Some authors have the remarkable gift of writing one great novel after another. Although an accomplished author with a definite satirical bent, today Charles Portis is remembered for only one novel: True Grit. And justly so, for while it portrays the rough life on the prairies of America, Portis often has his tongue firmly in […]
Shakespeare has nothing on Layne Fargo’s Temper. I listened to the Audible version of Layne Fargo’s debut novel, Temper, and it was a one hundred percent thrill-ride. The story revolves around a stage play, which proved to be an excellent plot setting not only for the action but for revealing the characters’ innermost selves. Drama […]
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” — John Maynard Keynes The autonomous stretch limousine stopped again, then again, at various Manhattan street corners. Men ducked into it, one by one, until four were seated inside. Armored and electronically cloaked to Secret Service specifications, the limo turned onto […]
Not to be confused with Edward Bellamy’s fine novel, I stand at the cusp between 2019 and the 2020, the new decade of the new millennium. Looking backward, as my favorite book critic Dwight Garner writes in his latest “Critic’s Notebook” in The New York Times, about the year gone by and what, for him, […]
Today was my birthday and the best present I got was Trump’s impeachment. I know it won’t get passed in the Senate, but he’s been wounded, and that’s a good start toward his losing re-election. The wound has already brought out his true colors – black and blue and mad as hell. The six-page letter […]
I’m not mad for sci-fi, but I always am for a good story, well told. Cixin Liu is a masterful storyteller, and The Three-Body Problem was for me a totally enthralling story, from the first page to the last. Although first published in 2006, The Three-Body Problem was not translated and published in English until […]
El Paso, Texas, experienced one of the most horrific hate crime slaughters in our nation’s history. Twenty-two people were killed and another twenty or more, primarily Hispanics, were gunned down by Patrick Crusius, 21 years old. Wikipedia states, “It is the deadliest mass shooting in the United States in 2019, the seventh deadliest since 1949, and the third […]