Entries Tagged as ‘Uncategorized’

June 30, 2008

Tax Free Tuesdays at Voltaire Books

Sure, it’s hot and sticky around here in July — but Voltaire Books is rewarding those of us who stick around with Tax-Free Tuesdays. For the entire month, locals — who already get a 5 percent discount — can take an extra 7.5 percent off purchases at the island’s best independent bookstore. Let’s go! (The [...]

June 28, 2008

A read medium-length and entertaining

My review of Tony Horwitz’s latest historical travelogue, A Voyage Long and Strange, is in this week’s edition of Solares Hill, and on the Citizen’s website. I liked the book, better than Blue Latitudes but not as much as Confederates in the Attic. Still, a fun and informative read. It will be interesting to see [...]

June 12, 2008

A good find

I haven’t read the Da Vinci Code (can you hear my tone of satisfied superiority via text?) — though I think it made a fine movie. I did read Angels & Demons and thought the writing SUCKED but eventually found myself turning the pages for plot. But I have been looking for several years for a [...]

May 18, 2008

Time to let go?

When I was 10 or 11, visiting my grandparents, I came across a copy of “Elizabeth the Great” by Elizabeth Jenkins. Since then I have, to varying degrees, been obsessed with the various versions of the Tudor story — mostly nonfiction, though more recently supplemented by fiction (I like to call this genre Tudor Trash) [...]

March 27, 2008

A great read

A recommended read from Maggie Nelson, one of the New Voices at this year’s Key West Literary Seminar, was John Wray and over the weekend I finished his second and most recent novel, Canaan’s Tongue. Thank you, Maggie! Wow. The book is one of those written in multiple voices, set during the Civil War, about [...]

March 21, 2008

Link o’ the Day

From the National Book Critics Circle Blog, Critical Mass, a very interesting guest post from Molly Giles on judging the PEN Faulkner Awards. I can’t imagine.
Her comments at the end of the post are especially interesting, given the upcoming Key West Literary Seminar topic, historical fiction.

March 11, 2008

Toni tomorrow

From Kris Neihouse at the Key West library: “Sorry for the late notice (again!) but at least this time nothing has changed. 
This is just a reminder about Book Bites tomorrow night March 12th  at the Key West Library at 5:30.  We will be discussing Pulitzer AND Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison.  So come on [...]

March 10, 2008

The mysteries of Sweden

When not gulping down episodes of “The Wire” and “Rome” (on DVD, courtesy of the Monroe County Library). I recently read a couple books from the collection of my employer, the FKCC Library: “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan – which I reviewed for Solares Hill, probably appearing in Friday’s edition. And I read [...]

March 4, 2008

Not again …

Why, oh why, in the post James Frey world, does anyone think they can write a flagrantly fake memoir and get away with it? Today’s New York Times reports on the latest case, a book called “Love and Consequences” that even received a good review from the Times’ fearsome Michiko Kakutani. The most painful detail [...]

February 26, 2008

The Scarlet Professor

Over the weekend I finally finished reading The Scarlet Professor by Barry Werth, a biography of the literary critic and Smith professor Newton Arvin.
Arvin won a National Book Award and wrote several respected biographies — but he’s remembered as the target of a pornography bust in 1960, which targeted him because he was gay. And [...]