Books

Philippa Gregory's The Queen's Fool is an entertaining, well-researched novel of Tudor times.

Hype. The modern American way of getting attention. It seems to have worked for John Twelve Hawks, the pseudonymous author.

Now they blend in with the rest. Selling the brand without questioning the content.

Tens of thousands of people, of all ages, all around the world, were sitting down today to read the one book. The hype does get a bit wearing, but the fact that the world is getting this excited about a book can only be a good thing. I couldn’t resist …

So, NHL players and owners appear to have a new collective bargaining agreement that will end the lock out that cost them last season. YAWN. Instead of worrying about a league few really seemed to miss as it committed hari-kari, maybe it’s worth taking a look at people who aren’t …

We could call this summer Men In Black 3 or the Birth of Mask ...

It takes a bit to get used to James Frey’s memoirs, both typographically and stylistically. None of the paragraphs are indented. Quotation marks are not used to delineate speech or conversation. Stylistically, Frey would probably flunk most basic composition classes. Many of his sentences are basically run-on streams of consciousness. …

"...New York is boring. It’s like Gone With The Wind on mescaline down here..."

True “dog people” are considered such because they think so highly of the canine. Not only do they consider their dog almost as much a part of the family as the children, they tend to respect a dog’s patience, tolerance and unqualified devotion. I know because I’m one of them. …

Some journalism doesn’t fit the inherent constraints of newspapers or magazines. Often, that is because the subject is too massive and requires longer periods of investigation than what these formats tend to demand in immediacy. Terry McDermott’s exploration of the 9/11 terrorists, Perfect Soldiers, is an example of this. McDermott, …