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Book Review: A Russian Journal by John Steinbeck

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John Steinbeck traveled to the Soviet Union not once, but twice. Did you guys know that? I found a reference to it while researching ballerina Maya Plisetskaya for The Dante Deception. A single sentence in one of the articles about her mentioned meeting Steinbeck in Moscow, and I did a double take. I don’t know much about Steinbeck, but being …

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East of Eden: The Final Frontier

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Eat my dust, Oprah. I finished East of Eden last night at 11:21 pm. This book was way more engaging and entertaining than I expected. That being said, I’d give it four stars, not five. It would have been five stars with a couple hundred fewer pages. Lop off 200-300 pages and it still would have been epic. But it …

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Book Review: Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

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In Night Watch, the first in the urban-noir fantasy series by Russian author Sergei Lukyanenko, low-grade White Magician Anton Gorodetsky finds himself caught up in a plot orchestrated by higher-grade magicians to change the course of human history. No pressure, right? I don’t normally read fantasy. In fact, I never read fantasy. Why? Because of Flannery O’Connor. She once said …

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Book Review: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

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My mom and dad always used to get me a box of See’s Candy for Valentine’s Day. Some years, it was the big white variety box. Others, it was the smaller golden box of truffles. Why did they always select the smaller box for the truffles? Because they are rich. (The truffles, not my parents.) They’re not meant to be …