Very entertaining, and I didn't know where we were going the whole time. A writer who maybe isn't a very good writer keeps butting heads with a peer, and steals his ideas over the years. Or maybe he's a bad writer who is stealing identities and globe trotting? There are two halves to this story and they tie together so neatly at the end. ( )

A debut novel, the style, substance, metaphors and literary sense reminds us writing is a craft, not an obligation. Kris takes on a personal journey, which I suspect is based on his life, sans the NY college lectures he conducts. Like all good stories, we experience trials and tribulations and the jealousy of two friends who like most, come from different worlds. Relationships key, we learn the importance of leopard spots, an appropriate metaphor for our souls. Two chapters in particular stand out, though my personal choices may not reflect yours. The literary quotes chosen to begin each chapter are carefully selected demonstrating the author's respect, knowledge and wit.

I'm a fan, plain and simple. This is what storytelling and brilliant writing is about; HIGHLY recommended!! ( )

This book, which I'd purchased, was a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award and Honorable Mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award.

The book is written by an original storyteller with a love of language.

This fictional tale of audacious prose stirs the heart and imagination. The settings and scenery ( clubs, theater, villages, cars, college) enhance the plot as we witness the differences between indirect and direct communication.

Throughout the manuscript, we glance at the fallible and untrustworthy narrator who steals identities.

My favorite part of the writing was the juxtaposition between the aspiring novelists' characters which caused me to challenge my perspective.

This story comes full circle at an airport terminal. ( )

I had the distinct impression on finishing Leopards that I'd just spent time - 250 pages worth of it - inside the crazy mind of a writer. I began caring more about the actual craft of writing more than about the fictional (or are they?) characters in the book.

A phrase has been coined for the time I live in: these are "post-truth" times. Identities and narratives are invented and disseminated on the internet. Sifting through the post-truth detritus can be exhausting while people seem more entertained by the allure of invented conspiracy theories and faux news commentary. These times are ripe to delve along with Jansma into an exploration of what is truth, and what fiction?

Did the narrator ever reveal his true name?

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened... -Ernest Hemingway

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. -Leo Tolstoy

The truth is beautiful. Without doubt; and so are lies. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Chapter 1: What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence. -Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus

Chapter 2: Writing, at its best, is a lonely life...For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day. -Ernest Hemingway

Chapter 3: Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Neither can you do good, who are accustomed to doing evil. -JER. 13:23

Chapter 4: What truth? You see where truth is, and where untruth is, but I seem to have lost my sight and see nothing. -Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

Chapter 5: By God, if I ever cracked, I'd try to make the world crack with me. Listen! The world only exists through your apprehension of it, and so it's much better to say that it's not you that's cracked -- it's the Grand Canyon. -F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

Chapter 6: It is good to know the truth, but it is better to speak of palm trees. -Arab Proverb

Chapter 7: The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leavers to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese lobbing around in the sun, in dolce far niente. Not doing a hand's turn all day. Sleep six months out of twelve. Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of idleness. -James Joyce, Ulysses

Chapter 8: [He] met his own image walking in the garden. / That apparition, sole of men, he saw. For know there are two worlds of life and death: / One that which thou beholdest; but the other / Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit / The shadows of all forms that think and live, / Till death unite them and they part no more ... -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound

Chapter 9: It is entirely conceivable that life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, but its right name, it will come. This is the essence of magic, which does not create but summons. -Franz Kafka, Diaries

Chapter 10: Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. - Henry David Thoreau, Walden ( )

Contemporary fiction is just not my thing.