Books: My Top Ten for 2019
In the spirit of end-of-year lists, here are the ten books I read in this year that stand out in my mind.
The End of the World As We Know It
Tell you what, planet-destroying asteroid, you can’t get here quick enough.
Wednesday Bag o’ Moto
The motorcycle trip my son and I have been planning has undergone a metamorphosis. Gregory’s been looking for a motorcycle, and now he’s found The One: a 2014 BMW K1600 GL (that’s it on the left). It’s in San Luis Obispo, California. The plan now is for me to drive my truck and trailer to […]
You Can’t Read That!
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! News & Commentary: In Asheboro, North Carolina, all within the space of a fortnight, Ralph Ellison’s award-winning novel Invisible Man was 1) challenged, 2) banned, 3) reinstated. Would the school board have reversed itself if its actions hadn’t made it a national […]
Tuesday Bag o’ Links
How’s that Nook e-reader I got for my birthday last year working out? Glad you asked. Over the past year my reading has been about 25% Nook, 75% book (I keep a record of the books I’ve read, and I actually counted). That strikes me as about right: e-books cost money and library books are […]
Paul’s Book Reviews: Fiction
“Her new book was on the phenomenon of word casings, a term she’d invented for words that no longer had meaning outside quotation marks. English was full of these empty words – ‘Friend’ and ‘real’ and ‘story’ and ‘change’ – words that had been shucked of their meanings and reduced to husks. Some like ‘identity’, […]
You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review: Slaughterhouse-Five
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. I’m starting with an essay on censorship by Chris Crutcher. Crutcher, an author whose books are frequently challenged and banned from school libraries and reading lists, is coming around to the same conclusion I’ve drawn: that parental book challenges are […]
Paul’s Book Reviews: Fiction & Nonfiction
“Young Lamar Jimmerson went to France in 1917 with the American Expeditionary Forces, serving first with the Balloon Section, stumbling about in open fields holding one end of a long rope, and then later as a telephone switchboard operator at AEF headquarters in Chaumont. It was there on the banks of the Marne River that […]