Books

Book Review: A Killing with Everything But a Body – “Murder in the Dollhouse”

September 13, 2025
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There is a moral to this story, besides the obvious one, that murder is a horrible crime whether the body is found or not. If there are wealthy women with weaknesses to exploit, predators will find them.

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Book Review: “James Baldwin: A Love Story” — An Intimate Biography

September 11, 2025
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We have a biography that reads like a novel in its range and intensity, a biography that forces us to dig deeper into our own preconceived prejudices and understand another man — a famous writer — in ways that neither he nor we might have ever thought possible.

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Book Review: “Clown Town” — Not Quite as Amusing as Expected

September 9, 2025
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Mick Herron’s prose, it must be said, remains top-notch, chock full of puns and timely references, as well as colorful dialogue. But the premise of this successful series of espionage thrillers is beginning to show some wear.

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Book Commentary: Three Weeks Before the Mast — Reading “Moby Dick”

September 7, 2025
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A slow thinker, I read 600 pages into “Moby Dick” before putting my finger on the book’s key tension. It’s between Ishmael’s intense and ecological whale love and the central story which chronicles the wanton murdering of whales, man’s unconcern with destroying the natural world.

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Book Review: “Book of I” — A Gem of a Novel

September 7, 2025
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This novel is as fresh and charming as any contemporary work this critic has read in ages.

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Book Review: “Queer Lens” – Let the Record Show

September 5, 2025
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By Trevor Fairbrother The Queer Lens project made me think about queer culture and camera culture as distinct phenomena that began in the Victorian era: each was a manifestation of modernity. The latest exhibition that Paul Martineau has curated at the J. Paul Getty Museum is titled Queer Lens: A History of Photography and features…

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Children’s Book Reviews: Fall Is Here

September 3, 2025
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Two books that deal with different rituals of autumn.

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Book Review” “Trip” — Tour Through an Undiscovered Country

September 2, 2025
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A giddily inventive, surreally hilarious, and sometimes profound debut novel.

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Book Review: “Film Noir” — Taking an illuminating Walk on the Dark Side of Cinema

August 30, 2025
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Film noir’s penetrating, knowing diagnosis of, and response to, corruption and venality prepares us for the dank turpitude that lurks in places both highfalutin and hidden.

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Book Review: “Eating Behind Bars” — Food For Thought

August 28, 2025
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“Eating Behind Bars” is a necessary if incomplete cry for justice. It earns its place among the growing number of books exposing this country’s shameful treatment of incarcerated men and women.

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