Books

Book Review: Jim Harrison’s “Brown Dog” — A Shakespearian Spirit in Michigan

December 8, 2013
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Think of these novellas as variations on a common theme: a complicated world is scrutinized through the elemental viewpoint of one of the most memorable characters in American fiction over the past quarter-century.

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Book Review: “My Mistake: A Memoir” — Notes from a Reticent Memoirist

December 5, 2013
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There will be readers who appreciate Daniel Menaker’s brevity and lack of emotional engagement, but for me, much of “My Mistake” reads like notes for a memoir.

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Poetry Appreciation: Seamus Heaney — “You’ll know them if I can get them true”

November 30, 2013
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Throughout his writing, poet Seamus Heaney’s penetrating imagination is one that strives for accuracy.

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Book Review: Fighting the Good Fight for the Press — Publishing the Pentagon Papers

November 29, 2013
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As the individual who quite possibly had the best seats in the house for the monumental legal battle that unfolded over the course of a few weeks in the summer of 1971, James Goodale provers invaluable morsels of insight and information.

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Book Review: “The Hired Man” — A Powerful Novel about the Aftermath of War

November 27, 2013
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Aminatta Forna has given us a novel that belies its modest premise, a book about how the human mind protects itself by not knowing, yet sometimes, due to unexpected circumstances, comes to terms with what it thought it could not.

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Poetry Review: The Unexpected Compassion of German Poet Gottfried Benn

November 25, 2013
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A collection of poems and essays by the admired German poet Gottfried Benn, who, because of his brief association with Nazism, has been absent from our mainstream, non-specialized, English-language view of modern German poetry.

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Book Review: “Some Day” — A Memorable First Novel about Waiting for Love

November 16, 2013
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In “Some Day,” Shemi Zarhin has masterfully woven together a tangle of bittersweet tales and elusive dreams. it is a book that is a pleasure to read and reread.

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Fuse Book Review: “The Measures Between Us” — A Promising But Scattershot First Novel

November 8, 2013
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We are left with a somewhat scattered narrative written in the third person with an omniscient narrator that moves from one inner life to another, sometimes to good effect, and sometimes leaving the reader stranded.

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Fuse Book Review: “The Translator” — A Bumpy Quest Novel

October 31, 2013
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Nina Schuyler’s uneven novel raises some interesting questions in the course of the protagonist’s quest, and there are many fascinating details about Japan and Noh plays and the power of silence.

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Book Review: The Leonard Bernstein Correspondence — A Tour of Twentieth Century Cultural History

October 31, 2013
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So is the book worth reading? Depends how interested you are in twentieth century cultural history, in music and creative genius, in marriage and sexuality.

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