AJ Dunn Reads

 Hamlet by William Shakespeare   In Elsinore Castle in Denmark two sentinals and Horatio see the ghost of the dead King Hamlet and rush to tell his son, Hamlet, and to bring him to see it for himself. The ghost tells him to avenge his murder, that young Hamlet's uncle, the new King Claudius who married his mother Gertrude, was the one who killed him. Hamlet delays his revenge as he sinks into sadness and apparent madness. The King and Gertrude try to figure out what is wrong with him, employing two school friends to discover the cause. lord Polonius suggests that Hamlet is mad with love for Ophelia, his daughter, and schemes to discover if this is the case. Hamlet pretends he doesn't love her and looks like he's crazy. When some actors show up at Elsinore Hamlet uses them to get a reaction out of Claudius by having them perform a play that closely resembles the murder he perpetrated against King Hamlet. Claudius does react and Horation and Hamlet decide he is guilty of the ...

  Under the Harrow by Flynn Berry This was a page turner! Under the Harrow follows Nora as she searches for her sister's killer in the small English village of Marlow. Entering her sister Rachel's house one late afternoon, Nora discovers both her sister and her sister's dog murdered; the dog hung form the staircase and her sister stabbed to death and lying in her bedroom. Nora, panicked calls the police and an investigation ensues. Is the killer an ex-boyfriend? An ex-con who previously assaulted her? A neighbor? Nora, herself? Nora, impatient with the pace of the investigation and reeling over the loss of her sister stays in the village and puts herself in potentially dangerous situations in order to track the movements of, and to outright question, several people she thinks could give her answers or whom she thinks may have killed her sister. The atmosphere is tense, melancholic, and masochistic. Nora remembers times with her sister, glossing over the bad parts of their ...

  MacBeth by William Shakespeare MacBeth, a general of the King Duncan plots with his wife to kill the king to become king himself, framing the king's sons. He does this because of a prophesy of three witches, who also tell him that Banquo's heirs will inherit succession. MacBeth decides to kill Banquo even though Banquo was never told he would be king.  MacBeth visits the witches again, who tell him that he will remain king until the Birnam Wood itself marches against him. He scoffs, but becomes paranoid and goes on a killing rampage, murdering many including MacDuff's family. MacDuff has fled to find Malcolm, one of Duncan's sons, and pleads with him to lead an army against MacBeth. MacDuff's army carries branches in front of them to hide their numbers as they march on MacBeth's castle. MacBeth had felt secure before this. In the meantime Lady MacBeth has been walking in her sleep and discloses what was done, and is overheard. She is plagued by conscience and ...

  Heart Spring Mountain by Robin MacArthur Vale, a stripper in New Orleans learns that a tropical storm has wreaked havoc in her hometown in Vermont and that her mother, Bonnie, is missing. The two are estranged, but Vale feels pulled home to find her mother. While there, searching, she reconnects with members of her family as well as family members long deceased, learning a deeply held secret that her missing heroin addict mother knows nothing about. She also learns about her family's buried history, something that reconnects her to the land (and the mountain) she grew up on. The characters include Hazel, Vale's great-aunt who is in the grips of dementia and who raised her mother; Deb, her mother's sister-in-law, who is an aging hippie missing her own son away in Guatemala, and who still hasn't come to grips with the loss of her husband many years before; and Lena, whose notebooks tell of her love affair with her sister Hazel's husband Lex, the father of both Hazel...

  Getaway by Zoje Stage Getaway follows three hikers on a seven day trip into the Grand Canyon. Sisters Beck and Imogen and their friend Tilda get together for a bonding hike into the canyon, leaving the world and their cell phones behind. At first everything goes according to plan and the friends enjoy the beauty and exercise of their surroundings, with some daunting hurdles for some. Beck, the older sister, is a doctor and a lesbian with a wife and child on the way. Imogen, the younger sister, is an author who tends to hide from the world because of a rape she endured years before. Tilda, a Mexican-descent social media maven, is the ex-girlfriend of Imogen's rapist. The two have tensions for that reason, as well as the fact that Tilda has been given a six-figure book deal, much to Imogen's surprise and envy. Unbeknownst to them, Beck has orchestrated the outing as a way to bring everything out in the open and resolve the issues between Imogen and Tilda. Only a day or two int...

  The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones One Saturday before Thanksgiving four Blackfeet men decide to go hunting on tribal elder land where the stumble on a herd of elk. Delighted, they fire into the herd, killing man, including a cow that is pregnant with a calf. The men think they will fill their freezers for the whole year, but are found and fined, losing their hunting rights for a period of ten years. One of the men, Lewis, killed the pregnant cow and her calf, burying it. Years later the men start dying one by one. First is Ricky, tricked by an elk that caused damage to a bunch of vehicles at a bar making it look like Ricky did it. He gets beat to death by the men in the bar. Next is Lewis, living with his white wife and dog off the reservation. Lewis starts seeing an elk woman and devises a scheme to figure out who it is, knowing that something supernatural is happening because of the elk hunt years ago. He harbors a lot of guilt over it. He suspects his co-worker and...

  Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy I had to DNF this book. It just wasn't interesting me at all. Maybe it's the romance elements. Maybe it's just taking too long for anything to happen. I don't know. Maybe I'll come back to it in the future, but for now I'm moving on to something more fun.

  The Waves by Virginia Woolf The Waves follows six characters throughout their lives from childhood to after middle age. Each section is matched with an introduction of a day's cycle of the sun, a metaphor for the rise and decline of a human life. Against all of this is the common theme of waves, a force in constant motion, forever overlapping and pushing forward. The six characters (Bernard, Neville, Louis, Susan, Jinny, and Rhoda) often come together around a seventh character named Percival, who is the only one not narrating. The six alternate within each chapter, except the last which is narrated entirely by Bernard, standing forth with their impressions of their lives as individuals and as a part of the group. This stream of consciousness narrative shows each character's experience of both their interior and exterior world as events transpire throughout their lives, with each character having a distinct worldview and view of themselves that either changes or is reinforce...

  Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia Noemí Taboada visits her cousin Catalina at High Place, an old Victorian mansion high in the misty hills of the Mexican countryside. Her father has received a distressing letter from Catalina with cryptic messages and he thinks she may need psychiatric care. he sends Noemí, a society girl used to dating pretty boys and bantering with those in her circle, to visit Catalina and assess the situation. Catalina moved to High Place after marrying a handsome, cold heir to a silver mine named Virgil who lives at High Place with his elderly father Howard Doyle, his aloof and proper aunt Florence, and his quiet and slight cousin Francis, along with three servants. When Noemí arrives she immediately feels unwelcome and learns this family has a thing with pure heredity, as in pure white English heredity, particularly that of their own family. All is not what it seems. The house is in decay and seems to have a mold problem. Catalins, kept in her room mos...

  On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong One thing is for certain: poets are amazing fiction writers. Although, I think On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous might be classified as autofiction. This is a coming of age novel following Little Dog, born in Vietnam and living in Hartford, Connecticut with his mentally ill mother and grandmother. It chronicles Little Dog's growth from a young boy in an abusive environment to his teenage years where he comes out, has his first romantic/sexual experiences with a farm boy, and learns the power of words through writing. The story is told as a letter from Little Dog to his illiterate mother who will likely never be able to read it. In this letter, he recounts various scenes from his life with her (Hong, or Rose) and his grandmother, Lan. Lan (a schizophrenic) had worked as a sex worker during the Vietnam War and gave birth to Rose, whose school was raided when she was a little girl. The letter is meant to be a catharsis for Little...

 Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King This might be one of those rare instances in which the film adaptation is better than the original book. Cycle of the Werewolf is about the small town of Tarker's Mills during its one-year struggle with a werewolf that has beset the town with a monthly killing. The book's structure is divided into months, from January to December on and around the full moon of each month, and is told in third person following one person's encounter with the beast in each chapter, with only a few recurring characters. The main one being a paraplegic ten-year-old boy named Marty Coslaw. Several people are killed as the werewolf stalks the town. During the fourth of July Marty encounters the beast in his backyard, wounding it in the eye. No one else in the town believes Marty's story, but Marty knows that whoever has a missing eye is likely the beast. It turns out that someone in town does, in fact, wear an eye patch, and Marty starts sending letters...