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Currently ReadingRecently Read | I grew up in an era when people still wrote letters. In fact, I remember my mother sitting down at least once a week writing to friends and relatives out of town, many on a weekly or biweekly basis. Today, though, letters are more rare. We tend to rely on email or text messaging to [...]            Tim April 30th, 2012 | Tags: biography, Book Reviews, history, nonfiction, Review Copy | Category: Book Reviews | Leave a comment |  Print This Post |  Email This PostShifting political tides are frequent and cyclical enough that they’ve earned their own label — pendulum politics. One party and its policies are in. The pendulum swings and another party and its policies dominate. Rarely, though, does the pendulum swing as much as the scenario in which Ken MacLeod plots Night Sessions, the winner of [...] Tim April 17th, 2012 | Tags: Book Reviews, Review Copy, sci-fi | Category: Book Reviews | Leave a comment | Print This Post | Email This PostImagine arriving in the afterlife and discovering the analogue to a Gideons Bible is a guidebook urging you to leave. At least in Anthony Weller’s The Land of Later On, the power(s) that be in the afterlife apparently believe that life, so to speak, is better reincarnated back on Earth as an entirely different [...] Tim April 2nd, 2012 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, Review Copy | Category: Book Reviews | Leave a comment | Print This Post | Email This PostThose who study literary theory view World War I as a key element in the development of modernist literature. And while French author Raymond Radiguet published only one novel before his death at age 20, that work, The Devil in the Flesh, is a prime piece of evidence for this viewpoint. It’s not surprising that [...] Tim March 26th, 2012 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, Review Copy, world literature | Category: Book Reviews | Leave a comment | Print This Post | Email This PostCreative or literary nonfiction has wide boundaries. Some contend it is nonfiction that happens to use the “styles and techniques” of literature while remaining true to the facts. In other words, writers don’t make things up, they style things up. Others believe those literary techniques include creating dialogue or giving characters various attributes or thoughts [...] Tim March 5th, 2012 | Tags: Book Reviews, creative nonfiction, crime, Review Copy | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostIt’s a question that appears on a number of state applications to obtain a license to practice law. Do you currently have any condition or impairment which, if left untreated, could affect the ability to practice law? While it seems simple, some of the questions it can raise are not. What are the chances someone [...] Tim February 28th, 2012 | Tags: Book Reviews, Law, memoir, mental illness, nonfiction, Review Copy | Category: Book Reviews | One comment - (Comments are closed) | Print This Post | Email This PostWar crimes trials are a 20th Century invention. Although a vehicle for punishment and, perhaps, the reestablishment of the rule of law, one has to wonder the extent to which individual defendants truly acknowledge any real guilt. This is seen in the autobiography written by Auschwitz camp commander Rudolf Hoess while in prison following [...] Tim February 21st, 2012 | Tags: Book Reviews, Germany, history, nonfiction, Review Copy, World War II | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostI love it when I stumble across a book that ends up being a gratifying read. That’s what happened with The Evening Hour, Carter Sickels’ debut novel. I saw a short review of it somewhere but don’t remember what it was that prompted me to put it on the reserve list at the library. Even [...] Tim February 13th, 2012 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This Post“A human being, like a dog, can get used to anything!” So says Adam Salmen, a fictional narrator in Dieter Schlesak’s The Druggist of Auschwitz: A Documentary Novel. But what Salmen and others imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II got “used to” is staggering, so much so that it continues to [...] Tim January 30th, 2012 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, Review Copy, world literature, World War II | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostAlthough I’ve only read three books this year, my early effort at spontaneity over planning in my reading selections means two of those books were biographies of two women at about the same time. They resulted in impressions as different as the subjects. On the disappointing end of the spectrum was Eva Braun: Life with [...] Tim January 12th, 2012 | Tags: biography, Book Reviews, history, nonfiction | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This Post |         The views expressed here are mine and mine alone. I do not speak for my law partners, our associates, staff and clients or my family and friends. Not only should any opinions here not be attributed to them, chances are they probably don't agree with me.  | ||
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