Andrea Avery started piano lessons while still a little girl. Wonderful things happened right away. Her fingers raced over the keys. Her brain understood the tricks to be performed. Her heart fell hard for Mozart and then Schubert. The trouble came on all the nights, all the mornings, when Avery woke up stiff, swollen, overheated. Her mother, a nurse, took copious notes of every [...]
Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s Island People: The Caribbean and the World is not a book about your cruise-ship islands. Expect a reporter’s observant eye, trained on these mini-cultures formed by sugar and slavery. He includes the history, with scenes of Columbus sailing up to these islands. He also covers the foal-like stumbles of tiny nations trying to run themselves after breaking free of their colonial overlords. [...]
So Sanders is your guy eh? As you might guess, this upsets me. The youthful ignorance of history displayed by his passionate supporters is deeply unsettling to watch. Many news sources assure us all that most Americans don’t favor socialism. This doesn’t comfort me a bit. The rapid rate at which we’ve gone from “loony fringe socialist sympathizer” to “major political party about to [...]
I used to read Mormon blogs addictively, in spite of disagreeing with much of what their writers had to say. Many take issue with the Church’s “Proclamation on the Family.” I believe they miss the mark and speak my mind here. We’ve enjoyed ourselves a sexual revolution because technology sweeps the short-term consequences away. I wouldn’t bet, though, on escaping the long-term consequences, even [...]
If you have any use for author biographies (and I do) and you are able to hold up five pounds of book with one spread-open hand in, say, the bathtub, you may enjoy Martin Stannard’s Muriel Spark: The Biography. We’ve discussed Spark’s Memento Mori here. You can expect more of her novels to come up on this blog. And you can always catch the [...]
Author Jane Alison introduces us to her best childhood friend, Jenny, in her memoir, The Sisters Antipodes. In fact Jenny’s and Jane’s families strike up the kind of friendship that has them barbecuing together every evening. After all, they have so much in common. Both fathers are diplomats, one Australian, one American. Both families have two girls, who pair up as same-aged playmates. Then [...]
This one’s for you, Broadway fans, and we mean the Broadway of Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet. In Kitty Carlisle Hart’s memoir, Kitty, the reader peeks backstage through the eyes of a woman who was married to one of Broadway’s biggest movers and shakers. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Kitty Carlisle, aka Catherine Conn, was the daughter of a New Orleans Jewish doctor [...]
“Ever wonder why 31-year old pro-quarterback Colin Kaepernick and other young people became so alienated from the freest, most generous nation in the world?” asks writer Herbert W. Stupp in the Washington Times last summer. Perhaps it’s the history book used in countless high schools and universities, A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. I first heard of Zinn in this [...]
National Review recently published back-to-back themed issues, the first “In Defense of Markets” and the second, “Against Socialism.” I toss most issues once I’ve read them, but I keep these two around. I would gladly let my fellow citizens vote for all the socialism they like if it didn't obligate me to live with their choices. I’m pretty sure they’d wish to turn it [...]
Raise your hand if you’re Mormon. Keep it raised if you’re also female. Sat through Young Women’s lessons, yes? Keep your hand up. Lessons on marriage and motherhood? As in, this will happen to you? Ah, yes, I still see a lot of hands. Marriage and motherhood didn’t happen? Uh-huh. Only a few hands still up. Just as I thought. Julie Rowse sat through [...]
