“Boy, those French: They have a different word for everything!” ~Steve Martin The Woman Who Fell From The Sky is the story of an amoral American home wrecker who moves to Yemen for a year to be the Editor of an English language newspaper. Ok, the homewrecking bit comes late in the story, but it cast it’s shadow over the entire book for me. Jennifer Steil encounters reporters who don’t read or write very good English, a culture where women are treated as third or fourth class citizens, and the fondness of everyone in Yemen for Qat-the mood altering drug…
Tag: strange new world
One Second After
“I’ll sleep with you for a meatball.” Julia Andrews said in Victor/Victoria. But that deal falls flat when there are no longer any meatballs to trade. One Second After by William R Forstchen is a blow by blow account of how one idyllic little community in the hills of North Carolina becomes a Masada under seige from the rest of America after an EMP attack knocks out all modern electronics. This is a Conservative fairy tale, where everything would have been fine if everyone had voted Republican, kept a stockpile of weapons in the basement, and drove a classic car…