Lindsey Lee Johnson. The Most Dangerous Place on Earth. New York: Random, 2017. E-book. Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a … Continue reading The Most Dangerous Place on Earth – Review
John Grisham. Camino Island. New York: Doubleday, 2017. Print. It has been a while since we read anything by John Grisham. This latest work is not exactly the legal thriller he is known for. Perhaps we could call Camino Island an insurance procedural. And like some of his other novels about the law, the stakes … Continue reading Camino Island – Review
Bob Santos. Say Goodbye to Regret. Indiana PA: SfMe Media, 2017. Print. The title promises: Say Goodbye to Regret. Is that even possible? The Great Gatsby tells us: “Can’t repeat the past?” he [Gatsby] cried incredulously, “Why of course you can!” Gatsby’s tragedy is that that is impossible. What is done is over, and we … Continue reading Say Goodbye to Regret – Review
Booth Tarkington. The Magnificent Ambersons. 1918; Project Gutenberg, 16 Sep 2016. E-Book. In what seems like a never-ending quest to find things related to The Great Gatsby, I decided to read The Magnificent Ambersons. Fitzgerald apparently was influenced by Tarkington, another Midwestern Princetonian who had made a splash in the literary world. Indeed, the title … Continue reading The Magnificent Ambersons – Review
Stephanie Powell Watts. No One Is Coming to Save Us. New York: Harper, 2017. Print. I picked this recent release up because a pre-publication review said there were conscious connections with The Great Gatsby, a novel that I often teach. It does that, but in a more subtle way. It is not a retelling of … Continue reading No One Is Coming to Save Us – Review
Steven M. Silverman and Raphael D. Silver. The Catskills: Its History and How It Changed America. New York: Knopf, 2015. Print. One thing immediately striking is this book’s subtitle. I always thought the Catskills was plural—the Catskill Mountains, just like the Rockies for the Rocky Mountains. Catskill Mountain (or “the Mountain”) is just one of … Continue reading The Catskills – Review
Steven R. Schirripa and Charles Fleming. Nicky Deuce: Welcome to the Family. Perf. Joe Grifasi. New York: Random, 2005. Audio CD. Twelve-year-old Nicholas Borelli, Jr., was supposed to go to a posh summer camp for three weeks while his parents went on a cruise. A sudden health emergency closed the camp right before Nicholas’s session … Continue reading Nicky Deuce: Welcome to the Family – Review
Robert Lampros. Eleven Floors. St. Louis: JBS-Publishing, 2015. E-book. Eleven Floors was promoted to me as a young adult book, i.e., appropriate for middle school. While the length and reading level certainly fit that, I suspect that middle schoolers might not consume it heartily. The main characters are college students who are really outside the … Continue reading Eleven Floors – Review
Wilkie Collins. The Frozen Deep. 1856; Gutenberg.org. 2012. E-book. Wilkie Collins may be my favorite author I hardly ever read. When I was a teen, I read The Moonstone. I loved its exotic mystery. A few years ago I read Woman in White—another great mystery. Both books had chapters by various narrators. This gave multiple … Continue reading The Frozen Deep – Review
Caleb Coy. An Authentic Derivative. Chistiansburg VA: Caleb Coy Guard, 2015. E-book. My copy of An Authentic Derivative tells me this was released in August 2015, so this book is hot off the press. Except that my copy is an e-book, so I guess that makes it hot off the hard drive or something. Imagine … Continue reading An Authentic Derivative – Review