Reviewed by Bob Williams Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday Harcourt 2007, ISBN 978-0-15-101276-3, $24.00, 336 pages Paul Torday, born in 1946, waited a long time before he wrote this, his first novel, and did a bang-up job…
Femininity, Intelligence, and Power: Yoko Ono’s Yes, I’m A Witch
Yes, I’m A Witch is an important addition to anyone’s music library: it is of the past and the present, and infused with ideas about individuality and integrity, and feelings of defiance, community, and love, and the music sounds good!
The Spiritual Beauty of a Sensual Woman: Carly Simon’s precious collection Into White
However, I do not like her now simply because I liked her then. Into White is like a meal of fresh steamed vegetables, baked fish in a creamy sauce, with mineral water and white wine nearby, and the promise of sweet fruits and other desserts, after weeks of eating food offering empty calories and no nutrition. I am thinking not only of taste, and not only of value and use: I am thinking of worth.
A review of The Bright Eyed Mariner by William Lambe
To say anymore, would give away the story, so I’ll stop now and encourage readers to learn for themselves the fate of these rich and varied characters. The author could have let the captain slide in a one-dimensional character but instead shows the man with all his doubts and his extreme wonder at how his life unfolds. Gerda too, is more than just a lusty female bent on conquering her man. Her delightful personality unfolds like a flower under the attention of a man finally worth of her charms. The story is told in the first person and so we never learn the captain’s name, but this fact in no way spoils the novel. Sprinkled throughout the book are lines from the poem The Ancient Mariner.
A review of Her Mouth Looked Like a Cat’s Bum by Matthew Ward
You wouldn’t want these friends for dinner, but you might like a laugh at their expense. The wry sardonic humour that fills these pages isn’t entirely unpleasant, though it might be a little sour. Her Mouth Looked Like a Cat’s Bum is an original, interesting take on a world you don’t want to be living in; a funny (at times), racy, and disorientating descent into Hades.
A review of Chess Facts and Fables by Edward Winter
There are many diagrams of chess positions, and many photographs and line drawings of famous and little-known players, and these add to the value of the book. For anyone with an interest in chess history, this volume is a wonderful treasure trove. It is perfect for browsing, whether one happens to be in one’s library or on one’s lavatory.
A review of Virginia Woolf by Julia Briggs
This book dwells necessarily on the Bloomsbury group, a subject of so many books that saturation impairs the urgency of its interest, but she surmounts this as much as possible by an emphasis on Woolf. She has written a model of what good literary criticism should be. This is an excellent book to add to the collection of any reader who requires a useful and intriguing book on a fascinating but often elusive writer.
A review of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by Simon Armitage
Is this a neglected book? If so, it deserves your attention. It will require perhaps two hours of your time, but it will be time spent acquiring a lasting experience and a durable memory of great value.
Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland
The Idi Amin that Forest Whitaker presents in The Last King of Scotland is charming, earnest, friendly, instinctive, intense, mercurial, paranoid, punishing, relentless, shrewd, and very powerful: a dazzling personality, a frightening man. Although I had remembered, possibly too vaguely, Idi Amin’s brutality, I had been looking forward to Whitaker’s performance and the film months before seeing The Last King of Scotland, thinking that it sounded like a great opportunity for a unique actor.
Tradition and Conscience: Painter Kerry James Marshall’s Colorful Narratives
It had been a rather simple program: a documentary, some slides, a conversation, all part of the library’s February 2007 African-American history program, but the program has introduced, or reintroduced, us to an artist of our time, a young master (there was some questioning and quibbling about the 52-year old artist’s age near the end of the program).