Books « A Progressive on the Prairie

Rereading trepidation

I’ve been an evangelist for Maria Doria Russell’s The Sparrow since I first read it in 1996. Although using science fiction as a vehicle, it is a thought-provoking look at philosophy and spirituality. I even have two first editions of it, the one I read and a rather pristine one as a sort of personal [...]

Those heavenly books

I’ve noticed it for a while and it’s been commented on by many but, for some reason, it really got to me this week. Right now, three of the 14 NYTBR nonfiction paperback bestsellers deal with visiting heaven. In fact, one has been on the nonfiction bestseller list for 132 weeks. That’s right: “nonfiction.”

The [...]

Reading restlessness

By the time you read this, it’s likely I will have finished the novel I’m reading. And that leaves me with a bit of trepidation.

That’s because I currently have three nonfiction books sitting around the house with bookmarks in various places. I can read one for a bit but then I get distracted from [...]

May missteps and milestones

I think the fact I couldn’t get settled in with a number of books just before and after Memorial Day contributed to the abandonment of one of this month’s missteps. The other I had actually started once before and, while I made it much further this time, still couldn’t see my way to the end [...]

April missteps and milestones

Nonfiction works constituted both the good and the abandoned this month.

Abandoned:

I Got a Name: The Jim Croce Story, Ingrid Croce and Jimmy Rock — Perhaps I’m too much off a stickler when it comes to nonfiction. Recreating conversations between people is somewhat acceptable in my view but when the only participants are dead, [...]

2012′s most challenged books

Each year during National Library Week, the American Library Association releases a State of America’s Libraries report. One of the highlights (or lowlights) is that it contains the Top Ten List of Most Frequently Challenged Books, compiled annually by the organization’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. So here’s this year’s “winners”, in order, and the reasons [...]

March missteps — and milestones

I am a bit disappointed in myself with this month’s misstep. Enough so that I feel some need to make amends. Therefore, rather than simply identify the books that fail me in a month, I will add those that surprise me or are better than anticipated.

Why am I disappointed about the one book I [...]

February’s missteps

Perhaps it’s a timing thing. Two of the three books I abandoned this month were within a day of each other. Meanwhile, the third raises some interesting questions for me about re-reading.

The month’s first casualty was The History of History by Ida Hattemer-Higgins. The premise of this debut novel was interesting. An American woman [...]

Author values profits over literacy

It is rather stunning. Terry Deary is a children’s author whose books were the seventh most borrowed from British libraries last year. Yet his view of libraries is that “no one has an entitlement to read a book for free, at the expense of the author, the publisher and the … tax payer.” According to [...]

January’s missteps

For as many books as I read each year, I’ve become a bit more persnickety than even four or five years ago. Put another way, I’m finding it increasingly common that while I will generally give a book a good chance, there often comes a point where it’s clear it and I weren’t intended for [...]

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