Hi Naomi, how have you been? I’ll stop by your site to see how your summer went. These books were indeed pretty heavy, so I followed them up with The BFG, which did the trick. Thank goodness I needed something charming & light. 🙂 I haven’t heard of the Madeleine Thien book but will look it up. Thanks.

Yeah Deb, he spent a lot of time studying & training to become a doctor (which was too bad it didn’t fully pan out) — but by his residency he was working on medical cases and with patients and I think he was doing & living how he had always envisioned. I think that’s why he continued on with it that last year. He loved working as a doctor on his cases and he was good at it.

Hi Anne, glad to hear that the audio of The Sympathizer is good and that you’re enjoying it! The Hamlet section is an interesting part of the book! At the end of the paperback in the acknowledgments, you see that the author did a lot of research and reading about the making of Apocalypse Now, which is interesting to find how he did a takeoff of that for The Hamlet. Because I’m reading it for my book club, I’m glad to have been able to mark up a print version. There are a lot of good lines in it. It helped me to keep things clear.

Hey thanks Darlene! How have you been? I’ll stop by your site to see how your summer has been.

Yes Laurel I know what you mean. I thought The Sympathizer was quite a unique book. I haven’t read books like it. It’s a bit dense but worth a read.

Thanks Bryan, yeah I thought Paul’s book was life affirming in that as his wife points out everyone dies and his words were reaching out to others about that process and what everyone eventually faces. Thx for stopping by

Thanks for sharing The Sympathizer with us, too.

Interesting. I didn’t know that Vietnam called the war The War Against America.