The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

It seems disrespecful to diss The Last Lecture, a book written by a father of three young children and professor at CMU who was told he would die shortly of pancreatic cancer (and has since died) and wanted to leave behind a tangible memento to his family. I am told that the actual last lecture, [...]

Mother on Fire by Sandra Tsing Loh

I know it’s supposed to be a satire. I know it’s supposed to be over the top. But Mother on Fire wanders not only over the top but sideways and over to the next valley, leaving the reader confused and often bored by the diatribe approach. About what? Ms. Loh is telling us about her [...]

Come on Shore and we will Kill and Eat you All by Christina Thompson

Come on Shore and we will Kill and Eat you All has to have the best title of the year – nah, make it the decade, perhaps the best title of any book I’ve ever read. It turns out to be a quote from the explorer Cook, who had several experiences with the ferocity of [...]

The Legal Limit by Martin Clark

The Legal Limit is a legal thriller that tells of two brothers, one crushed by his abusive father and the other one apparently capable of sublimating his difficult childhood into a judge’s position and a stable life. When they were young adults the bad one killed a guy and the “good” one covered for him, which [...]

The Colony by John Tayman

The Colony tells the true, often romanticized, but shameful story of the lepers’ colony in Molokai, Hawaii, which was created in the late 1800’s and lasting through the middle of the 20th century. Before I read this book all I knew about it was the figure of Father Damien, a Belgian missionary who volunteered to [...]

Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris

CSI Jeddah: Zoe Ferraris’s first novel,Finding Nouf,  reads like an exotic CSI story, complete with a death in the first few minutes, illicit sex (yes, even in Jeddah), family members who may be telling the truth but rarely the whole truth, suspicious foreigners (a la the South Americans in CSI Miami), a determined and attractive [...]

The Prince of Frogtown by Rick Bragg

The Prince of Frogdown is a cleverly-told story of the author’s father interleaved with the story of his relationship with his young stepson. His dad was a poor Alabaman blue collar worker who drank too much, abandoned his family, and died young. His stepson, a well-loved, well-protected little boy is having a totally different childhood than [...]

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

I don’t care much for dogs. I think of ghosts, tornadoes and fires as cheapshot plot devices. I can’t quite believe that a kid can be mute but not deaf. And I loved The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which features a mute-but-not-deaf hero, lots of dogs, talking (!) ghosts, a tornado, and a fire as the finale. Go [...]

Stop me if you’ve Heard This by Jim Holt

Stop me if you’ve Heard This is a very short and very funny informal history of jokes with lots of examples (yeah!) Rather than going for a long, exhaustive, and exhaustive treatise the author wisely chose to keep it short, although he manages to speak of the Greeks (not so funny, at least in translation), Freud, [...]

Manic: a memoir by Terri Cheney

Manic is a terrifying and wonderful book. Written by an episodically successful lawyer (when she’s neither depressed  or fully manic), it lays out the brutal reality of what it’s like to be bipolar in a world arranged for “normal” people. Despite the suicide attempts, the outrageous behavior, the prison, the mental hospitals, the author manages [...]