Posts Tagged ‘ Book review ’

If you are into dysfunctional family dramas, you will love A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore. It concerns not one but two such families, each with better secrets than the other.
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A quick read, The Recipe Club: A Tale of Food & Friendship by Andrea Israel & Nancy Garfinkel follows the lives of two young, best girlfriends, Lilly(pad) and Val(pal), through the letters they write to each other, accompanied by a recipe that is current to their situation from “Lovelorn Lasagna” to “Forgiveness Tapenade” (don’t...
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If you thought Major League Baseball was scary (just ask this guy), wait until you read Odd Man Out Matt McCarthy’s autobiography about his fiery plane crash of a Minor League baseball career, which included a coach becoming so enraged he stripped naked.  This is not a success story; this is the story of...
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The Privileges by Jonathon Dee presents an amorality tale that unfortunately is more fact than fiction. A well written story about a golden couple who hit it big illegally in the hedge fund racket, spend obscene amounts of money and never seem to reflect.
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You’d think a guy who was responsible for a lot of the things George W. Bush said would put together a series of horror stories meant to be reiterated by Democrats around the camp fire, but Matt Latimer’s Speech-less uses a novel concept in his memoirs of his days as the former president’s speechwriter:...
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Colson Whitehead’s coming of age novel, Sag Harbor, is centered in an upper middle class black summer resort community on Long Island. Because it is probably more fact than fiction, it gives white readers a different perspective on black culture and life than we get from the more popular hood books and movies.
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South of Broad offers the usual larger than life situations and characters we have come to expect from Pat Conroy juxtaposed against compelling narrative and beautiful poetic descriptions. If you have the time and want to be transfixed to the world fiction is supposed to send us to, read this, “Beach Music” and “The...
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You know that globetrotting, people-meeting, mustachioed journalist fantasy you want to live one day? “Generation Kill” creator Evan Wright has lived it, and in this anthology of Rolling Stone pieces, his thorough, widespread writing introduces us to everyone from addicts and misanthropes to heroes and dog-fuckers, deepening one’s view of this sin and song-laden...
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If you are looking for an excuse never to buy a piece of jewelry, you must read How to Sell by Clancy Martin, a novel about two coke head brothers and the world of high end jewels. Probably based somewhat on fact because the author sold jewelry before going to writing school.
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As retribution for their failed uprising against the Capitol, the twelve outlying districts of Panem must send two children to the Hunger Games, an Olympic-like spectacle and horrific form of mandatory entertainment. I dare you to stop reading after the 24 children enter into the large arena knowing they are under constant surveillance and...
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