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"Tales from Earthsea" by Ursula Le Guin is the fifth book in the Earthsea Cycle. If you've never heard of the series, it was a trailblazer in fantasy / speculative fiction for its Taoist influences and its subversion of many common tropes of Western high fantasy. This book is not one narrative but five short stories of varying lengths with an informative appendix giving some information and facts about the setting. I loved the first four books (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Far Shore, Tehanu) but to me, "Tales of Earthsea" really sets the entire series apart as a landmark in speculative fiction. These stories deepen the world-building in new and unexpected directions with characters that are complex and with honest emotions. They add complexity for the first four books and set up "The Other Wind," the final novel of the series. All of the short stories are excellent but I especially enjoyed "The Finder" and "Dragonfly." All five stories show off Le Guin's excellent writing and prodigious imagination.

"Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man" by U.R. Ananthamurthy is an masterful Indian novella sitting at the bridge between a realistic work and an allegory. Written originally in Kannada (a South Indian language) and translate by A.K. Ramanujan, the work deals with the relationship between religion and the experience of life as lived. The work can be read by someone with less of a background in Indian religions but a familiarity with Indian society helps. The edition by Oxford India Perennials does include some helpful notes but the translator (A.K. Ramanujan) keeps them to a minimum.

Samskara is a tricky Sanskrit word to translate. As the afterword of this edition notes, it can mean "a rite of passage or life-cycle ceremony," "forming well, making perfect," "the realizing of past perceptions," "preparations, making ready." This multivalent word is appropriate for a deeply complex novella about transformations of many sorts and the shaking of firm certainties and ideologies. The plot of the novella is deceptively simple. a small, decaying Brahmin village in Southern India runs like clockwork to the rhythms of rituals and rites.The community is overseen by Pranesharcharya, the kindly chief priest and the "Crown Jewel of Vedanta." Also in the village is Naranappa, who is initially portrayed as the exact opposite of Praneshacharya. He drinks, eat meat, lives with a low caste woman, and refuses to follow the rituals and customs of the village. At the start of the novella, Naranappa is found dead and the two simple questions are raised: is he still a Brahmin and if so, who is to burn his body? The quest for an answer will lead Praneshacharya to die to himself and be remade by his wide-eyed experience of the world.

What make the novel strong is the way in which the novel is so sensory. You get a glimpse into the psychologically complex world of Praneshacharya who wrestles with the changes he is undergoing. You smell the rotting body of Naranappa. You feel the hunger (physical and psychological) of villagers waiting for an answer. You feel the lust and desire of multiple characters for the things of the world. The artistry of the author in crafting a novella that shows so much in 117 pages makes this a fantastic work of literature that should be read by people living outside India.

"Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War" by Tony Horowitz is part travel book, part meditation on the power of historical memory. Centered around trips the author took around the American South to sites associated with the American Civil War, the author examines how the war continues to exert an oversized role on the American psyche, even among people whose ancestors would have never have had any role in the conflict. Horowitz was a journalist willing to become close to his subjects and one of the best parts about this book are his interactions with groups of hardcore Civil War reenactors striving to capture the authentic experience of the war in increasingly elaborate fashion. At first, I thought the book might be a little outdated (written in late 1998) but as I went on, I really felt that he capture something quite unique about American identity and the idea of remembrance that would make this book interesting for students of American history and society but also for anyone interested in the idea of history generally.

"Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood" by Trevor Noah is an engrossing, deeply personal memoir by one of the world's top comedians. It goes beyond mere autobiography and, with Noah's characteristic humor and grace, tells the story of a young man seeking his place at the end of Apartheid and the birth of a new South Africa. At the center of the story is Noah's relationship with his mother-one of the fiercest ladies every put to paper. While it has a serious heart, the book is hilarious and I found myself laughing hysterically at many points. My only complaint is that the funny moments are funny but at times, I felt a like I was reading a stand-up routine written into narrative form. I've read a few memoirs in the past where I felt as if the author had recorded himself and wrote it down as a transcription. But it was the moments where the book is more reflective that it shines. Very recommended.

"next to normal" by Brian Yorkey (Music by Tom Kitt) is one of the most emotionally vivid pieces of theater I've read. The winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, "next to normal" is a work of honest, raw feelings and emotions carried forward by a dri...ving rock score and well-drawn, three-dimensional characters. The play centers around a suburban family (father, mothers, son, daughter) dealing with the mother's depression and bipolar disorder. The mother is vivacious and damaged, the father is stoic and tired, the son lively and malicious, the daughter a perfectionist living in his shadow. The subject matter alone makes the play stand-out but what takes it to a higher level is its pure honesty. All the characters are three-dimensional and react in real, fully realized ways to the situations put before them. You really get the sense that these characters have full, rich lives beyond the confines of the play and are not merely created for our own entertainment. The lyrics are not necessarily clever but convey that honesty of feeling and action. The narrative is unique in that its course of action is not inevitable but is merely one way in which these characters could have reacted to such difficult circumstances. While I have not seen the play and only listened to its score, I can say without reservation that the work is a profound and excellent piece of theater.