I have finally finished reading my 500th book since I started tracking such data back in June of 2015. This half-millennium mark was crossed by the completion of the sociological study of consumer habits of the lower-class project dwellers in Manhattan, The Poor Pay More. I received this book in error thinking instead to receive …
Category Archives: Books
Monday Book Report: The Lies That Bind
The Lies That Bind, by Kate Carlisle (A Bibliophile Mystery, #3 in the series) Kate Carlisle is no Raymond Chandler, and her book—The Lies That Bind—is an affront to his project of raising mystery fiction to the level of literature. If anything, the author of this, the third in the series of so-called ‘Bibliophile Mysteries’, …
Monday Book Report: Journey To The Impossible
I Read It So You Don’t Have To Dept. The Banality of Feeble Dept. Journey To The Impossible: Designing an Extraordinary Life, by Scott Jeffrey This is perhaps the worst book I have ever read in my life. I was sorely tempted just to let the above sentence be my entire report upon this piece …
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Monday Book Report: The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories
The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories, by Horacio Quiroga To master the short story is to possess the ability to tersely describe the critical moment, the veritable crux of events, ideas, and emotions—and to capture that moment so that readers can contemplate and appreciate the revealed profundity in these smallest of prose packages. Hector Quiroga—a …
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Book Note: Photo Quotes
Monday Book Report: Sea Of Grass
Sea Of Grass, by Conrad Richter (1936) This very brief (just over a hundred pages, in the edition I read) narrative is a prose poem, a threnody for a lost time and place, New Mexico when it was new in the American imagination. As well, it is a meditation on the mystery of marriage and …
Monday Book Report: The MONTH at Goodspeed’s
The MONTH at Goodspeed’s Book Shop (May 1930, Vol. I, No. 8), by Norman Dodge Just one of the many delightful issues of the “PAMPHLET concerning books, prints and autographs” found in the famous Boston book store Goodspeed’s Book Shop, this slim staple-bound tract shows off brilliantly the lucent prose of Norman Dodge, whose trenchant …
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Monday Book Report: 2 Ellery Queen novels
The Scarlet Letters & The Glass Village, by Ellery Queen In my notice of (not really) reaching the “500 Books Read” milestone, I mentioned briefly the book we’re looking at today, which consists of two previously published mysteries slammed together in one volume by Signet in an effort to cash in on the seemingly bottomless …
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500 Books (not really)
I’ve just now completed the 500th book since I began tracking my reading back in 2016. Of course, since I don’t really count comics and graphic novels towards my ‘Books Read’ total, I am not really asserting that I’ve read a spectacular half-chiliad of tomes, but just jotting this brief note in any case. (Comics …
Monday Book Report: Catechism of the Seven Sacraments
If you are looking for a Catechism for your young Catholic friend or family member who thinks that The Lego Movie was cool and who might possibly believe that Raiders of the Lost Ark is still relevant, you need look no farther than Kevin and Mary O’Neill’s Catechism of the Seven Sacraments, a comic book …
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