reviews

A Story of Serial Murder and a Failed Investigation Author: Michael Bilton Peter William Sutcliffe, commonly known as the Yorkshire Ripper, brutally murdered thirteen women and injured seven more in a five year spree across Yorkshire and Leeds. The Yorkshire Ripper, finally caught and arrested in 1981, is a case famous both for its violence and for the upheaval and big mistakes that characterized its investigation. How did Sutcliffe go undetected for so long, and how did the police, who interviewed him multiple times, fail to realize that the infamous serial killer was literarily in their grasp? How did over two [...]

Family, Food, Future Author: Flora Ahn I really don’t have the words for this one. I just want to gush on and on about all the feelings The Golden Orchard evoked and that perfect line it walked between nostalgia and hope. It begins with Maya, a teenage girl, on a hot summer day, listlessly lying around. Her grandmother, Halmunee, has recently moved in with Maya and her never-there, career-oriented, family-phobic mother. Halmunee is slowly progressing into dementia, but she still has her good days and wants to share her secret and her life with Maya through cooking – only not in [...]

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 [...]