Without, by Donald Hall It doesn’t matter what I’m doing or what time of day or night it is, when I pick up this collection, I read it from first page to last. Published in 1998, Without traces the illness and death from leukemia of Hall’s wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, in an arc of [….]
The Vexations, by Caitlin Horrocks One of my favorites books of this year, Caitlin Horrock’s debut novel, The Vexations, is an intricate portrayal of the life of modernist composer Erik Satie, and his artmaking, that mines his most nuanced sensibilities. Throughout this enchanting novel, it’s the details that matter: the way a street looks, the [….]
Guess who’s back? Our favorite ginger witch, no…not Mrs. Potter, the smart-talking, mostly demon, once-was witch, Rachel Morgan has returned in Kim Harrison’s latest Hollows installment, American Demon. Here’s what ACE has to say about the June 2020 release: A thrilling return to the #1 New York Times bestselling urban fantasy series, continuing Rachel Morgan’s story. RACHEL [….]
Silver (Inverted Frontier Book 2) Linda Nagata Mythic Island Press Release Date: November 19, 2019 I simply do not have enough superlatives in my vocabulary for Linda Nagata’s writing. Whether it be military science fiction (The Red: First Light, The Trials, Going Dark), speculative tech thriller (The Last Good Man), or wildly imaginative science fiction [….]
The Vexations, by Caitlin Horrocks The lives of artists, when depicted in novels, must portray artmaking for what it is: work—anything else is an outsider’s view—and Caitlin Horrock’s debut novel, The Vexations, occupies that inner view; it’s an intricate portrayal of the life of modernist composer Erik Satie—and his artmaking—that mines his most nuanced sensibilities: [….]
Epilogue: A Memoir, by Will Boast Both a remembrance and a elegiac account of the loss of a family, Boast’s 2014 memoir (a recipient of The Rome Prize) tracks the tragic early death of his mother Nancy, the untimely death of his younger brother Rory, and the family secret left behind after his father Andrew’s [….]
Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son, essays by Michael Chabon The trope of fatherly wisdom, borne of experience and dispensed with measured calm, is a wonderful thing, but how realistic it? There are some great memoirs about fathers. Alysia Abbott’s Fairyland and Will Boast’s Epilogue come to mind, [….]
Passage to Ararat, by Michael J. Arlen Tuesday, April 24, marked a sober anniversary, 103 years since the Armenian genocide, when 1.2 million Armenians systematically died at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish Government. In Little Armenia, in Los Angeles, marches and observances gave voice to the painful legacy of the genocide for the ancestors [….]
Fear: Trump in the White House, by Bob Woodward The story has been called a bookend to Richard Nixon’s, a tale of hubris, an account akin to a ticking clock. Of Bob Woodward’s Fear: Trump in the White House, George Packer wrote in the New Yorker, the book “belongs on a shelf with the literature [….]
