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 [...]
Remember Asher Lev? We met him here. Since we left off with young Asher, he’s grown up and gotten famous. In Chaim Potok's sequel, The Gift of Asher Lev, we learn that the world knows him for his two paintings of the crucifixion. If you're wondering why a Jew would touch that subject, well, so does everybody else in his Brooklyn synagogue. No wonder [...]
I’ve got a soft spot for novels set off the beaten path. Creosote, Nevada certainly qualifies. Mary Sojourner invents the town for her novel, Going Through Ghosts, centering the action in Creosote’s two-bit casino. The reader immediately meets enough characters to make her feel like a new bride at her husband’s family reunion. Sure hope I can remember all these people. Then one of [...]
And now for a change in our regular programming, this week we feature a story full of spraying bullets and spilling blood. Terror of Living by Urban Waite may remind you of Breaking Bad. Switch out Breaking’s Albuquerque setting for the mountains that straddle Washington state and British Columbia, add in your version of Bryan Cranston and let the troubles begin. The drug-runner protagonist [...]
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 [...]
I spent a week reading the tale of Tessa, the thirty-something travel agent, who was perfectly fine never searching for her adoptive mother until a handsome cowboy lawyer walks into her travel agency one day and announces that her bio mother is looking for her. If that sounds like a romance novel, yes, it is. Wedding Pearls by Carolyn Brown features lovely Tessa, 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 [...]
So, you're pants fit a little tight. Of course they do. But you wouldn't have wanted to pass up those treats the carolers presented to you at your door, nor the cinnamon rolls that make Christmas morning feel like Christmas morning, nor the European cookies they passed around at the New Year's Eve Party. Still, it's time to swear off all the indulgence. [...]
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 [...]
