Recent Posts

This is the second book I've read this month told by a now-grown narrator about an event that occurred in his teenage years. Though I like the device and found both books to be excellent, I'm ready for a change: my next book will not involve teenage boys drinking beer. Both books are set in the upper midwest, one in Minnesota, this one on a reservation in North Dakota in 1988.   The...

Having loved Montana, 1948 so much last year, I decided to start the year with another Larry Watson book.  This one is on Tony's top ten list for 2012.   It is set in the southern region of Minnesota, not far from where I am visiting at the moment, in the senior year of high school for the narrator Matthew in 1963, the very year I graduated.  Matthew attached himself to the...

The main character in the police procedurals I have enjoyed in the past typically have certain characteristics:  a tendency to drink too much, problems being a good husband, competence (unlike his fellow policemen), and the need to lose a bit of weight.  Ruth Galloway is a forensic archaeologist specializing in bones who teaches at a university in Norfolk on the eastern coast of...

What a strange idea to recount Mary's take on the life and death of her son Jesus.  She tells the story as an old woman near death, wishing to tell the truth, struggling against her "minders" who want to shape the story. In Toibin's telling she is skeptical of his ideas and wholly dismissive of those who see him as the son of God:   "He was indeed the Son of...