Wednesday, January 6, 2010
“Think, men, think.” — Prof. Harold Hill, The Music Man
New Year’s Resolution No. 1 for 2010 is modest: Keep a book list. Then in a year there’ll be a better best books Brick.
One could say that if the books I read were memorable then I’d remember ‘em. It’s not as if I read that much, [...]
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The Web site of the town stacks, Fayetteville Public Library, offers to e-mail patrons about new arrivals. A couple of months ago I signed up for the non-musical recordings notification to help me grab new book-on-CD titles. The shelves increasingly are picked over every time I stop by, at least for volumes I’d want. Have [...]
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Friday, February 20, 2009
What a thoughtful movie. It’s about this middle-aged man who’s in a real interesting career, been at it his whole adult life. But the guy is on its far side, losing it. What he’s doing — or selling, depending on the degree of jaundice in your opinion of work — well, maybe it’s best as [...]
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Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Book report: The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K Chesterton.
Thanks, Wall Street Journal. Allan Barra in the Dec. 29, 2008, edition considered this book in its centennial year, with details about the author and his diverse fan base that continues even today. Got it from the library, but I’ll be hitting Dickson Street [...]
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Book report: Duma Key by Stephen King
I can be a snob sometimes: I enjoyed most movies based on Stephen King novels but read nothing of his until seeing a short story or two early this decade in The New Yorker. The plan’s not to catch up on everything he wrote, but so far I’ve enjoyed [...]
Mr. Boo Klist — liking audio books nearly as much as printed ones — now wants to recommend a new movie that’s gotten ho-hum reviews, Kevin Costner’s Swing Vote.
Even the critics I like get stuck on the probability of its premise, that a presidential election through odd circumstances depends on a single vote, in this [...]
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Book report: An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, by Brock Clarke
Panning a novel that I devoured in 50- to 80-page chunks approaches being disingenuous. Perhaps an An Arsonist’s Guide, released in fall 2007 to overall glowing reviews (though readers on amazon.com gave it only three of five stars), amused me even as [...]
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Book report: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver, with occasional essays by her husband, Steven L. Hopp, and a few thoughts from teenage daughter Camille Kingsolver
In Michael Pollan’s most recent book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, he recommends among other things avoiding foods your grandmother wouldn’t have heard [...]
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Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock
Book report: The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu
When I saw this title online I had a flashback. In an early primary school year (the early 1960s) Mrs. Friedman gave me for my birthday a subscription to a Disney comic book. Mom [...]
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Book report: The Art of Column Writing: Insider Secrets from Art Buchwald, Dave Barry Arianna Huffington, Pete Hamill and Other Great Columnists, by Suzette Martinez Standring
The reviewing trade has a law that a critic doesn’t write up works created by friends. It’s a group of laws, actually. When a periodical’s staffer or regular contributor writes [...]