I don’t remember when I originally read this book, although I bet it was in high school, since the book has been a staple of the high school curriculum for generations. Rereading it now, almost 60 years later and about 6 weeks before the U.S. Presidential election (2024), I was struck by how eeriely contemporary […]
The basic plot of this novel is memorable, but I reread it to see if there are significant details that I’d forgotten since I read the book way back in high school. What I didn’t remember is the apocalyptic suggestion: that the boys’ plane crashed at around the time when cold-war tensions were escalating and
Review: “Lord of the Flies” Read More »
Related Post: Writing the post about how The Drowning People contributed to my development in reading reminded me to put this novel on my list of books to reread this month. I’m glad I reread it. What I initially remembered was how the gothic elements gave the novel an air of timelessness and oppressiveness. What I didn’t
Review: “The Drowning People” Read More »
Related Post: I’ve been blogging about books since the late 1990s. During that time I’ve thought a lot about why I blog but not so much about how—or rather, how I approach reviewing a book. I’ve put off writing this post for quite a while as I looked back over past reviews I’ve written, especially
How I Review Novels Read More »
Being on a cruise ship gave me the opportunity to have probably the best reading month of my life: 10 books: 8 novels + 2 works of nonfiction. Let the reviews begin! I put this novel on my Kindle because I thought Dave’s 2021 mystery The Last Thing He Told Me was so good: “By repeatedly
Vacation Reading: Part 1 Read More »
Here’s a summary of the book, with a little help from Goodreads: The plot, I admit, is a bit bizarre, but I’m willing to go with a speculative story line that imaginatively examines some aspect of human experience. But this novel disappointed me—not because of what it contains, but because of what it lacks. First,
Review: “The Husbands” by Holly Gramazio Read More »
Set in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, Long Bright River humanizes the problems U.S. cities and their residents struggle with. Formerly a center of business and industry, Kensington is now home to abandoned and decaying former warehouses and factories, remnants of an earlier era when commerce and industry flourished. As the novel opens, a police
Review: “Long Bright River” by Liz Moore Read More »
In honor of International Women’s Day today, here are two novels that feature strong women. I reread the first 11 pages of this paperback to refresh my memory before writing this review. And immediately, I was right back as a passenger on the wild ride of this fictional world. The first clue to the nature
2 Novels to Read for Women’s History Month Read More »
The book is not so much a triumphant tale of overcoming adversity as a howl of fury at the injustice of it all. —the Guardian In this candid memoir Viola Davis details her journey from desperate childhood poverty in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to becoming one of the finest actors working today. “I learned from
“Finding Me” by Viola Davis Read More »
I picked this book up because I interpreted the description to mean I’d get a refresher course in the kind of slow, close reading we spent our time on in grad school. Clark’s stated purpose is to help writers “learn their best moves” by observing how literary writers have used language to produce “the effects
“The Art of X-Ray Reading” Read More »
