Book Reviews
Review: Field Notes From Elsewhere by Mark C. Taylor
From the razor's edge between what we know and what we absolutely cannot know and the coping with dread draws the reader to viewpoints often far from ordinary consideration, though no distance at all from what is vital to humanity. more »
Culture Watch, March 2010
Joan Cannon, Jill Norgren and Julia Sneden Review: Kristin Hannah's The Winter Gardenis a slightly flawed but enjoyable tale about people who fit the fiction, but some of them perhaps not quite to the life; Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Won… more »
Too Much Information? The Rhetoric of Women Wronged: When Political Spouses Tell Their Stories
Besides the sobering lessons in Edwards's book is that sad reality that most of the time the American press and public prefers a dumbed-down version of the political spouse. The media wants not even sound bites from our political spouses, but 'picture bites' usually of Barbie-doll like perfection, demure, uncomplicated and ultimately quiet. more »
February's CultureWatch
Amitav Ghosh's In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale published by Vintage is an early non-fiction work by the noted Indian novelist (whose work The Glass Palace is a favorite of mine). Ghosh wrote In an Antique Land after living in 1980 as a graduate student in an Egyptian farming village. He excavates a little known aspect of Middle Eastern history in a book that moves back and forth from the 12th century to the 20th, detecting and describing the interactions, real and imagined, of an Indian slave and local Egyptian merchants, holy men, and sorcerers.Gardeners and lovers of mysteries will be pleased to learn that several of the books of British born (John) Beverley Nichols have been re-issued by Timber Press. In Down the Garden Path, I chortled at lines such as "I would rather be made bankrupt by a bulb merchant than by a chorus girl." I expect the same witty, high-spirited writing in Merry Hall. And if I wish my flowers served up with a bit of murder and sleuthing, Nichols' detective novel, *The Moonflower, praised by novelists Somerset Maugham and Elizabeth Bowen, also rests on my to-read pile. more »