My interest in this book came from two sources: this New York Times review (Pieces for the Left Hand is on my reading list as well), and the fact that J. Robert Lennon was one of BigRed’s college writing instructors. He read Castle a couple months ago; I hope he’ll comment. Read more »
This week I finished up Black Flies, and then moved on to Renegade by Richard Wolffe. I love watching Richard Wolffe on MSNBC; his commentary is usually very insightful. That’s why I was particularly disappointed by Renegade. Mr. Wolffe’s writing seemed unnatural, with sentence fragments and repetition of the word “renegade” that felt forced. The campaign was presented disjointedly, without chronological or any other logical order of events. Perhaps Mr. Wolffe hasn’t figure out how to escape his journalist roots; I felt as though I’d read a greatest hits of newspaper election coverage.
Black Flies was excellent – highly recommended. A former paramedic in Harlem, Burke isn’t the strongest writer in an academic sense. But he writes with an incredibly strong voice, stronger than many novelists who may be considered to be technically “better” writers. Though categorized as a novel, Burke writes so graphically, drawing (I assume) from his own experiences, that I had to keep reminding myself it was fiction. An outstanding book, but not for the faint of heart.
Let me preface this by saying that I’m only halfway through, but I strongly recommend Lewis Robinson’s Water Dogs, especially as a summer/beach read. I’ve seen it reviewed a couple different places, so you may have already heard off it. At any rate, Water Dogs is a quick read – not taxing but not fluff, either. Of particular interest is that it takes place during winter in Maine, so it has a psychological cooling effect you may enjoy if you’re getting record high temperatures as we are. Following State by State, I would say that Robinson accurately captures Maine – or, given my zero actual minutes spent in Maine, my concept thereof. Give it a try! (And if you do, let me know what you think!)
More than once while reading State by State, I’d turn to Brian and say, “Let’s move to _______.” Brian’s response was almost always, “Ok. [pause] You know how cold it gets there, right?” While it is unlikely that I will have the opportunity to live in every state, that is the response I had hoped this book would evoke in me. For the most part, it did not let me down. Read more »
We came home from running errands to discover that our cable had finally been turned off. Probably the hardest part for me (aside from Bravo’s refusal to put its programming on Hulu) is that for nearly 10 years, I have set the timer on my television every night, and fallen asleep with The Daily Show or a Keith Olbermann replay as background noise. Last night I felt fairly virtuous going to bed with a book in my hand – it’s been a very long time since I did that.
These are the books on my “To Read” shelf right now:
