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Book recommendation

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For anyone out there who likes the Nick Hornby style of infiltrating pop music references into his narrative, read Tom Perrotta’s early novel “The Wishbones“. Also for any of you who don’t like Hornsby’s books, it is more interesting than his books.

Dennis Lehane and the epic novel

When I think of epic historical novels, I usually think that they are too long and poorly edited (that is probably redundant). I also expect them to cover several generations, some of which are rather uninteresting and several decades and events, many of which have no need to be remembered or romanticized.

So when i picked up Dennis Lehane’s latest novel, “The Given Day” and looked to the last page and saw that it said 702 and looked inside the front cover page and saw a cast of characters (but not who would play them in the inevitable movie given the success of his “Gone, Baby, Gone” and “Mystic  River”), I opened the book to read it with some trepidation. Continue reading…

Authors Are Ahead of Politicians

In John Updike’s “The Witches of Eastwick”, Joe Marino was an important character. He resurfaced in an ancillary way in Updike’s recent sequel “The Widows of Eastwick” (excellent book). Joe Marino in the books was a plumber. Once again art was ahead of life.