In his own words
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Pyramid
Review: O Time! Thy Pyramids! Bonus points if you know what that refers to. This book is about exactly what the title suggests, building a pyramid. First published in 1975 this book was originally written for younger readers but has informed and delighted kids and adults for nearly 50 years. Macaulay’s incredible draftsmanship and clear…
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NYT Essential Library: Jazz
Review: An impulse buy that really showed its age. Published in 2002 in the days of compact discs, before streaming, before even iTunes or the iPod. The subtitle is A Critic’s Guide to the 100 Most Important (Jazz) Recordings and it was exactly that. Now in 2024 the whole world of music is an entirely…
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Year of Wonder
Review: This was a Christmas gift and a nice premise, that is one reads a page each day and listens to the musical selection being discussed. That I made it to the end of July is a testament to my perseverance and courage because this was awful. At first I figured I would be the…
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Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man
Review: Clarence Birdseye was a real person, who knew? Not me for sure. I had heard of Birdseye Frozen Peas from crosswords but that was it. So I read this book and I learned all about Mr. Clarence “Bob” Birdseye and his curious life. I use the word curious in every sense of the word.…
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Why I Write
Review: Four essays, the first and namesake one being Why I Write, then The Lion and the Unicorn, A Hanging, and finally Politics and the English Language. All excellent, all way more applicable to the present day than I or anyone should be comfortable with. The first line from the second essay is as follows:…
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Prague Stories
Review: Something a little different for me with this volume. I will admit that I knew nothing about Prague, Czech Republic or Czech people other than Jaromir Jagr is from there. But now thanks to Everyman publishing I know a lot more. I still had to refer to my map of Europe to place all…
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On the Shortness of Life
Review: Seneca was a Roman writer and statesman who lived early in the first century AD. This particular essay was written around 49 AD as a letter to his friend Paulinus. Paulinus was praefectus annonae, the official who superintended the grain supply of Rome, and was therefore a man of importance. And apparently, Paulinus worked…
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The Story of Art
Review: Well. Was not expecting this to be a book that I couldn’t put down, but it ended up that way. Actually I had read some reviews that said that very thing, that readers could not put it down but I figured well reviews are sketchy these days so let’s hope this won’t be too…
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Babbitt
Review: This was an extraordinary novel, and I was not expecting that at all. How I came to read this was due to a trivia question that I got wrong a few weeks ago. The question was: Who was the first American author to receive a Pulitzer Prize? So I looked at the choices and…
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China Mountain Zhang
Review: This was good. Well written and engaging. Good, but not great. I figure this was why it was described on the cover as a New York Times Notable Book rather than a New York Times bestseller. The book is set in a future where the USA is a Socialist Republic after a civil war…