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Currently ReadingRecently Read | Imagine 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 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 PostI’ve commented before on the fact the New York-centric publishing world seems to have more than a bit of disdain for the reading public outside that world. Part of it is a sense of an essentially pretentious perspective, one that seems based on the notion that if you aren’t part of the “literary” world you [...] Tim February 9th, 2012 | Tags: Books, fiction, illiterati, reading | Category: A Reading Life | 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 PostSeeking redemption, let alone finding it, can be a long and tortuous path. But what happens if Jesus Christ — or at least a man claiming to be Jesus Christ — is making suggestions here and there? That’s the road on which Nikolaj Jensen is set in Danish writer Lars Husum’s first novel, My Friend [...] Tim December 5th, 2011 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, Review Copy, world literature | Category: Book Reviews | 2 comments - (Comments are closed) | Print This Post | Email This PostI’ll be honest. Brenda K. Marshall started out with a couple strikes against her. First, she is from North Dakota. Second, she has since moved to one of those areas where people tend to call this “Dakota,” without regard for north or south, and may either shake their heads or seem astonished to meet someone [...] Tim November 7th, 2011 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, historical fiction, Review Copy, South Dakota history | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostSome historical events take on such significance they become ingrained in a nation’s culture. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is one such event. In part because of the conspiracy theories that have grown up around it, nearly 50 years later we still see a variety of books, both novels and nonfiction, published about [...] Tim October 31st, 2011 | Tags: 1960s, Book Reviews, conspiracy theories, fiction, Religion, Review Copy | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostIn an Oxford lecture earlier this year, literary critic James Wood suggested that the “New Atheists” might be well served by looking to the modern novel. He says atheists — and some Christian fundamentalists — insist too much on polemic literalism. Novels, he said, are a vehicle to explore theological arguments and make real the [...] Tim October 3rd, 2011 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, Religion, Review Copy, world literature | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostGlenn Kleier’s new novel, The Knowledge of Good and Evil, may confound a few readers. On the one hand, it is a novel of ideas, some rather esoteric. On the other hand, it is an action-based thriller. How a reader reacts may depend on which approach they prefer. The book is Kleier’s first since the [...] Tim September 8th, 2011 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction | 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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