- June 19, 2015
- 3:34 pm
- Al Gini
- no comments
Summer Book Bag
Summer Book Bag
Al Gini
Loyola University Chicago
• Summer Time: And The Living is Easy, or so they say!
• It’s Vacation Time, Down Time
• Books for the Road, for the Plane
• Books for front porch, or the backyard.
• Philip Kerr
The Lady from Zagreb: A Bernie Gunther Novel
What a concept, a German policeman and private detective who is dragooned into the SS internal police, but he is not a Nazi. He feels sorry for Germany and its People and deplores the brutality shown to Jews and others. And, here’s the twist, he somehow survives. He somehow uses his position to do good. He somehow finds the balance to still be a decent humor being in a mad, mad world. (Book 10 of series.)
• Richard Price/Harry Brandt
The Whites
This is a cop’s honor story. Five buddies on the job together. They share the risks, the share the highs and the lows. They take a little, they break the rules a little, but they are still cops and they have standards. This is a story of how and why cops sometimes take the law and justice into their own hands when they system can’t do it.
• Barry Strauss
The Death of Caesar
A history that is a mystery and a piece of investigative reporting. There is no question who killed Caesar. (Hint-“Et tu Brutus.”) The question is why was he killed? He made Rome, Rome. He was loved by the crowd. He was a success at the levels of war, finance and politics. So, why kill the “golden goose.” Barry Strauss tells a tale that will keep you fascinated.
• Ruth Rendell
The Girl Next Door
The late literary Queen of English mystery writers (She died May 2015). Her books are not about the murder, but the motivation and the morality behind murder itself. This is a story and a murder that happened in WWII, but was not discovered until 50 years later. The players are all alive and the question is who done it and why. The moral perhaps: No bad deed every goes unpunished.
• Martin Amis
The Zone of Interest
Set in Auschwitz, this is not about the horror and pain of the prisoners that were brought there. This is about the people who are in charge. This is about the jailors, the officers of death. It’s about their families, their private lives, their ambitions, their hopes that if they do a good job here and be honored and promoted. This is a paradoxical look at life, love and ambition-in there shadow of the crematory. The author is not making fun of the horror of their campus; he is rather highlighting the famous dictum: The Banality of Evil.
• Richard Flanagan
The Narrow Road of the Deep North
In 1943 Australian POWs were forced to build a military railroad between Thailand and Burma. These prisoners worked 12 hours days, on four handfuls of rice and a little water. Half of them died along the way. Those who survived were never able to completely forget the horrors they saw and experienced.
This is a story of heroism, stamina, and a window into both the dignity and depravity of the human spirit.