Knowing where you’re going takes all the fun out of getting there… Kara McAllister is lost and she knows it. That’s why she is drawn to a strange Rand- McNally map of the […]
How we find our way: Denny Wilkins’ Mapping Utah – a Review
Mama and them do Christmas…
One last review for 2013: a classic example of a sub-genre of Southern literature known as ”Mama and them” stories. Many of these belong in the memoir category, while others follow the autobiographical or family history novel path. The […]
ArtSunday: A mind of the South – Thomas Nelson Page’s In Ole Virginia
I was in a local antique shop a few weeks ago and came across, lying on a school desk from the 1940′s, a small volume with slight water damage. I picked it up (as I […]
More light! More light! Reviewing Fred Chappell’s Brighten the Corner Where You Are
In an earlier review of books from my 2013 reading list, I looked at poetry by one of North Carolina’s best writers, Fred Chappell. This next installment looks at one of his finest novels, the poetic and […]
WordsDay: Postmodernist Xerism at its most discontentedly hopeful…
Another “now appearing in relief” review here as I finish the complex and engrossing After the End of Art by Arthur C. Danto – a book that I will review this weekend and that […]
ArtSunday: About a book…
“Will was beginning to come to the conclusion that he was not, as he had always previously thought, a good liar. He was an enthusiastic liar, certainly, but enthusiasm was not the […]
Book review: Common Nonsense
In November of 2000, Americans sat on the edge of their seats waiting to find out who would be the next president. Protests were held, counter protests were organized to meet the […]
Review: Lake with No Name by Diane Wei Liang
It’s an image most Westerners recognize immediately: A lone man standing in the middle of a five-lane street, blocking a line of tanks. Single-handedly, “Tank Man” prevented the tanks from advancing on […]
Book about happy drugs will make readers happy—Review: Pharmakon by Dirk Wittenborn
Dirk Wittenborn’s exploration of the drug culture—not the flashy counter-culture of the 1960s but the mainstream medicate-every-problem culture that arose in the 1980s—is at once a biting indictment of social values and […]
Why reading isn't fun—Review: Books by Larry McMurtry
It takes him ninety-one pages, but Larry McMurty finally articulates the problem that plagues his newest memoir, Books. “Here I am, thirty-four chapters into a book that I hope will interest the […]
