In this book we are introduced to Emma (Emily) Thomas, her life seems perfectly normal from the outside, she is a straight A student at Weslyn High, editor for the school newspaper, soccer and basketball player but what happens when she arrives home is something she is not willing to admit, not even to herself.[...]

Author Megan Miranda launches her debut novel with the absorbing story of Delaney Maxwell, it should be just another day in her life but instead turns out to be the day she died, for eleven minutes she was under freezing water, for 11 minutes she was considered death. That should have been the end of her story, but life gave her a second chance and now her world will never be normal again.[...]

Monday, September 07, 2009

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Here, for a change, is a fish tale that actually does honor to the author. In factThe Old Man and the Sea revived Ernest Hemingway's career, which was foundering under the weight of such postwar stinkers as Across the River and into the Trees. It also led directly to his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1954 (an award Hemingway gladly accepted, despite his earlier observation that "no son of a bitch that ever won the Nobel Prize ever wrote anything worth reading afterwards"). A half century later, it's still easy to see why. This tale of an aged Cuban fisherman going head-to-head (or hand-to-fin) with a magnificent marlin encapsulates Hemingway's favorite motifs of physical and moral challenge. Yet Santiago is too old and infirm to partake of the gun-toting machismo that disfigured much of the author's later work: "The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords

A great book but one that takes a lot of thought.If you want to read a classic, this is the one. The Old Man and The Sea is easy to understand and you can read it in a couple hours.I like Hemingway's style of language which is very easy to follow, but also maintain a level of depth in the meaning. For those fishing lovers out there, this novel is perfect for your taste. Overall, this is a worthwhile book to read.
Book read (09/07/08)
★★★★