Category: Review
You need these reviews in your life.
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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… Read more
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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… Read more
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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… Read more
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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.… Read more
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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:… Read more
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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… Read more
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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… Read more
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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… Read more
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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… Read more
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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… Read more