency. Obama takes readers on a journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation's highest office.

STATUS: Reading.

The Way by Swann's

Marcel Proust

Reviewer: bikerbuddy

The first volume of In Search of Lost Time...

The Way by Swann's is the most frequently read part of Proust's epic novel, In Search of Lost Time. It introduces subjects that resonate throughout the entire work, including the narrator's love for Swann's daughter Gilberte, Swann's jealous passion for Odette, and the rise of the nouveaux-riches Verdurins. Proust's narrator vividly recalls his childhood in Paris and Combray, most famously in a fraught evocation of his mother's good-night kiss and in the iconic scene where the taste of a madeleine dipped in tea brings back a flood of memory.

STATUS: Finished Reading. Review Pending after second reading.

The Pickwick Papers

Charles Dickens

Reviewer: bikerbuddy

Dickens' first novel...

Mr. Samuel Pickwick, retired business man and confirmed bachelor, is determined that after a quiet life of enterprise the time has come to go out into the world. Together with the other members of the Pickwick Club - Tracy Tupman, Augustus Snodgrass and Nathaniel Winkle - the portly innocent embarks on a series of comic adventures. The story recounts the adventures of the members of the Pickwick Club as they travel about England getting into all sorts of mischief. But can Pickwick retain his good will towards his fellow humans once he discovers the evils of the world? The book also reveals Dickens's burgeoning interest in the parliamentary system, lawyers, the Poor Laws, and the ills of debtors' prisons.

STATUS: Reading.

Hamnet

Maggie O'Farrell

Reviewer: bikerbuddy

Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction, 2020...

On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.Neither parent knows that Hamnet will not survive the week. Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright: a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written...

STATUS: Finished Reading - Review Pending

Dune

Frank Herbert

Reviewer: NickoHeap

Classic Science Fiction...

Melange, or 'spice', is the most valuable - and rarest - element in the universe; a drug that does everything from increasing a person's life-span to making intersteller travel possible. And it can only be found on a single planet: the inhospitable desert world Arrakis.

Whoever controls Arrakis controls the spice. And whoever controls the spice controls the universe.

When the Emperor transfers stewardship of Arrakis from the noble House Harkonnen to House Atreides, the Harkonnens fight back, murdering Duke Leto Atreides. Paul, his son, and Lady Jessica, his concubine, flee into the desert. On the point of death, they are rescued by a band for Fremen, the native people of Arrakis, who control Arrakis' second great resource: the giant worms that burrow beneath the burning desert sands.

In order to avenge his father and retake Arrakis from the Harkonnens, Paul must earn the trust of the Fremen and lead a tiny army against the innumerable forces aligned against them.

And his journey will change the universe.

STATUS: Finished Reading. Review Pending.