What is it about controversial book titles? Why can’t people stop themselves from jumping all over a title before a book even comes out? What is it about the marketing aspect of titles that drive people to say such stupid things? Ramesh Ponnuru’s excellent The Party of Death was roundly criticized and dismissed simply because [...]
In discussing A Nail Through the Heart by Timothy Hallinan I want to use a sort of Complete Review format as I have in the past. With quotes from other reviews followed by my own take on the book. Let’s start with Kirkus Reviews as they offer a quick plot summary as part of their [...]
Warlords: An Extraordinary Re-creation of World War II Through the Eyes and Minds of Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin by Simon Berthon and Joanna Potts is a fascinating and eye-opening read. Berthon and Potts do an excellent job in bringing these larger-than-life men down to Earth. Here is a brief description of the book from [...]
I am not sure why The New Republic chose to publish Alan Wolfe’s shameful “review” – ugly hit piece really – of a collection of essays by Russell Kirk. But they did and it is shameful. The immediate question seemed whether the best response to such an ignorant and distasteful piece of work would be [...]
Here are some links for your morning enjoyment: – I am currently reading The Postmodern Imagination of Russell Kirk by Gerald J. Russello and enjoying it immensely. Over at NRO John Miller talks with Mr. Russello about postmodernism, crunchy cons, and whether Kirk would have watched ESPN’s SportsCenter. A taste: MILLER: When I hear the [...]
Reading The Song Is You naturally involved thoughts about hardboiled and/or noir fiction. And whenever I have had a discussion about this particular genre someone always recommends Raymond Chandler. At some point in the past I picked up the beautiful Modern Library edition of The Big Sleep and Farewell My Lovely. Having read Abbott I [...]
Ross Douthat does a fine job of pointing out the problems with John Updike’s review of Amity Shale’s new book on the Great Depression: So far as I can tell from parsing this solipsistic flapdoodle, John Updike thinks the New Deal should be judged a great success because FDR was politically skillful enough to persuade [...]
Food for thought from David Plotz discussing Evan Almighty: Universal has hired a religious marketing firm to sell Evan Almighty to churches and religious leaders, hoping to capture the same hundreds of millions in Christ dollars raked in by The Passion, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Bruce Almighty. If they succeed, it will be tragic, [...]
A while back I mentioned that The Columbus Dispatch was ramping up its online book coverage with a blog by book critic Bill Eichenberger and an online book club. I have to say the blog is a bit lame so far. The irritating way the Dispatch blogs are embedded into the pages so that you [...]
Imagine: You’re at the airport and don’t have anything to read on the flight. You see two books at a kiosk. Six Principles of Effective Communication, a non-descript textbook, and Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, a bright orange hardcover with what looks like duct tape on the cover. Which book [...]