Books Archive |
740 Park - The great thing about books that celebrate or investigate the rich is that we can indulge our very normal curiosity in the privacy of our own homes. No one
A Butler’s Life - Jeeves is no more. He served so well for so long that I really don't think of that search engine as "Ask" --- to me, it will always
A Catalog of Birds - Laura Harrington may have won the Kleban Award for most promising librettist in American Musical Theatre, but I know her only as a novelist. And I came to know her
A Child’s Holiday in America - These selections have the power to re-connect you to your childhood. Not the childhood you had, with its predictable dose of uncertainty and awkwardness, but the childhood you had in
A Christmas Carol: by Charles Dickens, abridged by Jesse Kornbluth, illustrated by Paige Peterson - A lifetime ago, I left the suburbs of Philadelphia to become a boarding student at Milton Academy, a school so different from anything I knew that it might as well
A Coffin for Dimitrios - Graham Greene: "unquestionably our best thriller writer." John le Carré: “the source on which we all draw." Alfred Hitchcock: “Eric Ambler is a phenomenon.” And perhaps the ultimate endorsement: In the film of
A Dangerous Place - GUEST BUTLER NORA LEVINE owns the literary mystery/thriller corner of this site. That’s my good fortune --- I can’t read everything --- and yours too. Nora introduced us --- well,
A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: A Son’s Memoir of Gabriel García Márquez and Mercedes Barcha - People tell me, “I’ve read a book that changed me.” I’m not convinced. They seem unchanged to me. “One Hundred Years of Solitude” was the greatest novel I’d ever read
A Gifted Thriller Novelist Names 5 Great Thrillers - Guest Butler Alan Hruska wrote a thriller I actually finished. And liked. A rare event. I asked him why someone so talented would write a thriller. This is his reponse. ------ Good
A Head Butler Investigation: The Eschaton, David Foster Wallace, and the Decemberists - David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” was published in 1996. I haven’t read one of its 1,096 pages. The Decemberists released “Calamity Song” in 2011. I just heard it. I got to
A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table - A book that begins with a father, surveying the dinner table, remarking, “You know, we eat better at home than most people do in restaurants” --- how can you not
A Million Little Pieces - I am old enough to have lost friends to drugs and alcohol addiction. And I am old enough to have people in my life --- people very
A Month in the Country - It's fair to say there never was a writer remotely like J.L. Carr. For several years, this English schoolmaster taught in South Dakota. His first publications were 3” x 5”
A Month of Sundays: Searching for the Spirit and My Sister - "A Month of Sundays" is about the death of Shirley Kress Carter, born in 1937 and died as Christmas ended in 2000. Shirley was a mother of six, a professional caregiver,
A Really Short History of Nearly Everything - Until she was in fifth grade, our daughter drifted into sleep as her mother delivered a lecture that came to be known as “Bore Me to Sleep.” Our child was probably
A Round-Heeled Woman - You may not know her name, but you have probably heard of Jane Juska, the 66-year-old retired teacher from California who placed the following ad in the
A Sense of the World - James Holman was a 21-year-old British sailor with the bad luck to be the man on deck as his ship was buffeted by a winter storm off Nova
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams - The Sunday edition of the Kärnter Volkszeitung carried the following item under 'Local News': 'In the village of A. (G. township), a housewife, aged 51, committed suicide
A Stranger Like You - Hugh Waters has a problem --- no, Hugh Waters is a problem. He’s the original nowhere man: dead-end job at an insurance company, childless marriage, gray personality. He took a community
A Three Dog Life - Does she have a husband? Well, Rich is around, a phone call or a visit away. He can speak. He can even make sense: “If I wasn't with you and
