A couple of weeks ago I renewed my subscription to Netflix, just in time to catch the new documentary about American author and essayists Joan Didion. It’s an excellent tribute, very entertaining. C.J., who normally only watches You Tube videos about old English houses, loved it. He was even inspired to try reading some of Ms. Didion’s essays. And I was inspired to pick up … Continue reading A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion
I may be the only person you know who has read all three of Danzy Senna’s novels. There’s a memoir and a collection of short stories that I’ve not read so I can’t call myself a super-fan, but I’m a fan-boy. I might even have to confess having something of a crush, an author-crush, on her. New People, like her previous two novels, deals with people … Continue reading New People by Danzy Senna
It’s good. I enjoyed it. It’d didn’t exactly knock my socks off, but I was entertained. A couple of points…. First, have you noticed, lately, the prevalence of the two plot structure I call What’s Happening/What Happened? In this structure there are two plots, one that is happening in the novel’s present and one that has already happened in the novel’s past. The two plot … Continue reading The Nix by Nathan Hill
My current passion for cool cover art led me to this book while browsing at Book Town Books in Grass Valley. The pulpy nature of the story is countered by the classy sophistication of the cover art. But what does the art here have to do with anything? The book is about a hardened criminal released from a post-apocalyptic prison so he can drive a … Continue reading Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny
Jess Walter’s novel The Zero takes place in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks in 2001. The hero is a policeman assigned to the disaster site in the months following the building’s destruction. When the novel opens, he has the job of taking V.I.P.’s on private tours of Ground Zero or The Zero. Soon, he is involved in a clandestine investigation into the disaster itself … Continue reading The Zero by Jess Walter
I teach two sets of 7th grade English to GATE students this year, so when I found a partial class set of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea in the back of the book room, I thought why not give it a go. See what happens. What follows is my advice for anyone considering using The Old Man and the Sea with … Continue reading How to Teach The Old Man and the Sea to 7th Graders
I confess–I thought this books was going to be about Lincoln in France or in a French hotel or neighborhood, maybe in New Orleans. So I wasn’t all that anxious to read it. Plus, it’s historical fiction which I’m frankly a bit biased against. But it looked like a quick read and since I needed something I could finish before Monday when I planned on … Continue reading My New Favorite Book: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
You go to pick your three-year-old daughter up from her first day of pre-school. You wait with all of the other mothers, none of whom you know since you are new in town and on your own, as they watch their children come down the stairway. You wait. And wait. But your daughter does not appear. You look for her, for her teacher, but you … Continue reading Bunny Lake is Missing by Evelyn Piper
Visited the local Friends of the Library book sale yesterday, in the rain, where C.J. and I managed to spend much more than we intended. He got several art books and a couple of books full of house plans while I nearly completed my Jane Austen collection. Can you name the book I still have to find. I’ve decided it’s a good time to re-read all … Continue reading Sunday Ramble and Two Books I Didn’t Like. Sorry.
I really liked this book. Nnedi Okorafor’s fantasy epic Who Fears Death is something of a cross between Ursula K. LeGuin and Octavia Butler if both had grown up in Africa. The story follows Onyesonwu, a young woman living in what must be a post-civilization North Africa. Her culture is clearly based on Africa and the setting is a vast desert like the Sahara, but there … Continue reading Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
Three things. First Ben H. Winters’ new novel Underground Airlines certainly works as a thriller. Fans of his earlier series The Last Policeman will not be disappointed, though there may be a certain sense of de ja vu. While Underground Airlines is set in an alternative America, one where slavery never completely ended, the main character an escaped slave forced by a government agency to hunt down other escaped … Continue reading Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters
Claudia Rankine was all the rage at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs national conference in Los Angeles last spring. Her keynote address was sold out, the extra room where you could watch it all on video projection was sold out. She was huge. I had never heard of her, so I didn’t go. Probably a mistake, in retrospect. It’s difficult for me to … Continue reading Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
May Contain Spoilers 