Books News & Reviews A Book A Week: Best Friends Forever by Jennifer WeinerBecky Holmes on Thursday 11/19/2009 6:00 pmPopular fiction is a genre that is distinct from literary fiction, though the boundaries are fluid. I like to think of these categories as either ends of a ruler, with most books falling somewhere between the two ends. A lot of the books I read fall right around the middle of the continuum between popular and literary fiction. >More  A Book A Week: A Long Finish by Michael DidbinBecky Holmes on Friday 11/13/2009 6:00 pmWhen I heard in 2007 that Michael Dibdin had died, I remember thinking, "Oh darn, I never got around to reading any of his books." What a weird thought, as if the Head Librarian would now be taking all his books off the shelves. >More A Book A Week: The 19th Wife by David EbershoffBecky Holmes on Friday 10/30/2009 6:00 pmSome books just take longer than a week to read. David Ebershoff's The 19th Wife took more than two weeks, partly because it's long, and partly because some of it is a slog. Nevertheless it's an interesting book and worth reading for the 85% non-sloggish bits. >More Jane Hamilton and David Rhodes read to a capacity audience at the Wisconsin Book FestivalSaturday night lights at Promenade HallLinda Falkenstein on Sunday 10/11/2009 7:43 am, (5) RecommendationsUpstairs at Overture, a book festival volunteer herding people asked me, "Are you here for Jane Hamilton?" Well, if the truth were told, I was out in the windy cold on Saturday night to hear David Rhodes. >More A Book A Week: Mother on Fire by Sandra Tsing LohBecky Holmes on Friday 10/09/2009 6:00 pmSandra Tsing Loh is a writer, performance artist and public radio commentator. I don't hear her much on radio but I do read her pieces in the Atlantic. I’ve also never seen any of her one-woman shows but would sure like to. In 2008 she published Mother on Fire, a memoir about her life in Los Angeles, framed around her search for an appropriate school for her kindergarten-age daughter. >More A Book A Week: Finding Nouf by Zoe FerrarisBecky Holmes on Saturday 10/03/2009 6:00 pmI keep coming across these mysteries that take place in exotic locales. This was another one, set in Saudi Arabia. A teenage girl called Nouf goes missing and eventually turns up dead. >More A Book A Week: Daniel Isn't Talking by Marti LeimbachBecky Holmes on Friday 09/11/2009 6:00 pmMarti Leimbach's Daniel Isn’t Talking came out in 2006 and I remember reading some of the press about it with interest. Autism was in the news a lot because I think 2006 was the height of the autism/vaccination link controversy; not that autism has stopped being in the news. >More A Book A Week: The Dressmaker by Elizabeth Birkelund OberbeckBecky Holmes on Friday 09/04/2009 6:00 pmThis book was so forgettable that I forgot to blog about it. It's one of the books I bought at Powell's in Portland, Oregon, back in the beginning of August. The plot sounded like something I would like: a simple tailor in rural France is transformed into a leading couturier when he creates a fabulous wedding dress for a socialite. >More Lorrie Moore, at long lastThe acclaimed author's hotly anticipated new novel doesn't quite clickJennifer A. Smith on Friday 09/04/2009, (1) Comment, (3) RecommendationsAt 52, novelist and short-story writer Lorrie Moore has lived in Madison nearly half her life. Yet Moore, in both her work and the way others perceive her, retains a curious insider-outsider relationship to the Midwest. >More A review of Nature's Second Chance: Restoring the Ecology of Stone Prairie Farm, by Steven ApfelbaumLinda Falkenstein on Wednesday 09/02/2009 3:30 pm, (1) RecommendationAlthough Steven Apfelbaum is today a professional ecological restoration consultant who owns and operates Applied Ecological Services in Brodhead, Nature's Second Chance is not a tech-y treatise or a step-by-step guide to prairie restoration. It's a memoir of how he rehabbed his farmland and how that process helped him to step away from his more scientific obsessions and learn to live. >More A culinary trip back to the weird side of the Seventies with The Munchies EatbookAn excursion in retro foodLinda Falkenstein on Tuesday 09/01/2009 1:00 pm, (2) RecommendationsThere was a bridge period between 1960s casserole hell and the early, severe era of health food, and this might fall under the category of processed hippie food. In other words, the counterculture did not switch over from Hostess cupcakes to wheat germ in a day. >More A Book A Week: Happens Every Day by Isabel GilliesBecky Holmes on Wednesday 08/19/2009 6:00 pmI thought this book was a novel about a crumbling marriage. It turns out that it's a true story about a crumbling marriage, which makes it a little weirder to read. If it were a novel it would fit squarely into the "domestic fiction" category that I love so much. Is there such a thing as "domestic nonfiction?" >More A Book A Week: Testimony by Anita ShreveBecky Holmes on Friday 07/31/2009 6:00 pmWhy did Testimony have to be so sad? It is really heartbreaking. Well, it turns out that in Anita Shreve's world, if you commit adultery, very bad things happen to you. >More Heavenly caramels, holy cheesesA new guidebook to monastery made foods is a great resourceLinda Falkenstein on Friday 07/31/2009, (2) RecommendationsIt's not uncommon to hear people describe wonderful food as tasting "heavenly." Madison author Madeline Scherb took that characterization literally with her new book, A Taste of Heaven: A Guide to Food and Drink Made by Monks and Nuns. >More A Book A Week: Love Falls by Esther FreudBecky Holmes on Thursday 07/23/2009 6:00 pmEsther Freud wrote Hideous Kinky, a good book that became an even better movie. Love Falls would be a good movie too, but it's a lousy book. >More A Book A Week: Escape by Carolyn Jessop, with Laura PalmerBecky Holmes on Thursday 07/16/2009 6:00 pmI don't usually read books about the issue du jour, if you know what I mean. For some reason, however, I was attracted to Escape by Carolyn Jessop, who escaped from the FLDS, the fundamentalist polygamous cult that was recently raided by the Texas authorities for alleged child abuse. >More Isthmus Reads: Over the Edge, The Great Gatsby, and Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'ConnorIsthmus Staff on Monday 07/13/2009 4:00 pmA compelling account of the 2000 kidnapping of four U.S. climbers, Over the Edge is set along the remote and lawless borders of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in central Asia, and based on extensive interviews with the climbers and other participants in the drama, including one of their captors. >More A Book A Week: The Dissident by Nell FreudenbergerBecky Holmes on Wednesday 07/08/2009 6:00 pmCan I just list some of the topics Freudenberger tackles? Adolescent ennui, adultery, Chinese experimental art, culture shock, the nature of commitment, the Hollywood movie industry, identity and Tiananmen Square. With this many balls in the air at once, it's not surprising that a few of them drop and roll away without our ever knowing where they end up. >More Bryan Burrough brings the Dirty Thirties to life in Public EnemiesA review of the cops versus robbers book that inspired the movieKenneth Burns on Tuesday 06/30/2009 1:00 pm, (11) RecommendationsDon't let anyone tell you criminality means sloppy dressing. According to Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34 by Bryan Burrough, legendary gangster John Dillinger was the nattiest of bank robbers. >More Dave Crehore evokes enviable Wisconsin childhood in Sweet and Sour PieBill Lueders on Monday 06/29/2009 1:00 pm, (1) RecommendationIt made me laugh. It made me long for a childhood I never had, and which I sort of suspect Crehore is remembering a bit too fondly, with added saccharine. But I don't mind. The stories ring true, for the most part, and they immortalize a time and place that reflects well not just on the state but humanity. >More A Book a Week: An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination by Elizabeth McCrackenBecky Holmes on Saturday 06/27/2009 12:00 pmThis slim little book is about loss, specifically the loss of a baby. Too depressing, you might say? Maybe for some, but it's also about hope and about recovery. >More A Book A Week: Dumbfounded by Matt RothschildBecky Holmes on Saturday 06/20/2009 12:00 pm, (1) CommentI'm not the first person to observe this, but you know how sometimes a movie trailer can make a movie look funny and unique, then you go see it at the theater and realize that all the best bits were in the trailer and the rest of the movie is a big disappointment? >More A Book a Week: Lulu in Marrakech by Diane JohnsonBecky Holmes on Tuesday 06/16/2009 6:00 pmI loved Diane Johnson's three earlier books about American expatriates in France: Le Divorce, Le Mariage and L'Affaire. All three were funny, original, compelling and delivered laser-like critiques of both French and American culture. Johnson writes with a distinctive breezy style that belies her sharp observations and subtle characterizations. >More Isthmus Reads: Richard Yates, Susan Choi, Tana French, Denis LearyIsthmus Staff on Monday 06/15/2009 4:00 pmOne of my perverse pleasures is movie tie-in editions, so I picked up Vintage Contemporary's new mass-market paperback of Revolutionary Roadwith Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet canoodling on the cover. >More A review of Communities of Frank Lloyd Wright: Taliesin and Beyond, by Myron A. MartyMuch ado about Frank, but not enough about TaliesinLinda Falkenstein on Wednesday 06/10/2009 11:00 am, (4) RecommendationsObviously, Frank Lloyd Wright was more than an architect. He was a huge personality. His ideas about the human need for shelter, the life of the city and suburbia, and best methods of education were utopian. So an insightful study on Wright and his communities could be useful, even in the sea of books produced about his life, work, and philosophy. >More |
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