'Book Reviews' Category
Vanished Smile
Vanished SmileThe Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa by R. A. Scotti It’s 1911. A hot summer’s day in Paris. The guard at the Louvre is asked where the Mona Lisa is by an avid fan of the painting who is working on a copy. The guard replies that he does not know, perhaps it is [...]
The Partly Cloudy Patriot
The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell I first learned who Sarah Vowell is, not from her books or from her appearances on NPR, but from a short film about her and one of her books that was on the DVD of “The Incredibles.” That film interested me enough to read her books and I [...]
Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F.
Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F. by Stefan Aust I grew up with protests against the Vietnam War and with radical leftist organizations like the Weathermen and the RAF. The RAF were perhaps a little more mysterious because they were in far off and, at the time, divided Germany so I was always interested [...]
The Wordy Shipmates
The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell If you are one of those 28% who thought George W. Bush was doing a great job as president then you will probably hate this book. That isn’t to say that the rest of you will love this book. Beyond her political quips, there is a style to the [...]
The Day Wall Street Exploded
The Day Wall Street ExplodedA Story of America in its First Age of Terror by Beverly Gage Very few people recall the event. Even many of those who every day pass the pock marked wall on Wall Street have no idea what happened there on September 16, 1920. That day a horse drawn wagon full [...]
The Housekeeper and The Professor
The Housekeeper and The Professor by Yoko Ogawa How do we develop relationships with people? What does our memory mean in these relationships? Is it possible to form a relationship with someone who can not remember that he ever met you even though you see him every day? Yoko Ogawa has written a perfect, poetic [...]
That Went Well
That Went Well: Adventures in Caring for My Sister by Terrell Harris Dougan I think what I most hoped to get from this book is, what is it like to grow up with a sibling with a mental disability. I have a teenage daughter who is growing up with a younger, disabled sibling, and I [...]
Sweetheart
Sweetheart by Chelsea Cain A novel doesn’t have to be 100% believable but if an author is going to make the story absurd, she has to at least build up to the absurdity. In this novel the author makes no effort to make any part of the story the slightest bit believable. Right from the [...]
Kentucky Clay
Kentucky Clay by Katherine R. Bateman I got a bad feeling about this book while reading the introduction. The author tells us that she is an historian but she never was interested in her own family’s history even as her parents and grandparents tried to pass down their many stories to her. But now that [...]
The Wordy Shipmates (audio book)
The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell Before I start, I should mention that I don’t really like audio books. I find that I tend to think about what I am hearing. With a book, I can simply stop reading for a moment and do my thinking. With an audio book, it is more difficult as [...]
