Blogroll

Book Review: A Free Life by Ha Jin

Some contend that the term literary fiction is so overused and broad, it now amounts to little more than a name for a recent genre. And if you’re an illiterati like me, you might consider literary fiction to be like pornography — I can’t define it but “I know it when I see it.” Applying […]

Book Review: Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories by Steven Millhauser

A number of the characters in the short stories that comprise Steven Millhauser’s Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories don’t look at others straight on or are even hidden in darkness. That seems appropriate. Millhauser’s work tends to present a view of parts of life and the human experience that most others don’t see or for which […]

Book Review: Sting Like a Bee by Jose Torres

Each genre of books — whether literature, history or even sports — has its classics. When it comes to sports in general or boxing in particular, Sting Like a Bee: The Muhammad Ali Story by Jose Torres is unquestionably a top-ranked contender for that designation.

First published in 1971 after the first Ali-Joe Frazier bout […]

Book Review: Yalo by Elias Khoury

Lebanon, particularly Beirut, was torn asunder by the civil war that raged in the country from 1975 to 1990. Both external forces and internal strife contributed to the depredation. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the war is the backdrop and more to Yalo, the most recent work of Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury to […]

Book Review: The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Many people believe the U.S. is in a mess. But the history David Hajdu recounts in his latest book might provide a handy scapegoat: comic books. Stop and think about it. For nearly two decades, the men in the Oval Office — and even longer for Congress — have been of the generation that grew […]