A very serendipitous thing happened when I was reading the Joni Mitchell biography Reckless Daughter. About midway through the book there is a discussion of Bob Dylan’s album “Blood on the Tracks”. Dylan said in a 1978 interview “he was inspired to write his much celebrated ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ after spending a weekend listening …
Title: Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell Author: David YaffeType: BiographyFinished: November 5, 2018Rating: ★★★★ Joni Mitchell. Oh WOW. She’s been one of my favorite singer songwriters for so long. Her string of albums “Blue”, “For The Roses”, and “Court and Spark” are amazing. If you haven’t listened to Jon …
Title: The Accidental Tourist Author: Anny Tyler Type: Fiction Finished: September 27, 2018 Rating: ★★★★★ Anne Tyler is the real meal deal. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Breathing Lessons and was a runner up with this novel – losing to “Lonesome Dove”. She was also a runner …
Title: Turtles All The Way Down Author: John Green Type: Fiction Finished: September 14, 2018 Rating: ★★★★ Aza Holmes is a high school woman who is having an existential crisis caused by – or compounded by – OCD triggered by an anxiety disorder. She is prone to thought spirals …
Title: Clock Dance Author: Anny Tyler Type: Fiction Finished: August 27, 2018 Rating: ★★★★★ Anne Tyler is a master storyteller probing the lives of the people in dysfunctional families. This is the third novel of hers I’ve read, the others being Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and Breathing …
Title: The Godfather Author: Mario Puzo Type: Fiction Date Finished: August 18, 2018 Rating: ★★★★ I caught the last half of this movie last summer – right when Sonny was killed – come on, that can’t be a spoiler almost 50 years later. It struck me that this was …
Title: The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. 1865-1896 Author: Richard White Date Finished: August 6, 2018 Report Posted: September 4, 2018 Rating: ★★★★★ This book is a comprehensive view of Reconstruction to 1900s. Politics, power, culture, western expansion and industrialization. It would be …
SubTitle: The Thrill of Defeat, The Agony of Victory: A Classical Historian Explores Jesus’s Arrest, Trial, and Execution Rating:★★★★ Finished: March 21, 2018 [Image from Amazon] As the subtitle explains, this book is an historical view of Jesus’ death, not a theological one. “… this book differs from other books. …
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan Rating ★★★ Finished: March 3, 2018 My review and rating – as for all my reports – reflects how I react to the book and should not be seen some sort of objective score. I did not love this book but it won the Pulitzer …
Rating ★★★★ Finished: January 27, 2018 As in Little Fires Everywhere the driving event of the novel is on the first page: “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.”[p 1] Lydia is a high school teen who is caught in the web of conflicting expectations. Her family is the only Asian …