Halloween Poem

What better way to note Halloween than this lovely, haunting [sic] poem by Tucson poet Richard Siken: Unhappy Hour Going to a party where I knew you’d be, dudes bobbing for boyfriends, eyes shining like candy apples. I want to be a lamppost, or the history of plumbing. I am tired of being mysterious. You [...]

Review of “Reinventing the Sacred” by Stuart A. Kauffman

Stuart Kauffman, a recipient of the MacArthur “genius” award, is best known for his formulations of complexity theory, and in particular, the mechanics of emergence. There’s no easy way to explain emergence. I think of it as sort of like Boston Crème Pie. First you make vanilla pudding. And if you have ever made pudding [...]

Review of “Earth: A Visitor’s Guide to the Human Race” by Jon Stewart

If you are the type that still laughs uproariously every time someone uses Uranus in a sentence – or in any other way (excuse me while I laugh uproariously) this is the book for you! Jon Stewart is ostensibly telling the history of Life on Earth to future aliens. If you listen to the CD, [...]

Review of “The Grand Design” by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow

Note: This review is by my husband Jim. In The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow address the questions of what the nature of reality is, and whether the universe needs a “creator” to make sense. These issues traditionally have been part of the realm of philosophy, but the authors assert “philosophy is dead.” [...]

Review of “Vermilion Drift” by William Kent Krueger

This is the tenth book in a series involving detective Corcoran “Cork” O’Connor of Tamarack County, Minnesota, but I have never read any of his books prior to this one. It turned out not to matter at all; this book stands alone with no problem. You learn quite a bit about iron mining in this [...]

Review of “The Wake of Forgiveness” by Bruce Machart

This is a story about the violence and cruelty that family members can exhibit toward one another, and it’s a bleak, dark tale. It begins in a Czech immigrant community in Texas in 1895 with the death of Vaclav Skala’s wife in childbirth, and events just sort of go downhill from there. Karel Skala is [...]

Plugged or Unplugged: That Is The Question

Starting tomorrow, we will be traveling for ten days. I will be featuring [pre-scheduled] posts regularly, but don’t know if I will be able to comment on other blogs, since one never knows what to expect on the road. Since we don’t have e-readers, the more pressing question is, how many books do we each [...]

Review of “Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter” by Tom Franklin

Don’t you just love discovering a new author via a really good book? Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is a really good book. A word about the title: according to the author in the epigraph, southern children are taught to spell “Mississippi” as “M, I, crooked letter, crooked letter, I, crooked letter, crooked letter, I, humpback, [...]

Review of “Revolution” by Jennifer Donnelly

When I read A Northern Light by Donnelly, I was absolutely in love with it. I thought the writing was outstanding. It took place in 1906, however, so this book, which starts out in contemporary times, sounds very different. Yet it is just as amazing in other ways. What a versatile artist Donnelly is! In [...]

The OKRA Picks Challenge

I certainly wouldn’t want to pass up a challenge that lets me register as a “Goober.” As far as my family is concerned, it takes up where “Ding Dong” left off for the Game On Challenge. It seems apt. Here are the details: This challenge is being hosted by Kathy of Bermudaonion’s Weblog, who has [...]