Books

Book Review: “The Dream Merchant” — Gambling with Power and Possibility

April 20, 2013
Posted in ,

Part of what made “The Dream Merchant” so compelling, and at times, harrowing, a read for me are its themes: love, loss, rags and riches, to be sure, but also the theme of aging, and associated loss of power and possibility.

Book Review: “The Virtues of Poetry” — Fascinating But Frustrating

April 20, 2013
Posted in ,

James Longenbach’s ear for the nuances of diction, tone, stress, and the material aspects of poetry is so good, and his grasp of context and biography so assured, one wonders why the essays so often tie themselves into semantic and logical knots.

Book Review: Females on the Frontier of Medicine — Healers in Early Modern Germany

April 19, 2013
Posted in ,

In her groundbreaking study, Tufts University professor Alisha Rankin essentially revises the history of medicine by showing that women, presumed to be marginal in the development early modern medicine, were actually major players.

Book Review: A House of Many Doors — Gish Jen’s Tiger Writing

April 17, 2013
Posted in , ,

Moving restlessly between independence and interdependence in style and content, the lecture captures the changeling quality that Gish Jen associates with those who must creatively manage multiple cultural influences.

Book Review: “The Wanting” — Ambitious and Audacious Fiction about the Middle East

April 16, 2013
Posted in ,

There are so many characters to root for in “The Wanting” that you tend to read with your head swimming, and with an increasing sense of urgency as the senseless is revealed to have a logic of its own.

Book News: Forget the Insufferable “Mr. Selfridge” — Turn to Zola’s “The Ladies’ Paradise” Instead

April 15, 2013
Posted in , , ,

Mr. Selfridge drives me nuts because the storyline, the rise of a mercantile empire, calls for edgy  Darwinian conflict rather than paternal benevolence sprinkled with layers of powered soap opera.

Poetry Review: A Profound Respect for Place — Iraq and the Merrimack Valley

April 14, 2013
Posted in ,

David Allen Sullivan has no combat experience here or abroad, but his verse offers a poignant vision of the sights, sounds, and passions of the Iraq War. Matt Kraunelis replicates the landscapes of his hometown, planting the reader’s feet firmly in the Merrimack Valley.

Fuse News: Sonia and Sheryl —Tips From Successful Women

April 14, 2013
Posted in ,

Maybe Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg had no interest in the requirements of a good book — just its potential use as a marketing tool.

Poetry Review: Lapidary Ends — “Cut These Words Into My Stone”

April 12, 2013
Posted in , ,

This anthology, made up of Michael Wolfe’s superb translations of ancient Greek epitaphs, begins in prehistory and ends in the sixth century C.E.

Book Review: Meet Mikhail Kuzmin —The Oscar Wilde of Russian Literature

April 8, 2013
Posted in , ,

Poet Mikhail Kuzmin, born in the 1870s into a family of Russian Old Believers, was a passionate exponent of gay literature in the early twentieth century.

Recent Posts

Popular Posts

Categories

Archives