Blogroll

Book Review: Kidnapped: And Other Dispatches by Alan Johnston

America’s tendency to rush books into print after newsworthy, or even not so newsworthy, events has generally soured me on books appearing shortly after the events with which they deal. After all, can the paperback you see in the a supermarket checkout line a month or so after the latest trial of the century really […]

Book Review: The Magic Bus by Rory Maclean

Whether it’s because we like to commemorate anniversaries of events or a perception, right or wrong, that it was a time of promise, we have a seemingly never-ending fascination with the 1960s. With Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail From Istanbul to India, Rory MacLean seeks to explore a somewhat unique element of ’60s culture. […]

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 […]