Category Archives: Book Reviews
Review: Peggy Riley, Amity and Sorrow: What makes fiction work
This past Sunday’s New York Times Book Review featured Dylan Landis’ wonderfully positive review of Peggy Riley’s debut novel Amity and Sorrow (312 pp. Little, Brown & Company $25.99). It’s the story of a woman named Amaranth and her two … Continue reading
Review: Douglas Hofstadter, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking
My review of Doug Hofstadters new book, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking ran in today’s Shelf Awareness. It is also copied below in its entirety. Hofstadter’s first book, Godel, Escher, Bach, was essential reading … Continue reading
Book Review, sort of: Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin
Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin (Random House, 2009) used Phillippe Petit’s tightrope walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center as the novel’s central metaphor, an image of glorious achievement twenty-five years earlier as a redemptive … Continue reading
Poetry Review: Palace of Contemplating Departures by Brynn Saito
My review of Brynn Saito’s The Palace of Contemplating Departure (Red Hen Press, 2013) ran in today’s Shelf Awareness for Readers (dedicated poetry issue; it is, after all, Poetry Month). I loved this collection. Saito is wonderful with imagery and lets … Continue reading
Book Review: Letters to a Young Scientist by Edward O. Wilson
Shelf Awareness for Readers is doing a dedicated poetry issue in which another review of mine will be published – a wonderful debut (and prize-winning) collection by Brynn Saito called The Palace of Contemplating Departure. As a result, there will be … Continue reading
The Second Word 