Archive for the 'Book Review' Category
Book Review: Confederacy of Dunces: John Kennedy Toole
Posted on August 30, 2010 - Filed Under Book Review | 1 Comment
Might as well let you know my favourite book of all time is “Tom Jones.” Why do I mention this? Because ‘Confederacy of Dunces’ is one of the only books has come close to touching it.
Our hero is Ignatius J. Reilly, lifelong resident of New Orleans. Although college educated, he spends his days holed up [...]
The Sugar King of Havana: John Paul Rathbone
Posted on August 18, 2010 - Filed Under Book Review | Leave a Comment
There are 4 stories at play in ‘The Sugar King of Havana.’ The first, and most central, surrounds the life of Julio Lobo, a Venezualan who made a vast fortune cornering the sugar trade in the Republic of Cuba (before the Communist Revolution). The second, and barely separable from the first, is the story of [...]
Book Review: ‘A Separate Peace’: John Knowles
Posted on August 5, 2010 - Filed Under Book Review | Leave a Comment
I’ll never know what it was like to be a 16 year old boy in America in 1942, but I have a pretty doggone good idea, having read ‘A Separate Peace’. Honestly I considered not even writing this review. Seriously? What can I add to the tomes of gushing critique? Not much really. If you [...]
Book Review: Surviving the Extremes: Kenneth Kamler
Posted on August 4, 2010 - Filed Under Book Review | Leave a Comment
The full title of this book is ‘Surviving the Extremes, What Happens to the Body and Mind at the Limits of Human Endurance.’ So yeah, that’s what it’s about. Although I am a huge fan of what I call abusing my body for science, I am very happy to have read this book in the [...]
Book Review: White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Posted on August 1, 2010 - Filed Under Book Review | Leave a Comment
Hailed as one of the best best books of the past decade, there is no doubt that ‘White Teeth’ is one of those books that pleases readers and critics alike. Following 3 families of diverse background, sharing a common moment in a forgotten war, we experience the mixing of cultures that is, apparently, typical of [...]
Book Review: Naked Economics
Posted on July 26, 2010 - Filed Under Book Review | 1 Comment
The full title of Charles Wheelan’s book is “Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science.” I’m pretty sure in this day and age that economics is the last thing you want to read about. But man this book makes it easy as Lindsay Lohan. The critical factor here is that Wheelan is not a professional economist. [...]
Book Review: ‘The Spire’ by Richard North Patterson
Posted on June 2, 2010 - Filed Under Book Review | 2 Comments
Yes. I read two books over Memorial Day weekend. Here’s why I picked up ‘The Spire’. I had finished up ‘People of the Book’, and I was staring down delays in Chicago, so I thought I would pick up something at the airport. Last year it was Bob Woodward’s book about the Iraq war leading [...]
Book Review: ‘People of the Book’: Geraldine Brooks
Posted on June 1, 2010 - Filed Under Book Review | Leave a Comment
Based on a true story, ‘People of the Book’ follows the Sarajevo Haggadah, an early and rare Jewish volume as it is investigated by Dr. Hannah Heath, an Australian rare book expert. Moreso than just looking through a microscope and analysing inks, she finds curious things among its binding, which carry her on an investigation [...]
“Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes” Dan Everett
Posted on May 17, 2010 - Filed Under Book Review | Leave a Comment
When you study a language, you are studying more than just words and grammar, you are studying the culture and history of the people that speak it. Nowhere is this more clear than in Dan Everett’s study of the Pirahã people, a tribe of no more than 400 persons deep in the Brazilian Amazon. Without [...]
Anthill: E. O. Wilson
Posted on May 7, 2010 - Filed Under Book Review | Leave a Comment
There are very few people, especially in the modern era, that have radically changed the world’s viewpoints about our relationship with nature. Aldo Leopold comes to mind, but in my opinion, E. O. Wilson is the heavyweight champ. He is known for two major things. First, his prodigious and encyclopaedic study of the ant kingdom. [...]
