Several supporting characters are painted with skill; they grow into people that the heroine and her husband care about enough that the reader joins into their admiration. Other characters help to place the story into social and historical context.
Category: Book Reviews
Book Reviews
A review of The Price of Guilt by Patrick M. Garry
The story Patrick M. Garry tells is a story of how curiosity on the part of a group of young teens leads them to meddle in someone’s life with tragic results. This premise is well-rooted in life especially in political campaigns. The staging for the story has a small hometown appeal well-suited for the action.
A review of Inherited by Amanda Curtin
Memory is critical in each of the stories, recycled into new experiences, and reworked into new memories, twisting, in and out of view, but never lost—nothing is ever lost. The setting brings history into the present day as modern characters uncover clues about the past that lead to self-awareness.
A review of Theatre and Theatre Companies of New York by Anthony Rubino, Jr. and M. Stefan Strozier
The book is enjoyable to read, humorous, and informative, and contains a great deal of black and white images that comprise virtually a walking tour of theatres in NY and Brooklyn.
A review of The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn
She interviewed volunteers and experts, and got to it. It pays to be a food writer, with chef friends in restaurants all over Seattle. Lessons opened with a taste test to demonstrate how the variety within one category of food. Every taste test was a revelation. The most expensive canned tomatoes were not the Best in Show. Salt substitute really is a subsitute, and a poor one. The real lesson: Trust your tastes.
A review of Wherever You Go by Joan Leegant
Life in a war zone is fine for the noble savages, but not for developers from Shaker heights with Harvard-bound sons. It’s easy to dismiss Mr. American Tourist as a hypocrite, but Leegant isn’t choosing sides. Aaron’s partners in crime are equally American (one is from Skokie), sentimental and easily manipulated. Mr. American Tourist may be a hypocrite, but he knows how he wants to live, and he doesn’t need anyone’s approval to do it.
A review of Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor…the life of Colin Kerby, OAM by Jan Mitchell
It’s an odd sort of progression from surgeon to sandwich maker and from confectioner to showman. It’s hard, at times, to believe that this is a book about one person, though there is a kind of entrepreneurial, inventor thread that links everything Kerby does.
A review of Home Front by Kristin Hannah
Home Front is a nail-biter from beginning to end. The descriptions of Jolene’s daily life in the military, which are likely far more horrific for a real-life soldier than what Hannah describes in the book, are both compelling and heart-wrenching. Jolene Zarkades is a fictional Army helicopter pilot, but her story reflects the all-too-real experience of servicemen and women trying to return to their families after a life-changing tour of duty.
A review of Ruth by Marlene S. Lewis
The new social order is shown in a scene in which Ruth has dinner with three key people in her life. Similarly, the recurrent Christmas celebrations, with their associations of goodwill, peace and justice, reinforce the new spirit of harmony. Christmas, as well, serves as a good structural device to show continuity despite the passage of time.
A review of Inheritance (Inheritance Cycle, Book 4) by Christopher Paolini
This notion of self-awareness is one that is handled delicately and with it, Paolini creates a book that is far more powerful than simply a fast-paced plot driven fantasy about a war between good and evil. Eragon’s growth is one that takes him beyond the moment of his conflict to a connectiveness with the world he lives in and beyond, through the older dragons he encounters.