The twelfth in Martin Limón’s Sueño and Bascom series, featuring two CID agents in South Korea in the early 80s, and I think his best by far. Three GI’s have gone missing, all of whom have abused Korean women, and Command sends Sueño and Bascom to find them. It’s a solid whodunnit, a window into…
Read more Mr. Kill and Officer Oh and — gulp–Dr. Bam are all back.
This book reminds me of Lonesome Dove, only Wyoming instead of Texas and now instead of then. Rancher Barnum McEban (he had a twin named Bailey who died in infancy) with lifelong friend Bennett Reilly goes in pursuit of Bennett’s wife, who left them both for a physicist in Denver. Women are always leaving guys…
Read more “It’s no goddamn wonder I live alone. I’m either working or in intensive care.”
Gail Collins’ America’s Women (400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines) reads like the women studies class I was never offered at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It should be required reading for every US high school student today. Listen to some of this stuff: The most famous runaway slave…was [Harriet Tubman]…In 1849, when…
Okay, let me give the consumer warning up front–do not attempt to read this book without a box of Kleenex on standby. There. Got it? Good. I saw Come From Away in NYC last month, the musical about the 38 planes that were diverted to Gander, Newfoundland on 9/11, and I immediately googled to see…
I’m obsessed with Hamilton. There, I said it out loud in front of god and everybody. I’m owning it. I’ve been listening to the soundtrack on repeat for going on two years now, I’ve watched the PBS documentary at least three times, I’ve sung my way through the libretto of this book while listening to…
Read more The American Revolution, says the casting? It ain’t over.
This is a good book. I thought it was going to be either a polemical diatribe or a “Aren’t I wonderful, aren’t I great!” self-promotion like so many political autobiographies, but this one is by turns humble, informative and, of course, funny. Franken has a real appreciation for the challenges inherent in the job of…
Read more Enjoyable, informative, and maybe even a little hopeful. Maybe.
I saw the film and raved about it and everyone told me to read the book. I have now done so and I’m happy to report that this is one of those very few good books that have been made into a good film. Jean Gilkyson escapes her abusive boyfriend and with her daughter Griff…
Read more One of those very few good books that have been made into a good film.
So a girl speaks to birds and a boy speaks to computers and both are reviled and bullied in middle school. Years later they meet again and fall in love and the world falls apart. I think. The writing in this book is solid and is what kept me reading You did not want Patricia’s…
Read more Years later they meet again and fall in love and the world falls apart.
Michael Perry writes about where the rubber of everyday life meets the road in rural Wisconsin. This book is hung on a framework of visits to a neighbor down the road, a guy named Tom, married to Arlene, coming up on his sixtieth wedding anniversary. A while back the government pushed an interstate through the…
Jende Jonga of Limbe, Cameroon, follows his dream of a better life to New York City. Two years later he brings over his wife, Neni, to follow her dream of becoming a pharmacist, with their six-year old son. Jende strikes gold by getting a job as chauffeur to Clark, an investment banker and a child…
