Category: book review

This is a little book about the small things in life that suddenly coalesce into profound, life-altering choices that can shake the most normal of days to its foundation. The story concerns an average family man living a quiet life when he is confronted with the horror of the Magdalen Laundry that exists in the heart of his small town. And once his eyes are open, he can’t close them. Not about the darkness everyone is happy to ignore, not about his relationships, his faith, or his own identity. The book is a little more than 100 pages, and every syllable of every word seems perfectly placed. The prose is graceful, plain-spoken, and at once gentle and unsparing. A profound and beautiful miracle of a book. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I’m not averse to using existing works as the jumping off point for something new, or a tale being told from a new perspective. And I’d certainly expect a book set in the world of Huckleberry Finn, with a slave as a narrator to have heavily racial themes. And I’m a big fan of great writing and good storytelling. Percival Everett’s “James” certainly has all of this going on. But it’s also up other things. Things I don’t enjoy. Or even respect. First, it’s an inconsistent mishmash of parody, satire, pastiche, melodrama, racialist political screed, and self-indulgent intellectual hogwash. It simply can’t make up its mind what it wants to be, so it ends up like a scrap collection that’s pretending to be a quilt. But the Pulitzer committee obviously disagreed.

Meh.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Max Lucado is OK in small amounts, but in book, or any other extended form, his formula gets stale quickly, and the artificiality of his “voice” becomes quite apparent. It’s not that he’s without insights or writing ability…he has both. It’s that the presentation doesn’t work in anything longer than a page or two. I didn’t care for this book.

This is a really nice guidebook to the Battlefield at Gettysburg. I have never been there, but the history is really brought to life, and tied in with a landscape that the author is clearly intimately familiar with. It put me there, and made me really want to pay a visit. Good stuff.

This is a very nice story about a lonely widow who befriends an octopus at the aquarium where she works. This friendship helps solve a family mystery and brings her into contact with others with whom she is more connected than she knows. Oh, and you hear the octopus’ thoughts, and he’s a lot smarter than anybody you know. Sounds silly, and it is, but it works.

“The Fantastic Mr. Fox” by Roald Dahl. Twisted, charming, with a morality as clouded as “Cat in the Hat.” Recommended.

I also read Poems for Young People by Robert Frost. I enjoyed the poetry, but loved the beautiful water color illustrations more. I took a picture but for some reason, it was totally blurry. It’s my opinion that the book moved on purpose just to ruin this particular entry.

Read this for a summer book club. It has some good insights, and I’m glad I read it, but it would be a stretch to say that I liked it. It could have used another pass from the editor.

Now that I’m done reading government-ese for a living, I’m turning my eyeballs to some of my favorite childhood authors, and some kid’s classics that I somehow missed growing up. Because I’ve found that the storytelling and care in writing is frequently better in children’s books.

“Justin Morgan Had a Horse” is the story of the Morgan horse breed, excellently told by one of my favorite childhood authors, Marguerite Henry. She wrote primarily about famous horses and is most famous for “Misty of Chincoteague.”

“Justin Morgan” is a historical novel, immersing the reader in Revolutionary War-era America, as it follows Little Bub, a spunky foal, who comes under the ownership of singing schoolmaster Justin Morgan. Befriended by one of his students, the story tracks boy and horse through their lives, as they take their different paths through life, until finally — spoiler alert — they are finally united.

It’s a lovely book, written evocatively in language suitable for a young audience, while introducing historical elements and figures that give the story significant depth. Excellent all around. I’m picked it up at a used bookstore, and it’s a keeper.