Late last night I finished reading Garth Risk Hallberg’s sprawling epic first novel, City on Fire. I bought the hardcover one day, wandering through a bookstore looking for something I could really sink my teeth into. City on Fire served up as much as I… Read More
The Alaskan Laundry by Brendan Jones is your basic quest story. It’s about a young woman from Philadelphia who is going through some personal struggles, which culminate in a big fight with her father, during which he kicks her out of the house. She decides… Read More
The Whites is a pretty good bit of crime fiction. Gritty cop/ex-cop drama, curiously propelled by the actions of one of the characters many years before. Perhaps too many characters for me to cope with. Plenty of detail. Several murders. This was a “notable book… Read More
Last month, when I visited Chicago, I found myself with an hour or so to kill up in Old Town. I had enjoyed dinner with my friend Candy Minx at a place called Mash, across the street from the Old Town School of Folk Music… Read More
Today I finally finished reading The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon. It is a novel full of interesting ideas and I wanted to like it and I wanted to finish it, but it was a struggle. The problem is that this novel didn’t find its… Read More
The Thrill of it All is the 2014 novel by Joseph O’Connor about the rise and fall of a fictional rock band in the 80s. Off the top, let me say that I have read a number of Mr. O’Connor’s books. I’ve liked all of… Read More
One good (but unfortunate) way of accumulating a pile of books to read is to break your ankle. In no time after my injury I found myself awash in reading material, all kinds of reading material. This was welcome, because when your mobility is seriously… Read More
Sleep last night was limited by my inability to put down Orfeo, the 2014 novel by Richard Powers. What an unusual, imaginative and engaging read! Peter Els is a 70 year old, retired music composer. After a career in which he has consistently challenged boundaries,… Read More
I had Patrick DeWitt’s short novel, Ablutions, with me while I was in the hospital, but I learned very quickly that I am incapable of reading while taking uber-strong pain medication. I’ve been backing off the pain pills (I still need them occasionally and especially… Read More
I enjoy reading and while I’m not as voracious a reader as some people I know, most years I read several novels sprinkled with a healthy dose of non-fiction. Still there are a lot of great books out there I’ve meant to read along the… Read More
27th Street 