Tag Archives: books

It takes a bit to get used to James Frey’s memoirs, both typographically and stylistically. None of the paragraphs are indented. Quotation marks are not used to delineate speech or conversation. Stylistically, Frey would probably flunk most basic composition classes. Many of his sentences are basically run-on streams of consciousness. …

"...New York is boring. It’s like Gone With The Wind on mescaline down here..."

True “dog people” are considered such because they think so highly of the canine. Not only do they consider their dog almost as much a part of the family as the children, they tend to respect a dog’s patience, tolerance and unqualified devotion. I know because I’m one of them. …

"Superfluous daughters" in early modern Italy were, with varying degrees of force, pushed into nunneries

Some journalism doesn’t fit the inherent constraints of newspapers or magazines. Often, that is because the subject is too massive and requires longer periods of investigation than what these formats tend to demand in immediacy. Terry McDermott’s exploration of the 9/11 terrorists, Perfect Soldiers, is an example of this. McDermott, …

I don't care if liberals and Politically Correct types are upset, but I care about stealing someone else's stories, someone's else's history, to use for my purposes

Collisions between government and religion were partly responsible for the founding of this country. Some 200 years later, those collisions continue. A legal framework for dealing with constitutional issues raised by some of those collisions is the focus of Marci Hamilton’s book, God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule …

I went to North Korea in 1998 and it was, and no doubt still is, a most fascinating, if spooky, place.

Listen. You gotta keep quiet about this review. Otherwise too many other people will try to cut in on the territory. The thing is, Christopher Null’s Five Stars! How to Become a Film Critic, The World’s Greatest Job, actually does what it says. It tells you how to become a …

Literary types like to dismiss genre fiction, yet judging by the number of novels that are near- (or far-)misses, a detective novel is as difficult to write well as any other.