October 18, 2007 – 7:40 am
I’ve been a relative slackard over the last several months when it comes to actually doing reviews. It seems the only ones I get done are for books sent me for review purposes. As a result, I’m going to try to at least make these book briefs a semi-regular feature.
Clapton: The Autobiography, Eric [...]
October 2, 2007 – 7:50 am
Perspective requires time. With six years having passed since the events of September 11, 2001, we are beginning to see some critical analysis not only of the ramifications of that day but how we responded as a nation. In The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, Susan Faludi provides a unique [...]
September 20, 2007 – 6:59 pm
As I’ve previously lamented, America seems to take an almost chauvinistic approach to literature, displaying little or no interest in works originally written in another language and then translated into English. The potential disconnect with Malvinas Requiem will probably start with the title. Regardless, those who have called it Argentina’s Catch-22 just may [...]
September 5, 2007 – 7:55 am
By virtue of the title alone, Living Blue in the Red States — a collection of 21 “creative nonfiction” essays — seems right up my alley. Here I am about the darkest blue liberal you can get but a a lifelong resident of one of the deepest red states, one which, since supporting FDR [...]
August 28, 2007 – 7:49 am
So often it’s cast as “us against them,” a battle of cultures, West versus East, or even a “crusade,” with all its loaded implications. For several reasons, Tahar Djaout’s novel The Last Summer of Reason demonstrates the error of using such thinking when it comes to radical Islamists. In fact, it shows that [...]
My recent interest in foreign fiction — works originally written in a language other than English — continues to pay dividends. In the last two weeks, it produced two wonderful works, Antonia Arslan’s Skylark Farm and Christian Jungersen’s The Exception. I’ll leave it to those smarter than me to determine if there’s any [...]
It’s one of the sound bites that seems to have continuing resonance: Democrats, particularly liberals, love to “tax and spend.” Yet as reflected in Daniel Brook’s The Trap, the kernel of truth that lies in the epithet is that what liberals really advocate is fair taxation with spending tailored to needs that benefit the [...]
Although certainly the exception and not the rule, science fiction is sometimes viewed as little more than the American western set in space. It tends to stem from placing characters with an independent streak as pioneers or settlers in new frontiers. If you imagine this trope placed in the hands of a British [...]
Writers, like other artists, do not create in a vacuum. Rather, creation often comes by accretion, building on ideas of others to strike out in new or different directions. Ian McDonald’s Brasyl is a marvelous example of such synthesis.
Each chapter contains three storylines set in past, present and future Brazils. Not only does McDonald give [...]
I’m still trying to figure out if the news in the days preceding the release of Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961-1965 symbolizes irony or progress.
As the subtitle indicates, the book examines the first efforts by the U.S. and the Soviet Union to put humans into space. One of the [...]
March 17, 2007 – 11:27 am
We have strange attitudes toward mental illness. Psychological disorders aren’t so bad if they give us characters who entertain us on television (the obsessive compulsive title character in Monk), in movies (the multiple phobias and disorders in What About Bob?) or even in classic literary works (the depression of Winnie the Pooh’s Eeyore and apparent [...]
March 12, 2007 – 12:54 pm
Satire is a dangerous vehicle. There is a fine line between farce and simply being absurd, between making a point and clobbering the reader over the head with it. At times, those lines, particularly the latter, blur for Matthew Moses in his Anti-Christ: A Satirical End of Days. Yet there are probably many [...]
February 24, 2007 – 1:44 pm
Brief reviews of a variety of books which, for whatever reason, I haven’t had the time or desire to write full reviews:
The Black Hills Yesterday & Today, Paul Horsted — A wonderful coffee table book about the Black Hills region in which photographer Paul Horsted found locations from which photos were taken from 1875 to [...]
February 20, 2007 – 8:00 am
We Americans tend to pride ourselves on having — or at least perceiving ourselves to have — an independent or maverick streak. Regardless of whether it actually exists, it also seems to contribute to America seeming to have a perhaps disproportionate share of kooks. And whether you consider them part of a counterculture, a subculture [...]
February 16, 2007 – 7:54 am
Proof that atheism is hot — at least from the perspective of bookstores — hit me in the local national chain bookstore last week. Just a few feet from the front door sits a center cap of new releases on sale. Amongst the dozen or so selections — Victor Stenger’s God: The Failed Hypothesis. [...]
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