"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
The Garden of Last Days, by Andre Dubus III. A novel about people at the ends of their ropes. The characters are well-developed, the story line vividly gritty and believable, but I felt let down and sleazy afterward, because apart from a secondary older-cop character no one is happy or good or has any real […]
Army of the Republic, by Stuart Archer Cohen For the past two years I’ve been seriously thinking about what American working people might do if the government allows employers to destroy labor unions and cancel pension obligations. I’ve been entertaining fantasies of assassination teams, composed of unemployed and retired auto workers, picking off high-profile CEOs […]
Two books and one movie I hated. Your mileage, as they say, may vary. Trojan Odyssey by Clive Cussler. Four sentences, pulled at random from different chapters, should tell you all you need to know: Now as their objective stood before them it became obvious that unlike the others towns and cities they had sacked, […]
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. I enjoyed Mary Roach’s writing in Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, so I bought Bonk on CD to listen to on long drives. Turns out there’s quite a bit about sex I didn’t know (imagine that). Honestly, you’ll want to experience this work in private […]