Book

June 23, 2019

The Decision Book (Review)

kay, so I’m facing a very tough decision. Do I retire or not? At first I was. Then I didn’t. Then they offered a buyout. Then they jacked us with it, only giving it to directors, forever-employees and dingdongs. So now I need to know: do I stay or do I go? Given that she has to live with my endless prevarications, my wife did the only thing she could – she bought me a copy of The Decision Book. This book dosn’t tell you an answer – it’s not a Magic 8-ball. It simply provides you with one page […]
July 21, 2019

Don Quixote (Book 2) (Review)

don’t know how this all came to be. Miguel de Cervantes had his first smash hit (the original Don Quixote). Then, fifteen or so years afterwards, he came out with his second one. But this was two years after someone poached in his preserve and wrote their own sequel. Given that he bitches and mocks this trespasser all the way through his effort, I’ve got to figure that this sequel was a direct response to the incursion. But I found it interesting to see how much Cervantes’ powers of a writer had grown in that time. Book 1 was just […]
October 3, 2019

The Speed of Read (DOG EAR)

o I’m doing that speed as best I can. Kinda. I’m still in the midst of Infinite Jest, a tale of tennis and substance abuse recovery. It’s a fine book, clever and insightful, but goddamn slow. When you are in the midst of ten pages of description of the most minute moves of a tennis game between two teenagers, and all the reactions of the people in the stands, and then you get pulled into a ten-page footnote, well, it makes for every distracting reading. Truthfully, this damn thing sometimes puts me to sleep. But I’m going to push through […]
January 2, 2020

Squeamish (DOG EAR)

omething that’s been bugging me. So in Game of Thrones, the character Tyrion (as I recall) is a bit of a hideous dwarf. His eyes are lopsided, he limps along, he’s kinda grotesque. And later in the books (spoiler) he gets slashed across the face. Now he’s really messed up, with his once knobby nose is now really scrambled. I think it was actually cut open. Yeah, he was a sight to see (which made the book even more interesting since as the reader progressed, they began liking Tyrion more and more). The guy was fighting genes and family to […]
January 3, 2021

The Book Thief (Review)

ou can’t have a more hardcore story opener than this – little Liesel is on a train going to meet her “new” mother and father (since it’s 1939 in Nazi Germany, and her real mom is either unfit or too poor to take care of her and her brother). But a bad day goes further south when her brother suddenly dies on the train to her foster home. Once her brother is buried and before the train moves on, a book falls from one of the grave digger’s pockets and, even though she can’t read, Liesel steals it off the […]
June 17, 2021

Berlin (DOG EAR)

have strange one-minute conversations with a SunRail ambassador (another word for the station agent who helps clueless commuters find their ways on and off the trains). I knew her before I retired. And now that I am, I still ride up to my happy bicycling grounds on the north side of town by train. When my train pulls into her station, I pop my head out the door and there she is – we have a minute to chat about books we are reading and then slam goes the doors and off I’m transported. Heard an interesting one from her […]
August 12, 2021

A real find (DOG EAR)

was on vacation recently, visiting family up north while knocking out a whole lot of novels (I’ve got materials for weeks of reviews now). While rooming at my sister’s, I mentioned I’d like to stop in at any good used book stores. She had one, a little strip mall outlet that had room to grow and lots of books. I dove into it like a shark into a chum-filled ocean. While nosing through the scifi area, I found a collection of novels by one Christopher Nuttall, the Ark Royal series. It had a very interesting concept – it was a […]
December 16, 2021

A sad, lonely book (DOG EAR)

live in fear of finding one of my books in a used book shop. What does that mean? Did the owner not care enough? Is my book like the puppy in a shelter? Well, here’s one that’s worse. Found a neat book at the used bookstore. As I read it, I noticed that it was in great condition, but had GEORGIA HIGHLANDS COLLEGE LIBRARY stamped on the side. So I could always look this school up but I’m going to go with the idea that it’s some sort of commuter college, a tiny place in the backwoods somewhere. So this […]
August 25, 2022

Recommendation (DOG EAR)

have a peach of a physical therapist. In the weeks following my surgery, she’d been the one outlining my exercise program, making me stretch and flex and hurt and get better. A lot of my recovery, I owe to her. She’s from Brazil and we’ve chatted about life there, life here, all that. One cool down following a rough session, we got to talking about books (I always bring a new one every week for the waiting room). Anyway, she told me she loved a Brazilian author named Paulo Coelho, who I’ve never heard of. She told me she’s read […]
December 1, 2022

Book of Love (DOG EAR)

o instead of one of my dystopian movies, one recent Friday night I selected one I thought JB would like, Book of Love, an Amazon flick from 2022. Well, she liked it. I was amused by it, but the more I thought about it, the madder I got. So, the plot is this: Henry Copper is a very nebbish author who has spent five years on a novel that nobody likes. He wrote it from his own heart, his cold suffering lonely heart, reaching out to those like him. It is a book about chaste and unfulfilled love. The book […]