Tag Archives: books

Bias disclosure: I generally do not like pop psychology/self-help books. Therefore, you probably should not be surprised that The Irritable Male Syndrome did not change my mind about the genre. I happened to see a blurb about The Irritable Male Syndrome in a magazine at about the time my family …

It’s a ripsnorting, ’60s style, “give me an F,” punks and folkies wailing, no-makeup-wearing Cindy Sheehan agitating, bring the troops home now, my mother-in-law and the other hippies will be there, good old anti-war rally and free concert as Operation Ceasefire seeks to rattle the windows of power tomorrow, Saturday, …

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (that's of the UK) is offering free access over the weekend.

Poetry tends to kindle emotion. At times, the feelings may be as basic as loving or hating the art form itself. But some sort of emotional response is likely the goal of all poetry. As Allen Ginsberg says in No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese’s new documentary on Bob Dylan, “Poetry …

In Geeks, Jon Katz has written a powerful, moving story with two unlikely heroes who call themselves geeks. But as Katz has explained in his writings for Slashdot.org, geek isn’t the insult it sometimes seems. In fact some of them consider it a compliment, he said. Most of the fascinating …

Art Spiegelman, the author of the amazing, powerful book Maus gives his reaction to the destruction of the twin towers. Is In the Shadow of No Towers as amazing and brilliant as Maus? No. Is it fair to hold him to that standard? Not really. The book contains&#8212in his cartoon …

"When the alarm has sounded DON'T .... Be surprised at anything that may happen."

When CinemaScope arrived in the early 1950s, it was Hollywood’s effort to create more realistic film making by putting a wider image into a smaller area without significantly reducing the content or quality of the image. Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause takes …

Dunning, who has won the Nero Wolfe Award, wrote Booked to Die and The Bookman’s Wake. Both were excellent. This new book pales, however, in comparison to the two earlier ones. Dunning owned a Denver bookstore for many years but now does his sales online. I mention this because in …

'Parasitism is too mild a term for a relationship predicated on the periodic killing of large numbers of human beings.'