Books

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.

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…

Children’s Book Reviews: Fall Is Here

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

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.

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.

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.

Book Review: Alexandria’s Sphinx — “Constantine Cavafy: A New Biography”

August 26, 2025
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Unable to place Cavafy in a holistic context, momentum is never sustained. Key points remain scattered, unintegrated.

Book Review: “A Dog in Georgia” — The Gap Between Privilege and Peril

August 21, 2025
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This is a well-crafted story about the gulf between well-off Americans who can safely ignore power politics in their daily lives (and how many of us are doing just that!) and those at the edge of being oppressed or crushed by them. 

Children’s Book Reviews: Toddler Times

August 13, 2025
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Three new books from Candlewick Press highlight the everyday lives of toddlers and their loved ones.

Book Review/Commentary: Let Us Summon as Much Generosity of Spirit as We Can

August 12, 2025
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To be silent in the face of cruelty is to be complicit. And I refuse to be complicit. Surely we have to recognize that there are differences in taste. But to skewer another writer with such precision and glee? That is beyond the pale, especially in these perilous times.

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