"My Life and Hard Times" by James Thurber

It's really difficult to finish James Thurber's books.  Almost impossible to read even one chapter at a sitting.  By the end of the first paragraph, I am laughing so hard I just cannot continue.  "My Life and Hard Times" was my Mothers Day gift and it is such a treasure. The book was written by a middle-aged Thurber but of events that  took place before he was 25.  "The...

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"Midaq Alley" by Naguib Mahfouz

I start my new blog with a review of a novel by Naguib Mahfouz, Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1988.  Midaq Alley was one of his early novels set during the Second World War.  The novel is about the residents in Midaq Alley, an impoverished part of Cairo city. The World War has wrought changes in the city: It  brought electricity (the new radio in Kirsha's cafe), it...

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