Books You May Have Missed
VERA, A NOVEL BY Carol Edgarian
[ Forget the history books. If you really want to know what it was like to live – or die- in San Francisco when the 1906 earthquake hit, put yourself in the hands of master storyteller Carol Edgarian, get a copy of her novel Vera, published in 2021, and [...]
Two Excellent Books About The Sinking of The USS Indianapolis
At 12:05 am on Monday, July 30, 1945, a torpedo fired from a Japanese submarine struck the starboard side of the USS Indianapolis, near the bow; seconds later a second torpedo hit her amidship, also on the starboard side. Minutes later, the cruiser, on a run from Guam to [...]
ALL THE LEAVINGS, BY LAURIE EASTER
What is the best memoir to read? Last night - or maybe it was early this morning- I read the last sentence of Laurie Edwards' essay collection All The Leavings, Published by Oregon State University Press in 2021. For the second time! So, if you ask me that question any [...]
The Vagabond, by Colette
I obtained the book you see pictured here so long ago that, when I read it last week, I had to read in short bursts and take Benydril, because the invisible mold on its pages afflicted my sinuses. Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette, born in Burgundy, France in 1873, published The [...]
Best War Novels
The tragedy of Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent me to my bookshelves this morning to look for and remember the novels about war that I thought were worth keeping and treasuring. Here's the list. Tolstoy's War and Peace Eric Maria Remarque's All Quiet on The Western Front Hemingway's A [...]
THE WEIGHT OF INK, A NOVEL BY RACHEL KADISH
I hate to think of what I would have missed if my daughter had not given me this unusually structured, magnificent novel for Christmas, 2021. It was published in 2017. That I had never heard of it is, to me, like being the geologist who didn’t notice an earthquake [...]
WAITING FOR SNOW IN HAVANA,CONFESSIONS OF A CUBAN BOY, BY CARLOS EIRE, PUBLISHED 2002, WINNER NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
Like in all great narrative, the opening lines reach beyond the particulars of that narrative to identify for us what is universal in the story, in this case paradise lost, Adam, looking back on what disappeared, the instant he lost his naivete. The world changed while I slept, and [...]
THE TRANSIT OF VENUS, by Shirley Hazard
“They were natural and supernatural, in that blank space, like amorous figures from mythology.” When I was a teenager, in thrall to my hormones, I couldn’t imagine a more enthralling love story than Romeo and Juliet. Then I went to college where I succumbed to English professors’ groupthink that Pride [...]
A DEATH IN THE FAMILY
A DEATH IN THE FAMILY, BY JAMES AGEE, PUBLISHED IN 1938 There are two tragedies associated with this Pulitzer Prize winning novel: the death that is central to the story and the fact that the novel had to be published, and the prize awarded, posthumously. Agee’s fatal heart attack, [...]