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February 7, 2020

Why Religion? A Personal Story by Elaine Pagels

February 7, 2020

07February

I know this scholar from her work Revelations about the last book of the Bible “Revelation,” a fascinating book that translates her scholarly work for the public. Her new book recounts her own dramatic life with references to her work and religious/spiritual practices that helped her survive traumas she experienced. Her best known book is The Gnostic Gospels, written early in her...

February 3, 2020

The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman

February 3, 2020

03February

As he did in his book Seven Types of Ambiguity, the author depends on coincidences for this 617 page book to work. He begins with the story of a sympathetic character, Lamont Williams, who had just been released after six years in jail. Lamont had agreed to give a ride to his old friend and a man he didn’t know who robbed a store, making Lamont an unwitting get-away driver. He had gotten a...

January 31, 2020

Inland by Téa Obreht

January 31, 2020

31January

The author’s previous novel, The Tiger’s Wife, was an exhausting view of life in the Balkans, with fairy tales from the Ottoman days and references to the 1990s war in the region to the uneasy postwar years when it was published in 2011. The backdrop for this one is the West; one tale begins in the 1850s, the other in the 1890s and the two collide at the end. The story featuring Nora...

January 23, 2020

Cod by Mark Kurlansky

January 23, 2020

23January

The subtitle is A Biography of a Fish that Changed the World, staking out a big claim for a bit of food, but the author makes a good case. By giving them a preservable food source, the cod enabled the Vikings to leave home for distant shores. Its abundance off the Newfoundland and Massachusetts shores was a rich resource that changed behavior. And there are countless other instances of the...

January 19, 2020

Florida by Lauren Groff

January 19, 2020

19January

The author’s great strength, evident in both this book and in Fates and Furies, is her brilliant use of descriptive language. In “Ghosts and Empties,” the first story, a woman recounts the walks she takes each night while her husband puts their two boys to bed. She is dismayed to have become “a woman who yells,” and she hopes her walks will counter that. Some of my...

January 17, 2020

Books to Read

January 17, 2020

17January

Inland by Téa Obreht. The Street Sweeper by Elliott Perlman. Public Library. The Light & the Mirror by Hilary Mantel comes out March 10. The Imperfect Union by Steve Inskeep. About Fremont. The Bridge of Little Jeremy by Indrajit Garai. Rec by Tony’s Book World. Prairie Fever by Michael Parker. Jeff-Mad new books. Fest. of the book Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman...

January 11, 2020

Hare’s Fur by Trevor Shearston

January 11, 2020

11January

A book about a 70-year-old potter in mourning for his wife who encounters three kids living in the wild to avoid being taken in by the child protective bureaucracy, well, that story could have some pitfalls. This one successfully avoids them. The book is set on the outskirts of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. Russell has a few good friends who live nearby, but his life is largely solitary now...

January 6, 2020

Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips

January 6, 2020

06January

This remarkable novel on the NYT list of the ten best novels of 2019 is the author’s first. It is set on Kamchatka, a remote peninsula in the east of Russia, much closer to Alaska than to Moscow. It takes place over the course of a year, a chapter for each month. The first chapter describes a terrible event, the kidnapping of two young girls, that was very difficult for me to read. Each...

January 3, 2020

Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl

January 3, 2020

03January

I loved listening to the author who, when this was written in 1998, was restaurant critic for the New York Times. Here, she tells how she came to love good food. I had read her laugh-out-loud book Garlic and Sapphires more than 10 years ago, so I was not surprised to find this one, too, has many funny stories. I’ll start with one of the best about her mother, who was a terrible–and...

December 29, 2019

Favorite Books for 2019