What an unusual title for a book! What on earth can it mean? Well, part of the problem is an intentional ambiguity in how book titles are traditionally indicated. One rule states that a book title that is mentioned inline… Read More ›
Books
Freedom
Last year I listened to the audiobook version of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and reviewed it in this blog, so I figured that I would follow it up with Franzen’s fourth and latest novel, Freedom. While Freedom held my interest all… Read More ›
The Lie that Binds, Life Sentences, and The Wild Duck
Last night I saw the Weston High School Theater Company’s excellent performance of The Lie That Binds. What? You’ve never heard of this play? That’s because it was written collaboratively by the cast and crew — namely, the students in… Read More ›
Rail Power
It turned out to be a pleasure to read Steve Barry’s Rail Power, a gift from my sister-in-law. At first glance this looks like nothing more than a downsized coffee-table book, filled with lots of pictures and very little text. What… Read More ›
Why Don’t Students Like School?
On the whole it was refreshing to read Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about How the Mind Works and What it Means for the Classroom. Despite the misleading title and overly long subtitle, Daniel Willingham’s… Read More ›
Diamonds for the Dead
Diamonds for the Dead, by Alan Orloff, is a reasonably compelling mystery with an interesting cast of characters, many of whom are Russian immigrants in northern Virginia. The characters and the place make the book. It’s fun to read — nothing… Read More ›
Missing Justice
Although it was published over six years ago, I’ve just gotten around to reading Missing Justice, a worthy early contribution to Alafair Burke’s Samantha Kincaid series. Actually, I didn’t read it; I listened to the audiobook version, narrated by Betty Bobbitt…. Read More ›
Hangman
I just finished listening to the audiobook version of Faye Kellerman’s latest novel, Hangman, beautifully narrated by Mitchell Greenberg. While I liked it a lot, I can understand why some people might not. In the first place, this book is… Read More ›
Born to Kvetch
So what’s not to love about this book? Just don’t expect Leo Rosten’s The Joys of Yiddish, which is a much lighter and less consequential work. Michael Wex’s Born to Kvetch is a serious, in-depth, expert analysis of conversational Yiddish… Read More ›
This Body of Death
This Body of Death, the latest in Elizabeth George’s series of literary mysteries, is well worth reading if you’re familiar with some (or preferably all) of the earlier novels in the series. I’m not at all sure, however, that it’s… Read More ›
Capitol Betrayal and Inside Out
Because I have such a large backlog of reading material, I often put print books and audiobooks on a queue; I get to them whenever I get to them. It could easily be months later, so I no longer remember… Read More ›
The Corrections
Too often I expect to like a certain book and then I’m disappointed. Occasionally the opposite situation happens to me; such is the case with Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. I tend to read so much genre fiction and non-fiction that… Read More ›
Lost in Lexicon Launch Party
Yesterday I wrote about Penny Noyce’s new book, Lost in Lexicon. What prompted that post was that I was on my way to the official launch party for the book. It was a great success, and I saw a couple… Read More ›
Lost in Lexicon
If you regularly see my Facebook status in your News Feed, you may have noticed that it said “I’m lost in Lexicon right now…” on October 17. This status confused some of my students. One of them asked, “How did… Read More ›
Betty Webb
Do read Betty Webb’s fascinating and informative “Desert” mysteries about the world of fundamental polygamists in the southwest. So far I’ve read Desert Wives, Desert Noir, and (most recently) Desert Lost, all of which I can recommend. Please note that the… Read More ›
Bruno, Chief of Police
You’ve heard Martin Walker on NPR. His peaceful mystery — Bruno, Chief of Police — is well worth reading if you want to bathe in a mixture of French politics, small-town French life, and a host of interesting characters. Despite some… Read More ›
Dirty Blonde
In my previous reviews of two of Lisa Scottoline’s legal thrillers (Daddy’s Girl and Lady Killer) I wrote about Scottoline’s treatment of the world of Italian Catholic working-class South Philadelphia, families, law, and justice. Dirty Blonde (notice a theme here… Read More ›
Alice I Have Been and Dreamchild
I suppose you would have to label it historical fiction, as the novel Alice I Have Been is actually a fictionalized autobiography or memoir. Like all historical fiction, it is faithful to the letter and the spirit of the known… Read More ›
Linguistics, mathematics, and mysteries
“I make order out of chaos.” This is how an old friend whom I hadn’t seen in years explains her transition from linguistics to statistics, when people think it’s a complete change of field. It’s how she explains it to… Read More ›
The King of Lies
During the last few months I read two interesting novels by John Hart: The Last Child, which I believe is his newest, and The King of Lies, which is definitely his first. It’s not really clear why I read them… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 