Posts

Death of a Great Old Oak Tree

Image
Taking a break from book reviews for a post to express something which caused me to lose some sleep last night and to struggle with one of the problems of the city and neighborhood that I live in.  Unfortunately, it is a problem that, to really drill down to the cause of my anxiety, would involve speaking plainly and openly about the general ethnicity of a cluster immigrant groups who comprise over 50% of the city's population.  If I were to provide particular details of this group, I would be called a racist and dismissed as xenophobic.  I am not either.  However, writing on a public platform would elicit this kind of feedback.  So obviously I will not be providing any details except those that are required for the story and event.   About five years ago I was with friends, father and daughter, walking through a wooded section of an arboretum that serves an entire community for both environmental study and management and other recreational activities such ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Book review: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Image
This is the 25th anniversary of the publication of The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen , first published on September 4, 2001 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  This was exactly one week prior to 9/11, a fact that all of the retrospective reviewers now discussing The Corrections will note.  I purchased my paperback edition a couple of years ago because I thought I should read it.  I didn't know about the book's upcoming 25th anniversary and it got stuck, unread, on my bookshelf.  In 2013 I read Freedom which attracted me primarily for the blue bird, a Cerulean Warbler, on the cover.  I knew that Franzen was a birder from reading a couple of his New Yorker essays.   Freedom kept my attention, but there were a few things I didn't like.  It seemed to me to be full of character issues; just one of which I remember was the unlikely relationship between the father character, Walter, with a young Indian woman.  The relationship didn't work for me because,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Book review: How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time

Image
How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter At a Time by Sarah Longwell , publisher of The Bulwark.  St. Martin's  Press, New York, September 2026. This book is hot off the press.  I ordered it in the spring and it arrived, from Barnes and Noble, on Sept. 8, 2026.  I finished reading it earlier this morning and have been thinking about it all day.  I wasn't sure that I would feel confident to write this review.  I feel confident writing reviews of other books on this blog, often simply because I loved the book and enjoy the challenge of the review process.  It is, primarily, why I keep this blog.   How to Eat an Elephant is about politics. This puts it in a different category for me.  I don't read books about politics.  I read newspaper and magazine articles, I listen to podcasts, but I never read books about politics.  Until now.  Well, I did read Abundance ( March 2025) by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson and liked it, but I'm not...
Post a Comment
Read more

Never too late: how I came to finally read The Odyssey

Image
My love of books began when I was a child, too young to even read.  I loved the way a book felt in my hands when I held it, and I loved the look of the words on the page—even though I couldn't read, I knew the words were something important.  I especially liked library books with their mylar covers.  The mylar cover elevated the book to a higher level of importance. Our parents were paying attention and took us on outings, usually on Friday evenings, to our municipal public library. We also had a book mobile that parked in our school parking lot one Friday afternoon each month.  When I was around age twelve, my parents purchased an encyclopedia set for their many kids.  It was a cost they probably could not have afforded, but I remember my dad's pride when the large, heavy box arrived and we unpacked each volume.       When I think back to my young reading, I am struck by the kinds of authors I read:  Austen, Dickens, Bronte' sisters, Wilke C...
Post a Comment
Read more

Book Review: Middlemarch by George Eliot

Image
I did it.  It was a fight to the finish, but I did it.  I read Middlemarch !  To write that it was a fight to the finish is not exactly right.  But there is a lot to get through in the first half of George Eliot's novel.  Once I got beyond Edward Casaubon's death, my reading became less onerous.  I'll explain. Middlemarch is considered by many, who are qualified to hold such opinions, to be the greatest novel of the 19th century. Many readers consider it to be their favorite novel ever and re-read it on a regular basis.  This same fondness is frequently described with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice which is an 18th novel, so there is no conflict for readers who love both.  When asked which book of great fiction they have not read, many readers will admit to never having read Middlemarch.    I am proud to say that I have now left this group of readers and have joined the enthusiastic Middlemarch readers.  While I will not say t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Book Review: Seven Years In Tibet by Heinrich Harrer

Image
I must be a true adventure reader.  Perhaps I was influenced by Larry McMurtry, who was not only a great writer, he was also a great reader.  In fact, books were his passion ;  the reading, buying and selling of them, occupied essentially all of his adult life.  This is the central theme of his memoir, appropriately titled Books (Simon and Schuster, 2008).  In Books ( chapter 62), Larry McMurtry writes:  "For most of my fifties, what I read for pleasure was travel writing, and the book that introduced me to the pleasures of inspired travel writing was called Tent Life in Siberia by George Kennan" (1845-1924), originally published in 1871 by S. Low, Son & Marston and reprinted in 1986 by Gibbs M. Smith, Inc.  Larry McMurtry wrote the introduction for the reprinted edition of Tent Life in Siberia .   Larry McMurtry died in March 2021 and in 2024 I went through a Larry McMurtry reading phase that gave me pleasure and comfort.  Almost certa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Book Review: The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Image
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, Hogarth, an imprint of Random House, New York, © 2025. I have just finished reading Desai's novel.  Knowing I wanted to write this review, this morning, while waiting my turn in the ophthalmologist's exam room, I read the NYT's glowing review  from September 14, 2025 on my phone.  Then I read some of the 81 commenters mixed reviews.  Some abandoned the book almost from the start, others read through but did not like it and, finally, there were those who loved it.  Regardless of the category commenters fell into, many made interesting and insightful observations.  The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is that kind of book. Full disclosure, I have no particular literary expertise that credentials me to write this review.  I'm much more comfortable reviewing field guides and the like—although some might argue that I have no particular expertise there either.  What I do have is that I am a reader who love...
Post a Comment
Read more