When Nancy writes "I'm sick of Dan Brown's latest blockbuster," what she really means is: "I'm sick of Dave writing about that book; doesn't he read anymore?" So to prove her wrong, I'm putting all thoughts of "The Lost Symbol" aside to review E.L. Doctorow's "Homer & Langley."

Synopsis: Doctorow, a master at reworking history (think "Ragtime" and "The March") tells the tale of a deadly plot hatched by a mystical society and -- oops, sorry, wrong book. Actually, this is a fictionalized account of the eccentric Collyers, wealthy brothers who became recluses in their Manhattan townhouse, loading it with all manner of junk. Doctorow reimagines their lives, and they way they would have interacted with social changes in America.

Review: Doctorow delivers an interesting character study, though blind, introspective Homer ("a person who had drifted through time lacking any capacity to step out of its stream") is crafted more clearly than his disaffected brother. Langley's manic mission -- to develop a newspaper reflecting his view that people and events are replicated through time -- is poignant. It reminds us of the cyclical nature of events the brothers witness: war, discrimination, social revolution.  

Read it if you like: A fanciful touch of history, told in simple, yet thoughtful, prose.

Avoid this if: You're a stickler for history. Doctorow adjusts the Collyers' actual life spans (they died in the 1940s) to include issues such as the Vietnam war and the 1960s counter-culture.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Reviews
        

Author: James R. Ross

Synopsis: Ross explores the question of Jewishness, through groups of people in remote areas of Peru, Uganda and other countries. These groups, including some who claim a connection to the lost tribes of Israel, worship in non-traditional ways but seek acceptance among Jewish and Israeli authorities.

Review: With simple prose, Ross explores the question: What is a Jew? Visiting communities around the world, he chronicles the groups' struggles to get recognition from Israeli authorities, or to immigrate there. His writing is strongest when he questions the political and cultural underpinnings of that struggle. For example, are those who immigrate to Israel left to be "human shields" in dangerous settlements in the heavily near Palestinian West Bank? But he seems to pull his punches when asking whether a racial bias exists among Jewish leaders. And he hews too closely to the Orthodox viewpoint, ignoring the conflicting theories about Jewishness that might be supplied by Conservative or Reform movements.

Read it if you like: Jewish history and books such as "My Father's Paradise."

Avoid this if: You're looking for a deep, scholarly discussion of Jewishness.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Reviews
        

Today in The Baltimore Sun, you'll find a review of "Born Round" by Frank Bruni, who has been the New York Times' restaurant critic. The book doesn't focus on inside chatter about the city's eateries, though Bruni does describe his disguises. Instead, the book takes a hard look at his personal demon: an eating disorder. An excerpt from Diane Garrett's review:

It’s a good thing Frank Bruni is such a talented writer, or “Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater” would be a lot tougher to digest. The outgoing restaurant reviewer for The New York Times writes frankly about gargantuan binges and drastic weight-loss strategies in this alternately rollicking and sobering memoir. A book of comic excesses and culinary appreciation, it ends on a cautiously optimistic note: Bruni mostly has his eating under control but doesn’t take it for granted.

His passion for food, however, remains undiminished.

Bruni has always loved to eat. The author even suggests he was a baby bulimic, describing in vivid detail the time he threw up all over his highchair after being denied a third burger. ... “My parents would later tell me, my friends and anyone else willing to listen that they’d never seen a kid eat the way I ate or react the way I reacted whenever I was denied food,” Bruni writes. “I have no independent memory of this. But according to my mother, it began when I was about 18 months old.” ...

Continue reading "Review: Born Round by Frank Bruni" »

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Categories: Reviews
        

Sunday in The Baltimore Sun, Cornell University professor Glenn C. Altschuler reviews The Wilderness Warrior, a new biography that focuses on Theodore Roosevelt's push to preserve America's wilderness. Here's an excerpt:

In his magnificent and magisterial biography, Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University, celebrates Roosevelt, a Harvard trained zoologist, as a "pro-forest, pro-buffalo, cougar-infatuated, socialistic land conservationist." Between 1901 and 1909, "that damn cowboy" set aside 234 million acres of Wild America for posterity, creating hundreds of federal bird reservations, national game preserves, forests, parks, and monuments. More than his trust-busting or his Nobel Peace Prize, Brinkley demonstrates, these actions should secure Roosevelt’s reputation as one of the greatest presidents in American history.

By mixing Darwinian analysis with cowboy campfire yarns, and establishing himself as a gun-toting Easterner embodying a western ethos, Brinkley writes, Roosevelt was able to persuade congressmen, bureaucrats in the departments of Agriculture and Interior, and millions of Americans that saving "natural wonders, wildlife species, timberlands, and diverse habitats was a patriotic endeavor." When he couldn’t, he went beyond his legal authority (to preserve The Grand Canyon as a public park) or issued "I So Declare It" executive orders.

Continue reading "Review: The Wilderness Warrior" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Reviews
        

Author: Sarah Schmelling

Synopsis: The McSweeney's contributor and D.C. resident has given Facebook a literary makeover. Books and authors including Hamlet, Edgar Allan Poe, Anna Karenina and Ernest Hemingway are introduced to social media -- with varying degrees of success.

Review: The book begins with an invitation to join "William Shakespeare's Admirable, Righteous, Singluar, and Incomparable Booke Club Group," and continues its pithy, saucy tone through Jack Kerouac's profile, in which his interests include "Jazz, spontaneity, the road, steam of consciousness and the mad people."

I especially enjoyed the Dante's Inferno Quiz, in which you can discover which circle of hell you are destined for; and of course Jane Austen's tumultuous affair with the Web site that begins with astonishment at 4,537 friend requests and ends with the literary genius' love of her own wordplay in status updates. And the 20th reunion for the Lord of the Flies is downright devilish -- I can absolutely imagine Jack mocking Survivor (no hunting?!) and working as a script advisor for Lost.

While it's difficult to read this book straight through, I did get a sense of timesuck that always accompanies my time on Facebook, so kudos to Schmelling for recreating the best and worst of the medium.

If you liked: Facebook, MySpace, classic literature, or making fun of every book you had to read in high school, you'll love reliving these tomes through the Internet prism.

Avoid this if: Making fun of Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Oscar Wilde or Emily Bronte raises your blood pressure. No one is safe in Schmelling's social network!

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Reviews
        

I saw Harry Potter Wednesday night in a packed theater, and before I let you know what I thought, I'd just like to share a nice, human connection that I made with a (gasp!) fellow Kindle user!

I know, I know. After Dave's various tirades, you'd think such a thing to be impossible. But in fact, the nice woman next to me was reading from her Kindle while waiting for Potter to begin. I was actually reading from my iPhone's Kindle application, since the clutch I brought was a bit too tiny to carry the actual device.

We soon go to talking about the various Kindles, the reading experience and how great it was to travel with books no matter where you are, and how little space you need to carry them. It was a beautiful thing.

And then the movie started. And if you haven't seen it, or read the book, I'd say just enjoy the pretty picture there and ignore the rest of this post.

Continue reading "Harry Potter: Just waiting for the next chapter" »

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Reviews
        

Author: Sarah Rees Brennan

Synopsis: Set in modern-day England, the story begins with 16-year-old Nick Ryves and his brother, Alan. Their family's been torn apart by the demons they run from, but now two teens are are asking them to fight back to save one who's been marked for possession.

Review: Nick is quite the head case, and you can't really blame him: After all, his day-to-day life running from magicians and demons would drive anyone a little crazy.

The intense loyalty of his brother, whose love he guards jealously from any woman who stumbles into their lives (including his own mother), is just about the only bright spot in their fugitive existance. That, and the huge honking sword he carries at all times. 

The characters and their world are portrayed consistently and realistically, which is always the most important aspect in the fantasy genre, and sometimes overlooked by less saavy writers. And the great big whooper of a family secret in the plot ensures that it's not just all magic, all the time.

I'm looking forward to the next installment in this new series, and many more books from first-time author Brennan. 

If you liked: Holly Black (Tithe), Garth Nix (Shade's Children, Keys to the Kingdom series) or Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson series) you'll enjoy this. Nick's character provides a likewise strong voice, but there's plenty of development to be had.

You should avoid this if: The supernatural just doesn't do it for you. While there is some violence, it never gets too graphic, and the young love angle is kept at a minimum, so if you're looking for a hot sex scene, move on.

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Reviews
        

There's a new children's book from the Michael Phelps/Alan Abrahamson team, whose No Limits chronicled the swimmer's record-shattering performance at the Beijing Olympics. Here's an excerpt from a review of How to Train With a T. Rex and Win 8 Gold Medals, a book that Sun sports reporter Kevin Van Valkenburg approached  cynically:

"I wanted to make a bunch of jokes about a cartoon version of Phelps telling a cartoon Ms. California that everyone deserves the right to get married, and reminding kids that cell phone cameras will be confiscated every time he and his cartoon posse walk into a room. But the truth is - and maybe this is the result of having a kid of my own on the way - I kind of liked it. There isn't exactly a narrative there, and the inclusion of a Tyrannosaurus Rex makes very little sense, even in the illogical world of children's books. But it has a nice message and some cool illustrations by Ward Jenkins. ...

"The main lesson ... is that you need to work hard to achieve your dreams, but it's really a book about math. From 1998 to 2003, Phelps swam 60,000 meters a week, which amounts to 12,480 miles over six years. How does Phelps help kids understand how far that is? With a picture of him swimming to the North Pole and back, and then his coach telling him to do it again. And a picture of him swimming the length of the Great Wall of China three times.

Continue reading "New Michael Phelps book for kids" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 1:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Can someone write too well? Can a prose style be too gorgeous?

Those questions came to mind as I read All the Living, the first novel of C.E. Morgan, a writer who, from her photo, looks to be about 22. Boy can she write.

The novel, which was released earlier this spring to much praise, is set in rural Kentucky in the 1980s, and is about a 19-year-old named Aloma who comes to live with her farmer fiance after his mother and brother die in a car crash.

Aloma was orphaned and sent to boarding school at an early age. She's a gifted pianist, but she doesn't know what she wants out of life, or how to figure it out, and she doesn't have a clue how to connect with anyone else. She can be prickly and spoiled and unlikable without ever being unsympathetic.

Morgan has a great eye. The book is full of unexpected images, such as bats in flight "sloping" down a shaft of air. Here's Aloma's response to a church choir: "Then came her own shuddering response to the sound of their hollered singing, the mismatched pitches rubbing and abrading against one another, the static of imperfect voices. It was not perfection that moved her, only that rub, what others found ugly. She sought the joy of misshapen things."

Wow.

Continue reading "Review of "All the Living"" »

Posted by Mary McCauley at 1:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (34)
Categories: Reviews
        

George Pelecanos has won praise for his hard-edged novels, and his work as a producer for HBO's The Wire. Here is Sarah Weinman's review of his new book, The Way Home, a softer approach to story-telling:

There comes a point in a writer’s career when reviewers start to look not just at the book on the “New Releases” table in the bookstore, but at the body of work as a whole. For crime writers, such summary judgments focus either on specific characters — Chandler’s Marlowe, Christie’s Marple and Poirot, Highsmith’s Ripley — or indelible one-offs, like Eric Ambler’s A Coffin for Dimitrios and Dorothy B. Hughes’ In a Lonely Place. Characters inspire loyalty, passion and debate among readers; one-offs spur re-examination, depending on the time period of discovery.

George Pelecanos, however, is a different breed, because his work is less about specific characters and more about discrete periods. Certainly, all his novels share certain attributes: chronicling urban Washington, D.C., as it was then and now, paying attention to the nuances of racial tensions and togetherness, examining masculinity against the backdrop of criminality, all set to musical soundtracks. But the three early ’90s novels featuring accidental P.I. Nick Stefanos crackle with a youthful energy that sobers up in two subsequent period-heavy quartets, and disappears entirely starting with 2006’s The Night Gardener.

Continue reading "Review: George Pelecanos' The Way Home" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Reviews
        

Sunday in The Baltimore Sun, frequent Read Street poster Mary McCauley will take a look at Steve Luxenberg and his new book, Annie’s Ghosts. In a profile, she describes his "struggle to reconcile the competing parts of himself, to pay his familial duty to his mother while remaining true to the values of his [journalism] profession." In this review, she takes a look at the book itself:

Annie’s Ghosts is an exhaustively researched, often moving testimony to the ties that bind families together — including connections we aren’t even aware existed. The author, Steve Luxenberg, is an associate editor at The Washington Post who has supervised two Pulitzer Prize-winning projects. He brought more than three decades of investigative reporting experience to his quest for information about the crippled and institutionalized aunt he’d never met.

Annie Cohen was born with a leg that was bent and couldn’t be straightened out, and when she was a teenager, the limb was amputated. She appears to have been developmentally disabled, with an IQ that fluctuated between 56 and 73. As she grew older, she might also have become mentally ill; one issue the book raises is the precise nature of Annie’s impairment, when it developed and whether it worsened during her decades of confinement.

In 1940, Annie was sent to a Michigan psychiatric hospital one day shy of her 21st birthday. She remained institutionalized until her death in 1972 at age 53.

But the book is only partly an attempt to reconstruct Annie’s life and examine the social forces that shaped it. Luxenberg also explores why the author’s mother, a kind and charitable woman, engaged in a lifelong attempt to hide her sister’s existence. In the end, there was much that the journalist didn’t learn about his aunt — for instance, he never was able to turn up a photograph of Annie, if indeed, one existed. Readers with a yearning for the feeling of closure provided by fiction are likely to be frustrated by Annie’s Ghosts.

Continue reading "Review: Annie's Ghosts" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

I'm a sucker for coming-of-age novels, perhaps because, at age 51, I'm still stuck in my own much, much, much delayed adolescence. If you don't believe me, ask my mother.

So I gobbled up the audio book version of Francine Prose's Goldengrove. I listen to books on tape in my car, and more often than I'd like to admit, I'd arrive home after work, switch off the engine, but leave the CD player running. I'd delay going inside for 30 to 40 minutes until I reached a natural break in the story. Mamie Gummer, who narrates this audio book, is Meryl Streep's daughter. She demonstrates here that she inherited at least some of her famous Mom's acting chops.

Goldengrove tells the story of 13-year-old Nico the summer she loses her adored older sister, Margaret, in a freak swimming accident. The girls' bookstore-owner Dad and musician Mom are besieged by their own grief, and leave Nico to fend for herself. As the summer progresses, she is increasingly drawn to Margaret's 17-year-old boyfriend, a charismatic but moody artist named Aaron.

It's to Prose's credit that as the pair's relationship turns creepy, the reader never loses sympathy for either teen. They're two lost children, trying to survive however they can. The adults in their lives are either utterly oblivious to their offspring's pain or are unable to help them. The author and actress collaborate to create a pitch-perfect portrayal of a 13-year-old girl. They get just right Nico's adolescent machinations, and the guilty, helpless love she feels for both parents.

Nico will lie at the drop of a hat to get her own way. At the same time, she is acutely aware of how vulnerable her mother and father are. She will do anything in her power to protect the adults who should be protecting her. 

Continue reading "Audiobooks: Francine Prose's "Goldengrove"" »

Posted by Mary McCauley at 5:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Audiobooks, Reviews
        

It's always a good time to remember the men and women who have died to keep us free, but there's no better time than the Memorial Day weekend. Here are some suggested readings:

Leathernecks (Naval Institute Press, $60, 352 pages) by Merrill L. Bartlett and Jack Sweetman. Publishers Weekly praised this significantly updated version of The U.S. Marine Corps: An Illustrated History, noting that the illustrations have been overhauled and the text adds a chapter analyzing the corps' contributions to the war on terror. Newcomers will find even more useful the opening chapter, a survey of marine forces since antiquity, and the comprehensive overview of the U.S. Marines' history, PW said.

We Who Are Alive and Remain: Untold Stories From the Band of Brothers by Marcus Brotherton (Berkley, $24.95, 320 pages) On D-Day, Easy Company parachuted into Normandy and the Germans in a series of uphill battles. Twenty members of Easy Company recall their victories and defeats.

Easy Company Soldier by Sgt. Don Malarkey (with Bob Welch; St. Martin’s, $14.95, 304 pages) The paratrooper recalls the battles he and his fellow soldiers fought after landing in Normandy.

Iwo Jima: World War II Veterans Remember the Greatest Battle of the Pacific by Larry Smith (W.W. Norton, $17.95, 384 pages) Smith interviewed a variety of military men who were involved in Operation Detachment — wrestling a strategic island from Japanese control.

The Box From Braunau by Jan Elvin (Amacom, $24.95, 272 pages) After decades of wondering, the author explored her father’s involvement in World War II. This is father-daughter memoir at its most poignant.

Continue reading "Memorial Day books" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 1:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Reviews
        

Adapting a 447-page novel to the stage is not for the faint of heart, especially a tome with the sprawling nature and epic ambitions of Edna Ferber's Giant, which attempts to chronicle the entire history of Texas by examining the marriage of a cowboy landowner to a white-glove Virginian.

Still it can be done -- just witness the success of a little musical, also based on a Ferber novel, named Showboat, which will probably still be revived in American theaters until, oh, the end of time. Granted, it helps if your creative team includes Showboat's two geniuses, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, and if they punch out catchy little tunes like "Ol' Man River."

The world premiere of Giant, running at Signature Theatre, is a bit of a runaway steer. The first two acts gallop by. When you get to the third, well, let's just say that you wish someone would lasso that longhorn. Looking at the different choices made by the producers of Showboat and Giant can be instructive in the art of making the leap from page to stage.

Continue reading "Edna Ferber's "Giant" -- From Page to Stage" »

Posted by Mary McCauley at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Reviews
        

For an early peek at Sunday's Baltimore Sun, here's a roundup of mystery reviews from Oline Cogdill:

Devil’s Garden by Ace Atkins (Putnam / $24.95/ 368 p.) Before O.J. Simpson and other trials of the century du jour as well as endless news of celebrities acting badly, there was silent film comic Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s 1921 rape and manslaughter trial. Atkins uses this real event as the basis for his historical mystery Devil’s Garden. Atkins’ meticulous research enhances his eighth novel, a look at the fascination with celebrities, the power of the press, dirty politics, voyeurism and the thrill that the early movies brought to audiences. Atkins doesn’t just throw real-life facts into his novel; he skillfully weaves them into a suspense-laden story that serves as a look at the early film industry, an homage to Hammett and his Maltese Falcon, and a valentine to San Francisco of the 1920s. Even if Devil’s Garden has the reader racing to the Web to learn about the real case, Atkins’ gritty take on the era is riveting.

The Last Child by John Hart (Minotaur Books / $24.95 / 373 p.) Johnny Merrimon — a 13-year-old who looks 10 — has learned what no child his age should even begin to think about. His twin sister, Alyssa, is last seen getting into a white van, his father leaves a few weeks later and his once vivacious mother gives into drugs, alcohol and grief. Edgar-winner Hart succinctly pulls together a terrifying, emotionally heartbreaking story that lays bare the extent of human emotions. Hart is an extraordinary storyteller, and his third novel, The Last Child, surpasses his superb first two.

Continue reading "Reviews: Devil's Garden, The Last Child and Intent to Kill" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Reviews
        

This week in The Sun, Towson University English professor Diane Scharper provides capsule reviews of four books with a Maryland connection. The topics range from kids' sports to the Mideast crisis.

Until It Hurts By Mark Hyman (Beacon / 160 pages / $23.95). Sports programs for children aren’t about kids having fun. As Hyman sees it, they’re a means to an end. His latest book offers an eye-opening look at youth sports. from its inception to the present. The YMCA introduced youth sports in the 1880s to encourage moral fitness; by 1903, the Public Schools Athletic League used sports to lower the crime rate; in the 1920s, the American Legion pushed sports to encourage patriotic values. Even Carl Stoz’s Little League, which made its debut in 1939, hoped to promote virtues of sportsmanship — as well as to help Stotz financially. By the 1950s, youth sports was already a monster. Hyman, a Baltimore resident, sportswriter, coach and parent, interviews educators, doctors, major league baseball players, parents and kids who say that children’s organized sports do more harm than good. According to Hyman, it’s about competitiveness, greed, college scholarships and adults wanting to bask in reflected glory.

My Hope for Peace By Jehan Sadat (Free Press / 224 pages / $25). To many Westerners, the Taliban is synonymous with Islam, and burka-clad women are mute archetypes of Arab feminism. Not true, says Dr. Jehan Sadat, widow of former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated in 1981. In this thought-provoking book, she corrects misconceptions about Islam as she examines similarities and differences between Muslims and Westerners. Although Islamic customs are more conservative regarding relations between unmarried men and women, Sadat offers no apologies — given the divorce rate in the West. A Senior Fellow with the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, Sadat does not equate feminism with promiscuity as, she alleges, do many Westerners. She believes one can be a devout Muslim woman while being both emancipated and educated. Her life and example offer eloquent testimony to that notion. 

Continue reading "Reviews: Until It Hurts and more" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Reviews
        

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, W.W. Norton & Company, 247 pages, $23.95. 

Daniel Mueenuddin's In Other Wonders, Other Rooms is an engrossing and often elegiac look at modern Pakistan. The author's tone varies between ironic humor at the machinations of his frantically scrambling characters, to suppressed rage at the waste of human potential. 

To describe Mueenuddin's Pakistan as "modern" is very nearly a contradiction in terms, for the society the writer depicts is breathtakingly feudal. In their ironclad class distinctions and depiction of a rapidly vanishing way of life, these eight linked stories are reminiscent of Chekhov.

The lives of nearly all the characters are entangled in some manner with that of the wealthy land-owner, K.K. Harouni. His status provides protection for his servants and his women (and yes, the two groups often are conflated). For both, he is their reason for existing.

Indeed, the title character of the final story, A Spoiled Man, reminded me of Firs, the ancient footman in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, who is accidentally abandoned by his well-intentioned but callow owners in the play's final scene. Neither Firs nor A Spoiled Man's Rezak, an elderly servant who lives in a portable tin and wooden hut of which he is heartbreakingly proud, ever question their fate or criticize, even in their own minds, the rich families who alternately patronize and neglect them. 

Continue reading ""In Other Rooms, Other Wonders"" »

Posted by Mary McCauley at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Reviews
        

While preparing this post, I soon realized I would have to review the source material right along with the zombies for some of our readers, such as Mr. Rosenthal. So if I start to get a little too gushing, please do tell me. This is, after all, my favorite book with my all-time favorite character, Elizabeth Bennet.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

Most everyone recognizes this as the opening line of Pride and Prejudice. As a 10-year-old, you may read it and believe you've cracked open a romance. Wait a couple of years, and you'll realize you've got some biting satire on your hands.

Now just replace "man" with "zombie;" replace "good fortune" and "wife" with "brains." Not only have you got satire, you've got heroines armed with fast wit and crushingly good manners, slashing undead throats and kicking zombie heads in!

PPZ is at least 100 pages longer than the original book, and those 100 pages go a long way toward creating some clever new plot points and martial arts action. It seems Mr. Bennet has spent his days preparing his daughters for the zombie war, going so far as to gain them tutelage under Master Liu during trips "to the Orient."

Now they are warriors first, women second.

Jane Austen gives you a window into Regency-era caricatures: the scheming wives and daughters, seeing payday instead of a gentleman in front of them; the scheming men looking for the easiest way to fortune; the men and women you know and love who just won't. keep. quiet.

Continue reading "Maybe zombies DO make everything better" »

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Reviews
        

Sunday night at 8, HBO airs The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, a new series based on the books by Alexander McCall Smith. Oline Cogdill, who often reviews mysteries here, calls it "beautifully filmed, beautifully acted and with a source material that it honors." Here are excerpts from her review:

I have long thought these best-selling novels about Precious Ramotswe, the Botswanan divorcee turned private investigator, would make an excellent TV series or movie. ... Certainly, HBO has assembled top talent for its The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. The pilot is directed by Anthony Minghella, Oscar winner for The English Patient. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency was Minghell’s last project before his death in 2008.

American singer Jill Scott seems perfect for the role of Precious. ... Precious isn’t a businesswoman and doesn’t always know what a detective should do, but she is an intelligent woman determined to succeed. ... Her neighborhood is poor and she knows she will never get rich as a private detective. But her wealth comes from her ability to help others. “The lost, the frightened” have a crusader in Precious. By helping others, she helps herself.

Continue reading "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency on TV" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Reviews
        

Sunday in The Baltimore Sun, read a review of Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (And Redeeming Promise) Of Our Country by William Greider. Here's an excerpt from the review by Glenn C. Altschuler, a professor of American Studies at Cornell University:

For decades, William Greider acknowledges, he has played the role of Cassandra, "warning of dire economic consequences ahead and being mostly ignored." ... In Come Home, America, (Rodale / 328 pages / $25.95) Greider reprises his critique of corporate and finance capitalism and proposes new structures for the shattered economy. By turns informative and impractical, provocative and polemical, the book at its best asks tough and timely questions about the relationship among government, public purposes and private corporations. ...

Greider calls for a "popular formation" of citizens committed to confronting politicians "with tough demands and nagging intrusions." If it acquires the requisite scale and skills, he suggests, the formation just might force them to reduce defense spending in the United States to the combined total of the 10 next-biggest military powers. This "modest" proposal, he points out, would cut the Pentagon’s budget by about $180 billion.

Greider is equally apoplectic about the disastrous impact of globalization on American workers. Lower prices for goods, he insists, do not come close to compensating for the devastating losses in jobs, wages and national wealth. Trade deficits make the gross domestic product $1.5 trillion smaller. And the hundreds of billions in debt held by China (and other "emerging" countries) will surely come back to bite us.

In the context of a worldwide recession, alas, Greider’s proposed solutions seem unworkable.

Continue reading "Review: Come Home, America by William Greider" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Reviews
        

I've always been a HUGE fan of Adam Gopnik's non-fiction writing in his books and for The New Yorker. He has such an interesting way of looking at the world that I'll buy virtually anything he publishes sight unseen.

Imagine my disappointment, then, at finding his newest book about Darwin and Lincoln to be tough sledding.

Angels and Ages (Random House / $24.95) is a 211-page riff on a fascinating historical coincidence: Both the 16th U.S. President and the scientist who pioneered the concept of evolution were born on Feb. 12, 1809. And both men profoundly changed the world.

Eagle-eyed readers will note it's shout-out to Baltimorean Daniel Mark Epstein's 2008 book, The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage, and it's "loving and funny" inventory of the contents of the couple's Springfield house.

Gopnik greatly admires Lincoln, whom he describes as surpassingly pragmatic and shrewd. "His rhetorical genius," Gopnik writes, "lay in making cold calculation look like passionate idealism." But Gopnik adores Darwin, and for me the liveliest passages in the book were when the author describes his introduction to The Origin of the Species, which Gopnik read as a teenager at the behest of his mother, and on the beach.

"It's a Victorian hallucinogen," Gopnik writes, "where the whole world suddenly comes alive

Continue reading "Review of Adam Gopnik's "Angels and Ages"" »

Posted by Mary McCauley at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Reviews
        

In Sunday's Baltimore Sun, read reviews of two poetry collections with Maryland connections. Here are excerpts from Diane Scharper's reviews of Voices by former Maryland poet laureate Lucille Clifton (at right) and I Heard God Talking to Me by Elizabeth Spires, who teaches at Goucher College.

Voices (BOA Editions / 59 pages / $22.95) Although National Book Award winner Clifton is a woman of few words, she makes each of them count. Her latest book continues Clifton’s tradition of autobiographical Zenlike poems showcasing an instinct for the evocative image and the just-right ending. Most of the poems personify inanimate things as well as plants, animals and deceased family members. Several poems concern growing up a black woman in a white culture. ... Each section explores the ways the poet relates to voices: from those spoken by inanimate objects to those remembered to those "overheard" in the titles of pictures. Serving as a medium, the poet speaks not only for those things that have no voice, but also for the feelings associated with them. All of this is rendered in Clifton’s trademark sound of black colloquialisms. as if spoken by Basho. With no capitalization or punctuation, these poems get their message across through brevity, white space and line breaks as well as Clifton’s genius for hypnotic rhythm.

I Heard God Talking to Me (Farar, Straus & Giroux / 56 pages / $17.95) Spires’ latest book offers short poetic characterizations of the primitive sculptures and tombstones by William Edmondson, an illiterate artist who heard and saw God speaking to him beginning in his early teens. Accompanied by black-and-white photographs of Edmondson and his carvings, the book has a warm tone and a narrative drive — somewhat reminiscent of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. The fascinating story these poems tell is not about the deceased so much as it is about the individual monuments and their relationship to the carver. ... [Spires] quotes from Edmondson’s descriptions of his work as she skillfully imagines what these carvings might say. Figures like "Adam and Eve," "Three Crows" and even an "Angel with a Pocketbook" speak plaintively as Spires subtly captures the essence of their profound yet simple existence.

Photo courtesy of St. Mary's College of Maryland

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Reviews
        

This week, Baltimore author Laura Lippman releases her new book, Life Sentences. As part of the launch, she'll appear Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. at the Charles Village Barnes & Noble and at 7 p.m. at the Enoch Pratt Central Library. Here's a review by Oline Cogdill, who writes regularly on mysteries for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and often contributes her views here:

A memory can be fragile, fleeting and not all together reliable, but it also can have the power to sustain a life commitment. Several people can experience the same event at the exact time, yet each have a different interpretation.

These vagaries are at the crux of Baltimore author Laura Lippman’s engrossing 14th novel. Not a conventional mystery, Life Sentences is a stunning look at the mystery of life and the gulf between people. Taking her fourth break from her usual heroine, private detective Tess Monaghan, Lippman again shows why she is one of today’s most important authors. Life Sentences is a fresh look at contemporary relationships filtered through the prism of memories, racism, economics and jealousy.

Cassandra Fallows’ two memoirs about growing up in a racially-charged Baltimore in the last 1960s have brought her money and fame. The true stories of this white girl and her four black friends and her father’s remarriage to a black woman were well received, but her novel has barely earned modest sales. Cassandra’s idea for another nonfiction may be her way back to the best-sellers list. What happened to her grade school classmate, Calliope Jenkins, who spent seven years in prison for refusing to answer questions about the disappearance of the infant son she was suspected of murdering?

Continue reading "Review: Life Sentences by Laura Lippman" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Reviews
        

I do believe this is a first in my life: I liked the film version of Watchmen much more than the graphic novel. And I like the original a lot.

Of course, I went in with low expectations, so while I may have been easier to impress than our esteemed reviewer, Michael Sragow, I have to say the movie made me want to go back and read the graphic novel again. And not to nitpick, but to revel in the series' mood and relive all those little moments again.

The moments I didn't want to relive? The film actually improved upon!

Warning to those who haven't read the graphic novel or seen the movie yet: Major plot points ahoy!

For instance, I thought the original ending was a jumbled, convoluted piece of work. Why does the villain create a fake alien monster to squash NYC, when he can simply frame Dr. Manhattan? Everybody's already scared silly of the guy, so USE that fear.

And the movie version does! It's a simpler evil plot, and exactly what I would expect from the smartest man in the world: You can't defeat a godlike man? That's OK, just make him the boogeyman and leave him emotionally shellshocked. No alien invasion needed.

Continue reading "Who watches 'The Watchmen?' Me. And I loved it." »

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Reviews
        

Sunday in The Baltimore Sun, read a profile of Philipp Meyer, 34, who grew up in Baltimore's Hampden neighborhood and is winning acclaim for his first novel, American Rust.

The profile by Mary Carole McCauley begins: "It wasn’t apparent to anyone for the longest time that Meyer had hopped the freight train to success — just like the protagonist of his acclaimed debut novel, American Rust. ... For starters: despite a stratospheric I.Q., Meyer dropped out of high school at age 16. After three tries, he elbowed his way into prestigious Cornell University. After graduating, Meyer worked as a trader on Wall Street and made piles of money before deciding that he wasn’t cut out for a life of empty materialism. So he quit, moved into the basement of his parents’ home, and picked up odd jobs in construction. Then, Meyer, who had been writing seriously since college, sold his first novel for $400,000, winning praise from The New York Times and The Washington Post."

In Hampden Meyer learned about a man came to the aid of a friend in a bar fight, shot someone, and wound up dying in prison. He told McCauley: “That was when I began to think about how an awful choice becomes the best choice someone can make. Growing up in that neighborhood and seeing the struggles of all these working-class folks and lower-class folks, I began to realize that their morality was shaped by their circumstances. ... I learned that people who might not get a lot of credit for being deep thinkers, may have rich and complex visions for their own lives that might not be apparent on the surface.”

Reviewer Diane Scharper, a Towson University English professor, says the book is reminiscent of  Faulkner. She writes: "The characters manage (and fail to manage) their complex lives in run-down neighborhoods, where they get drunk, argue, fight, have sex, find and lose hope, kill murder (by accident), attempt suicide and run away. ...

Continue reading "Philipp Meyer and American Rust" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Thanks for all the great suggestions for breaking out of my reading rut. I started with a couple of bite-sized French books that I came across at the Sun (by French authors, translated into English). Both sounded intriguing.

Report on Myself, a memoir by Gregoire Bouillier, tells of a Parisian life of artistic dysfunction -- or is it dysfunctional artistry? Born to bohemian parents who were emotionally -- and at times physically -- absent, Bouillier grew up with a quick temper and a somewhat unhinged moral compass. His search for love and stability is painful, both as a child and an adult. But Bouillier's honest self-examination makes the reading worthwhile.

It must be difficult to translate a work that is so introspective. And there are a few clinkers -- in talking about a mysterious childhood illness, the word "malarkey" is used, and it seems incongruous for the time. But generally the 161-page tale, told in fragments that shift between childhood and adult life, moved well. Both the humor and pathos come through.

One poignant example: "When the voices left me alone, another kind of frenzy would take hold of me: writing everything that happened to me in the margins of whatever newspaper I got hold of ... . Because in the midst of the others in this demeaning world, I was trying to send out news of myself, in order to reassure the whole world about myself and not disappear altogether."

Beyond Suspicion by Tanguy Viel promised to be a noir gem. It's the tale of a ne'er do well couple reaching for the big score. Only 170 pages, it reads longer, or at least denser, because much of the prose is delivered in long stretches that twist, turn and loop back on themselves. I didn't mind that. In fact, the translation was so well done that even such complex sentences were clear.

What I did mind was the shallow development of the main character, who narrates the tale. When the plot begins to boil, he acts in a way that seems totally out of character. It's less a twist than a total absence of foreshadowing. I was also annoyed by the couple's lack of common sense. As their crime unfolds, they leave a trail of clues that any beat cop who has watcheda few NYPD Blue re-runs could unravel. It drained the story of its suspense, and left me unsatisfied.   

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Reviews
        

In Sunday's Baltimore Sun, read a review of The Agency by Ally O'Brien. Carole Goldberg, a former books editor at The Hartford Courant, calls the book "a delicious mash-up of chick-lit and thriller." Excerpts from her review:

If you have hitherto regarded literary agents as mousy types, Ally O’Brien will change your view. ... Chief among these miscreants is our heroine, Tess Drake — smart, ambitious, impulsive and sexy, and possessed of a singularly dirty mouth and snarky attitude. She’s also a bit slutty, as she will tell you.

Repeatedly. This gets her into plenty of hot water, but she relishes splashing around in it. That is, until she makes the mistake of falling in love. Tess is not the only piquant female character. ... There is Cosima, who hates Tess and takes over the agency where they both work when its head, Lowell Bardwright, is found dead after what looks like a session of erotic asphyxiation gone wrong. ...

Continue reading "Review: The Agency" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 5:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Reviews
        

I want to start off this review by telling you that if you like Dave Eggers or his literary journal McSweeney's, you will like this book. Stop reading and go buy it or check it out, now.

The rest of you still with me? OK.

I myself don't really like Dave Eggers. 

BUT in this book, G. Xavier Robillard takes that Gen-X mindset, mixes in some hipster disdain and adds superpowers. Basically, if Eggers had superstrength, could fly and predict the weather, this would be his memoir. And I love it SO MUCH MORE than his actual memoir, which bottomed out about of a third of the way through.

Captain Freedom: A Superhero's Quest for Truth, Justice and the Celebrity He So Richly Deserves, is Robillard's first novel, (He also contributes to, surprise!, McSweeneys.net) and it is endlessly entertaining in a pop-psychology kind of way.

Captain Freedom is a modern-day superhero, who has more trouble dealing with sponsors and finding his arch-nemesis via Internet hating sites than he does fighting crime. His life as a superhero reflects our reality-TV world that obsesses over gossip and status rather than right and wrong.

This is exactly what satire is supposed to be: cutting, yet light.

Robillard is a guy who looks at the world around him, really understands what motivates people and then completely skewers it. Nearly every paragraph is a punchline, and if it isn't funny yet, it will be by the end of the chapter.

So the rest of you? You can go get this book now, too.

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Reviews
        

In Sunday's Baltimore Sun, read David L. Ulin's review of Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch (Little, Brown / 416 pages / $30). Here are excerpts from the review:

Gooch opens Flannery ... with a lost moment: an account of how when O’Connor was 5, the Pathe newsreel company sent a cameraman to her home in Savannah, Ga., to film a chicken she had trained to walk backward. ... 

"O’Connor’s screen debut," Gooch writes, "exists in all its fragility in a Pathe film archive. For all of four seconds, O’Connor, a self-possessed little girl, is glimpsed in glaring afternoon light, a wisp of curls peeking from beneath her cap, calmly coping with three chickens fluttering in her face." Here we have a stunning metaphor for not only her writing but also her existence: brief, glancing, almost impossible to pin down.

Flannery is just the second full biography of O’Connor. (The other is Jean W. Cash’s Flannery O’Connor: A Life.) It’s not that plenty hasn’t been written about her; O’Connor has, Gooch tells us, "become a one-woman academic industry," subject of countless dissertations and critical studies ... .

Yet 45 years after her death at 39 from lupus, O’Connor resists biographical treatment,

Continue reading "Review: Flannery by Brad Gooch" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Reviews
        

In Sunday's Baltimore Sun, read short reviews of three books with a local connection: In the Shadow of the Master, The Nanticoke, and The Glen Rock Book of the Dead. Here are excerpts from the reviews by Diane Scharper, a Towson University professor of English:

In the Shadow of the Master, edited by Michael Connelly (William Morrow / 389 pages / $24.95). For the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth, the Mystery Writers of America has published this collection of 16 of Poe’s best works with often-insightful commentary by well-known mystery writers. ... As Stephen King, Laura Lippman and others discuss their indebtedness to Poe, one realizes the extent of his greatness. A master of suspense, Poe influenced everything from French Symbolist poetry to tales of ratiocination.  (Here are more Read Street posts on Poe.)

The Nanticoke: Portrait of a Chesapeake River by David Harp and Tom Horton (Johns Hopkins Press / 124 pages / $29.95). Although crabbers, fishermen and oystermen ply their trade on the Nanticoke, most of the river serves no purpose other than as a source of natural beauty. That’s more than enough, according to former Baltimore Sun reporter Horton and former Baltimore Sun photographer Harp. ... Part memoir of Horton’s years growing up near the river and part travelogue — documented by more than 100 color photographs — the book is a paean to this chief river of Delaware and Maryland.

The Glen Rock Book of the Dead by Marion Winik (Counterpoint / 108 pages / $20). A collection of very short essays memorializing the dead, Winik’s latest was inspired by Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. But instead of fiction, free verse and cynicism, Winik, a University of Baltimore professor, offers memoir, prose and warmth — expressed with precise evocative details. 

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Reviews
        

In Sunday's Sun, read a review Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers by Chauncey Mabe of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Some excerpts from the review: Successful people, Gladwell says in Outliers, his third book, are the product not of genius, or talent, or ambition, or even hard work. ... Aha! So that’s how Gladwell, a middling writer for The New Yorker, became a literary star with an ill-deserved reputation as an original thinker, able to command a $40,000 speaking fee.

Gladwell follows a strategy honed at The New Yorker and perfected in his previous books, The Tipping Point and Blink, best-sellers both. He surveys the work of researchers and genuine thinkers, connects some dots (not all of which fit comfortably), coins some cool phrases, and presents it all in a breezy style.

That’s not to say Outliers isn’t a pleasurable, modestly informative way to spend a few hours, in the manner of a Discovery Channel documentary. Gladwell explains why star hockey players are almost always born near the beginning of the year, why Bill Gates became rich and famous, why Korean airline pilots used to have a propensity for flying perfectly good airliners into the ground, why so few people with extremely high IQs win the Nobel Prize.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Reviews
        

Michael Phelps is an American hero. He's the greatest Olympian of all time, the fastest swimmer who's ever lived and he didn't let a little thing like ADHD stop his dreams.

Of course, the world knows how, with his mother, two sisters and lifelong coach by his side, Phelps smashed nearly every swimming record there is in the world.

Unfortunately, none of this saves his latest book, written with sports journalist Alan Abrahamson.

Part of the problem may be that with 24-hour news coverage for an intense two weeks this summer, it was nearly impossible to escape the Phelps fever. If you were anywhere near a television, you saw detailed accounts of every meal Phelps ate, every lap he took, every heartfelt glance he shared with his mother.

The other part of the problem is that the book is written horribly.

For die-hard Phelps fans, swimming fiends or Olympic historians, I'm sure this book is essential. For anyone else in the world, it's a waste of time, albeit a short one.

The book is organized in chapters that loosely correspond with each gold medal race Phelps swam in Beijing, flitting through time and space so that many times I had no idea what relation a certain event had within the timeline.

Continue reading "Michael Phelps may not have limits, but this reader does" »

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 6:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Reviews
        

I'll get right to it: Though I saw flaws in Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, which won the 2008 Man Booker Prize, I liked it much more than Nancy did. The commentary on India's caste system rang true for me, and echoed the racial struggle in books such as Invisible Man and Native Son. (Adiga notes his indebtedness to Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright and James Baldwin in a Q&A that follows the story.)

My biggest complaint: the artificial device used to begin the book, a letter being written by protagonist Balram Halwai to China's premier. It doesn't do much to move the book forward, and peters out as the narrative picks up speed.

But I liked Adiga's fast, loose writing style, and his descriptive phrases. "A white man's body is like a premium cotton pillow, white and soft and blank. My father's spine was a knotted rope, the kind that women in villages use to ull water from wells... "

The book is a manifesto, an indictment of India's caste system.  Adiga does not simply blame the British, who once occupied the country. He also puts responsibility on the shoulders of Indians -- rich and poor -- for maintaining the system.     

Continue reading "Review: Dave's shot at The White Tiger " »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Reviews
        

 Dave and I thought it would be fun to review a book after we'd both read it. His choice? The 2008 Man Booker Prize-winner The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga, who just so happens to be a journalist, published at The Wall Street Journal and Time.

The story is narrated by an Indian "entrepreneur," Halwai. Halwai relates his story to the prime minister of China, writing to the man after hearing that he is visiting India. Halwai, a man from a lower caste, decides that the prime minister isn't going to learn the truth about India unless he hears it from Halwai himself. 

The catch? That company Halwai owns and operates was purchased with money he stole after murdering his employer.

So let's go beyond the obvious issue of a wanted man corresponding with the prime minister of China, in which he admits to his whole sordid crime. It'll make the rest of the book a lot easier to get through. But it does lead to my least favorite literary character: The unreliable narrator.

Sure it's fun, seeing exactly how many grains of salt a reader will swallow before the gig is up, and they reach for a refreshing new read. And following a madman into the darkness of his own soul can be plenty illuminating. But my problem with this guy is that he's not even charismatic. He's just a bore.

Continue reading "Review: I survived "The White Tiger"" »

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Reviews
        

On the book page of Sunday's Baltimore Sun, you'll find Liz Atwood's review The Widows of Eastwick By John Updike (Knopf/320 pages/$24.95). Here's an excerpt from the review:

It’s been 30 years since the three witches haunted the sleepy town of Eastwick, R.I., under the tutelage of the devil incarnate, Darryl Van Horn. In their prime, the three divorcees teased lovers, taunted rivals, explored their sexual and mystical powers and lounged around in Horn’s hot tub. But even witches grow old. Do they still have what it takes to make magic?"

John Updike, one of America’s greatest living novelists, reprises the memorable characters from the Witches of Eastwick — Alexandra, Jane and Sukie — in this story about the need to cling to life in the face of deterioration and death. Updike has a knack of turning what might seem sophomoric tales into grander explorations of life’s greater truths, and he does so again here as the aging witches confront the loss of their powers.

While Widows is a sequel to Updike’s 1984 popular novel, readers need not have read the first to appreciate what has become of the once lusty and powerful trio. Each conjured up husbands and went their separate ways — Alexandra to the desert in New Mexico, Jane to Massachusetts and Sukie to Connecticut. Widows begins with Alexandra, the oldest and most earthy of the witches, who has recently lost her cowboy-potterer husband. ... 

Continue reading "Review: The Widows of Eastwick" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Reviews
        

 I want to start by saying I REALLY hate clowns. So receiving mail with a big scary clown doing a Mona Lisa impression is not the best way to endear me.

Luckily, William P. Tandy has refreshing writers with good stories on his side. But for my sanity, Tandy, please avoid the evil clown faces in the future.

Personal highlights from this issue include a collection of vignettes detailing the life and times of a Baltimore bartender, an unholy rat jihad, a haunting piece of poetry courtesy of Susan Beverly and a treatise on football that will make any diehard fan reconsider their disdain for the comic-book geeks in their life. Benn Ray's got your number, No. 1 Ravens Fan.

Curious about this zine thing I keep blathering about? Share your own mini-story about Charm City with us, and get a chance to win one for free. Sure, they only cost $3, but I know how much you guys like winning stuff.

Dave and I will pick the best story and send the zine your way.

Anecdotes including scary-big rats, hons and similarly only-in-Baltimore run-ins encouraged to apply. And I apologize for the clown -- I'll try to avoid such illustrations in the future.

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Reviews
        

Charles Colley's first novel, as you read yesterday, has been a long time coming. And the first thing you'll notice while reading it is that he knows every inch of his characters, for good and bad. Every paragraph, while sometimes a bit too Dickensian in detail for my taste, is used to surround the 3-dimensional characters within it -- with love, with tragedy, with vindication.

I won't pretend to understand World War I-era Baltimore very well, but Colley has mastered the trick of time travel. I fell in love with his Baltimore, feeling just a touch of nostalgia and then pride in my city. I walked away with a new appreciation for Charm City and its inhabitants.

Likewise, I'm no expert on the experience of growing old, but following the tortured protagonists Jesse and Jim throughout their lives, you start to feel the wear of the ages. The story centers around these two, as Jim twists his life around to accomodate the love of his life, Jesse. She spends her life helping everyone she can, sometimes to the detriment of her life with her husband, and all the while fighting the ghostly voices she hears in her head and the unexplainable visions that become all-too real.

Eventually, Jim has to help his wife be rid of these voices once and for all, and in attempting to save her he may have to sacrifice his own sanity, or life.

I'm not sure if it's simply a side effect of growing up with a family of storytellers, or the familial basis of the events, but Colley never holds his characters at arm's length -- you know exactly where they're coming from and why. It's refreshing to see an author who doesn't fall into the trap of writing with such an air of detachment that the reader may be thrown out of the story altogether.

It's no surprise that I'm a fan of the more supernatural themes, as long as they're used as a vehicle and not a gimmick. Colley succeeds in using the ghost story to showcase the relationships in his novel, not to overpower the story with fancy tricks and deus ex machina.

There is drama, conflict, suffering and redemption, with no quick fixes for any involved. It feels real, and for any book that delves into the otherworldly, that is indeed impressive.

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 8:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Reviews
        

In case you missed it amid the Obama-mania, the Taste section reviewed three new cookbooks that offer solutions for time-starved cooks. Here's an excerpt from Jill Rosen's review of More Fast Food My Way by Jacques Pepin, Jamie at Home by Jamie Oliver and The Modern Baker by Nick Malgieri:

Pepin, the gourmand, vows everything in his book is fast and easy. Oliver, the spiky-haired U.K. chef known for laid-back cooking, says he really means it this time with Jamie at Home. Even Malgieri, bound by the science of baking, swears The Modern Baker will save people so much time they’ll want to bake every day.

Pepin, reached by phone in New York where he was recently promoting his book, thinks his latest volume will appeal to anyone who wants fresh, nice food “without working too much.” Homemade, he says, is overrated. ...

Continue reading "Cookbook review: Pepin and friends" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Reviews
        

I should have seen this coming. Whenever Brad Pitt gets involved with a project, the whole world pays attention.

And so, ahead of the Christmas Day opening of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: The Movie, we get The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: A Graphic Novel.

Now, I knew going into it that Fitzgerald has Baltimore ties. But I didn't know this little tale was actually set in 20th-century Baltimore.

With every throwaway line about Charles and Monroe streets and Mount Vernon Place, I got a little thrill. This must be what's its like for Manhattanites whenever they go to a movie.

I read this in one sitting, and it was absolutely charming. I really appreciate it not only for the creativity -- which ties the fantastical so closely to reality -- but also for the flexibility it shows on the part of Fitzgerald. There wasn't a jazzman or boozy flapper in sight.

The origins of the short story, as explained in the afterword by Donald G. Sheehy, a professor of English, lie in a Mark Twain quote.

Continue reading "Fitzgerald like you've never seen him" »

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Reviews
        

I, like millions of fanboys and girls on this earth, love Neil Gaiman. His writing is concise, if not always its meaning, and his attraction to the macabre and bizarre makes for some fresh storytelling.

For tried and true fans, The Graveyard Book does not disappoint.

(I know, I know, I said I'd get started on the new Lippman collection. I was just cleansing my reading palate before jumping back in, I swear.)

I mentioned Gaiman last week, for his star status in the comic book world. But he doesn't pigeonhole his talents -- although we do have him to thank for the source material of that abysmal Stardust movie. Stardust has the distinction of being the first and only movie that I've walked out on, and I still don't care how it ends.

But please, don't judge him for that trainwreck. Instead, give this book a try.

Continue reading "Neil Gaiman the next Rudyard Kipling?" »

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Reviews
        

... because otherwise I may be run out of town for the following sentence.

 I don't like Laura Lippman's writing.

Well, let me clarify, which is another way of saying, let me hedge my bets. I don't like THIS Laura Lippman book.

With Bouchercon coming up, I thought the least I could do was read some classic Lippman, in preparation for the festivities. Lippman's returning to Baltimore as a guest of honor, and they sure are excited to have her.

So I picked up What the Dead Know. I chose her 2007 mystery detailing the 30-year-old cold case on two missing sisters, rather than a Tess Monaghan classic, because I wanted to get a feel for the writing, not just a character. And in the past I've picked up a mystery novel from a series, and grew quickly annoyed that the lead of the story far surpassed the plot.

So I began. I was looking forward to some suspense, some twists and turns, and some amazing characterizations. After all, this is Laura Lippman. Instead, I found myself wondering why the heck this wasn't a short story.

Continue reading "I sure hope Mobtown has outlived its moniker ..." »

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Reviews
        

Continue reading "Latest from Laura Lippman" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

 I bit the bullet. I e-mailed the fine friendly folks at Amazon, and requested a Kindle of my very own (for two weeks). The packaged arrived at The Sun before my vacation was even finished, and I have to admit I was excited to open it up and get started, even though I went in with major doubts.

 And so this past week I've sacrificed my books, I've read a user manual, I've read Stephanie Meyer's Twilight, all for you, my Read Street constituents.

OK, maybe I'm exagerating a bit...it wasn't THAT bad. But as one co-worker noted while walking by my desk, "A Kindle? That doesn't seem like your style."

Regardless, I'm a professional. So I approached this assignment as professionally as I knew how: with a pro-con list.

Continue reading "My week with Kindle" »

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Reviews
        

Over on the New York Times book blog, there's a spirited debate about the perfect novel. Suggestions have ranged from the well-read -- The Great Gatsby is an early favorite -- to the obscure (Herb ‘n’ Lorna).

I don't get the excitement over Gatsby, but maybe it's just because I can't get the white-clad Robert Redford and Mia Farrow out of my head. If pressed over a couple of glasses of wine (that seems to how the Times debate started) I might pick All the King's Men.

But let's start at the beginning: Can there be a "perfect" novel, and if so, what is it?

I'll throw in another question: Is there a perfect book club novel? My pick here (and maybe overall): Cold Mountain.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Book Clubs, Recommended, Reviews
        

In this Sunday's Sun, check out a review of two new books about Barrry Goldwater.

Flying High, a highly enjoyable read by the late William F. Buckley Jr., focuses on Goldwater's role in the 1950s and 1960s in taking over the moderate Republican Party. It also tells of Buckley and his cadre of young conservatives, who were trying to create the right wing's own version of Camelot. 

For a closer look at Goldwater's career in the 1970s and 1980s, try Pure Goldwater, edited by Barry Goldwater Jr., a former congressman, and John W. Dean III, the White House counsel who testified against Richard M. Nixon in the Watergate hearings. They selected the senator's words, often explaining the times and context, and his journal entries, letters and speeches. 

Aldso, get a roundup of crime fiction, including The Dirty Secrets Club by Meg Gardiner, who has drawn high praise from Stephen King. Gardiner, a talented writer making a name for herself in Britain for her Evan Delaney novels, has created an appealing, entertaining thriller about a series of bizarre murder/suicides in San Francisco.

Sunday on Read Street, a look at the week's new releases.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Reviews
        

 If you really want to understand Charm City and the charming people in it, you've got to get your hands on a copy of Smile, Hon, You're in Baltimore.

Editor William P. Tandy's handcrafted anthologies on city life, told by lifelong residents and those who love it from afar, will guide you through the best brews in town, the toughest neighborhoods you can live to write about and even close encounters with a ghost or two. According to the Web site, there are now 14 zines about nearly every aspect of our fair city.

Skin Deep continues the at turns entertaining, appalling and resonant trend. With poetry, history and some stunning first-person accounts, the 58-page zine is sure to hold your interest, tattooed or not.

High (and low) points include a tribute to a tattooed soldier who died in Iraq; some Smalltimore ink solidarity in Gibraltar; a horrifying narrative describing a tattoo removal; and a hilarious look back at young love and its end, courtesy of an Elmer Fudd on Romeo's rear.

As for what inspired Tandy's latest issue, in which he shares his own experience under the needle, he says he wanted a Mobtown twist on something that's caught his attention: reality tv.

"I sometimes enjoy watching the tattoo reality shows for the stories that clients bring into the shops. But most of these people come from places like Chattanooga or Duluth, and their stories are more rooted in those places than they are in any vacation spot," he says. Meanwhile, "we have our own museum devoted to the subject.

"With Skin Deep, I wanted to offer Baltimoreans an opportunity to tell the stories behind their tattoos while saving them a plane ticket to Miami."

So go pick up a copy, and if you're so inspired, share your own Baltimore experiences. 

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 4:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Reviews
        

Indiana Jones is the love of my life. My boyfriend has learned to deal with this, mostly because Dr. Jones is a fictional character, but this week has probably been particularly hard for him.

After nearly 20 years, my (movie) boyfriend is back, and I might be going a little bit crazy.

I'm not talking about the weeklong party, including decorations, nightly viewings and a serving of monkey brains I forced my friends in attendance to eat. (No animals were harmed, it's simply strawberry goo). I'm talking about the mass-marketing gurus who have totally suckered me into buying all kinds of crap I don't need.

Indiana Jones m&ms? Check. Little paper Indiana Jones fedoras? Check. Indiana Jones Cheez-its? Check. The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones? Oh, you know it.

I spotted it in the bookstore, squealed like a 10-year-old, and didn't even try to defend my purchase -- until now. How can I resist a publication that includes Short Round's illustrations of how he conquered the Temple of Doom?

The Lost Journal, which even has some pages intriguingly "ripped out" is a fun read for the slightly obsessed, or those who want to reacquaint themselves with the whip-wielding, Nazi-killing, ancient-language-speaking adventurer. It covers some ground that the television series and movies didn't address, gives some insight into the adventures we all know, and brings you up to speed on what Dr. Jones has been up to since the last movie. But you can probably live without it.

And that's what I'm here for, folks. I'll be the marketing dupe so you don't have to.

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Reviews
        

Here's a preview of the Books page in the Arts & Life section. You'll find:

     -- A review of The Lincolns, Portrait of a Marriage by local poet and biographer Daniel Mark Epstein.

     -- Capsule reviews of crime fiction audiobooks. Betrayal by John Lescroart, read by David Colacci; Killer Heat by Linda Fairstein, read by Blair Brown; An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear, read by Orlagh Cassidy.

Online Sunday here. 

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

James Frey was last seen in 2006 squirming on Oprah's couch after acknowledging that he had made up large parts of his memoir, A Million Little Pieces. Now, he's back with a work of fiction (quick learner, eh?) and is all over the media touting Bright Shiny Morning.

Reviews range from admiring to scathing. The New York Times said he "stepped up to the plate and hit one out of the park." In a profile, Vanity Fair called the book "satirical, tense, and surprisingly touching," but said it was at times scattered. The Los Angeles Times was blunt, calling it a "literary train wreck without even the good grace to be entertaining."

Whatever. Even if every critic in America loved the book, I wouldn't read it. I've seen too many journalists and newspapers devastated by fabrications (Jayson Blair and the New York Times, Janet Cooke and the Washington Post) to give Frey a pass so soon. Two years off the lecture circuit, followed by a   book release -- that seems more like probation than punishment. Yes, the guy deserves a second chance, and yes, he seems to have the talent to do great things.

But others will have to tell me about them.  

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Reviews
        

 Cam Northouse of Clayton Fine Books offered these largely Chicano authors to those who enjoyed Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me Ultima:

• Dagoberto Gilb. This Los Angeles native enjoyed critical and commercial success with 1993's The Magic of Blood. The collection of short stories set in the Southwest won the PEN Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award. Publishers Weekly describes his latest offering, the novel The Flowers, as "hilarious and thought provoking as it traces the bigotry and alienation among the wildly varied cast of characters."
• Sandra Cisneros. Since 1984's beloved The House on Mango Street, Cisneros has proven herself as a deft poet (Loose Women) and writer of short stories (Woman Hollering Creek). Her 2002 novel Caramelo was reviewed in The Sun as "a sprawling, raucous affair that weaves together several generations of la familia Reyes. ... It's an exuberant celebration of family folklore."
• Oscar Hijuelos. New Yorker Hijuelos was born to Cuban immigrant parents, and is the first Hispanic to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction -- in 1990 for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, which has since been made into a feature film and a Broadway musical. The Sun called his 2002 A Simple Habana Melody "a rippling, teasing, occasionally poignant retellling of one Cuban composer's life. ... the book has a feeling of a delicate but delightful trifle."
• Gary Soto. Soto has written poems, novels, children's books and even a memoir. He earned the 1993 Andrew Carnegie Medal for The Pool Party and was recognized as a National Book Award finalist for 1995's New and Selected Poems, which Publishers Weekly described as "lean and avid," gathering "an impressive force with their quick rhythms and recurrent images."

(Photo by lusi at stock.xchng)

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 4:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Check It Out, Recommended, Reviews