tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386566332026-05-06T23:10:52.998-05:00A nineteen-year-old book blog offering book reviews and news about authors, publishers, bookstores, and libraries. Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.comBlogger3796125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-30097574103611537782026-05-04T14:50:04.426-05:002026-05-04T14:50:04.427-05:00

 I first read Elmer Kelton’s Stand Proud sometime back in the eighties,  and that was plenty long enough ago for this re-read to feel like I was reading it for the very first time. I remembered almost no details concerning the book’s plot, and had only a general memory of how much I enjoyed the story the first time around. It turns out that Stand Proud explores a theme that

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-55834421347662301612026-05-01T14:49:29.018-05:002026-05-01T14:49:29.018-05:00

 An American Outlaw is the first book in John Stonehouse’s popular series featuring US Marshal John Whicher. There are now eight books in the series, including one novella, with the latest novel Wolves of the Evening, having just been published in March 2026. This is my first exposure to the series so I don’t know how typical An American Outlaw is to the other seven books, but I’ve been

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-17880944442626328962026-04-30T13:26:35.400-05:002026-04-30T13:26:35.401-05:00

 I finished two of the five books I was reading last week (reviews to come eventually - I hope), and I made decent progress on two of the others. I finished my re-read of Elmer Kelton’s Texas novel, Stand Proud, along with listening to the rest of An American Outlaw, the John Stonehouse audiobook I started during my recent day trip to Beaumont. The Kelton book, I’m relieved to report held up

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-60944749365765469752026-04-27T19:24:53.428-05:002026-04-27T19:58:40.821-05:00

 Although this is just my second experience with a Haruki Murakami novel, I’ve learned that he is immensely popular in his home country of Japan. In its first week alone, one million copies of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage were printed - and by the end of its first month in publication, all but 15,000 of those books had been sold. And from what I’ve read, this is

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-43456471592131901472026-04-23T12:20:48.486-05:002026-04-23T12:20:48.487-05:00

 Although I have five books going this week, they are not the ones I expected I would be reading after just purchasing over a dozen new ones a a few days ago. Of course, my long term reading of Ron Chernow’s Mark Twain continues, but the other four that I’m reading were not in my immediate plans before…suddenly they were. I did abandon one last week that I had high hopes for, Rule of the

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-22586726370009566612026-04-21T13:20:00.000-05:002026-04-21T13:20:01.484-05:00

 Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These is a difficult book to review without inadvertently straying into spoiler territory almost immediately. It comes in at fewer than 130 pages in total, putting it firmly in novella territory, and elimination of spoilers from the conversation leaves little but generalities to talk about. The problem is not with the generalities themselves; they are all

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-9229970449416911222026-04-19T12:32:00.001-05:002026-04-19T12:32:59.217-05:00

 I can’t vouch for the methodology behind the survey that generated this chart, but it pretty much reflects the numbers I’ve been seeing over the last few years from numerous other sources. The takeaway headline is easy to spot: The top 4% of readers by themselves read almost half the books read in this country in any given year. But the saddest takeaway, by far, is that 40% of U.S.

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-72068089273561886962026-04-16T14:23:00.001-05:002026-04-16T22:27:03.889-05:00

 When the Light Goes is the fourth book in Larry McMurtry’s five-book Thalia, Texas series. The main character in the series is Duane Moore, who was a high school student when introduced in the first book in the series, The Last Picture Show. In this one, Duane is in his sixties, and he’s feeling a bit mortal even if he doesn’t want to admit it to himself yet. Duane's wife has been

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-24987440837601411712026-04-13T11:45:00.002-05:002026-04-13T11:49:41.006-05:00

 After buying almost nothing for most of a month, I’ve been on a little e-book buying spurt the last couple of days. I’ve purchased a combination of recently published books, older books, and back catalogs from some of my favorite authors. Among them are:I can’t even begin to count the number of short stories I’ve read over the years, but I can’t recall a single one by Lorrie Moore. Lately,

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-72399904638545099092026-04-11T07:00:00.001-05:002026-04-11T07:00:00.115-05:00

Over the past couple of weeks, my currently-reading list has shrunk all the way down to four books. And even one of those is my perpetual-read, the Mark Twain biography by Ron Chernow of which I reached the forty percent mark just today  - with still over 600 pages left to go. I have, though, added three very different books to my current reads, and I’m enjoying each of them:I’ve only read

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-14445065927707614322026-04-09T07:00:00.004-05:002026-04-09T09:06:55.506-05:00

 Blasphemy is a collection of thirty-one short stories written by a favorite storyteller of mine, Sherman Alexie. It should be noted, however, that Mr. Alexie got caught up in that whole “Me Too” movement back in 2018 after perhaps as many as fifty women came forward to say that he had sexually harassed them. The ensuing fallout was real and deserved: scholarships with his name on them got

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-8035220027425264642026-04-06T07:00:00.003-05:002026-04-13T17:06:07.478-05:00

 Louise Penny made me do something today, I never dreamed I would be doing in a million years: abandon her latest novel, The Black Wolf, at the eighty-page mark with no intention of ever picking it up again. Now I only wish I could get my $30 back.I have been reading Penny for years, and have read eighteen of the nineteen novels she’s published prior to The Black Wolf, enjoying them so much

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-15729950122891178102026-04-04T12:48:00.003-05:002026-04-04T12:49:47.894-05:00

 “History gives you the facts, and fiction gives you the truth of the facts.” (Unattributed quote from Nancy Pearl in The Writer’s Library)I bought Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet a couple of years ago but forgot I had a copy until reminded of it by the recent release of the book's movie version. That’s a problem I often have with e-books: “out of sight, out of mind.” But I suppose that’s story

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-2501854806576949992026-03-30T16:08:00.001-05:002026-04-04T15:42:13.463-05:00

 I still remember standing in line outside in the dark back in 1973 for a couple of hours waiting for my chance to see the movie version of The Exorcist - and how you couldn’t finally walk inside to your seat without feeling at least a little sense of dread. I had read William Peter Blatty’s novel the previous year, so I knew what to expect, but the buzz around this movie was so hyped

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-52273364830071190522026-03-26T07:00:00.001-05:002026-03-26T07:00:00.136-05:00

 I didn’t realize what a can of worms I was opening up when I decided to read Jonathan Evison’s Lawn Boy. I don’t remember running across it at all when it was published in 2018, and it really only caught my eye now because of its unusual cover art. Only after finishing Lawn Boy, did I learn (in the author’s short essay at the end of the novel) that it is largely autobiographical. This is a

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 Despite having seven books going last week, I still found myself in a bit of a reading slump because even though I finished one of the seven, Ben Bova’s Mars Life, I found it tough to get much into any of the other six at all. The only other one that I found consistently engaging was Ron Chernow’s 1100-page biography of Mark Twain - and I’m going to be reading that one for a few more

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-11291325655163569632026-03-21T19:55:22.591-05:002026-03-21T19:55:22.591-05:00

 Big Five publisher Hatchette has decided to pull Mia Ballard’s Shy Girl from British bookstore shelves, and will not be publishing the novel in the United States at all because the publisher is now convinced that Shy Girl is largely AI generated. This is a first, but it will almost certainly not be a last unless publishers get more serious about vetting the manuscripts they take on for

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-44958975006807707232026-03-19T13:22:39.601-05:002026-03-19T13:22:39.601-05:00

I cut my reading teeth on ‘50s and ‘60s scifi authors like Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, Theodore Sturgeon, and a few others. Probably because so much of his output was aimed directly at the YA market, Heinlein is the one whose work I remember most vividly today, but all of my favorites had one thing in common: a relatively strong emphasis on the “science” part of the term

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-62158640688578200822026-03-16T15:24:00.000-05:002026-03-16T15:24:01.476-05:00

I have been a reader for over 70 years now, and my opinion of the publishing industry has never been lower than it is today.  I realize this didn’t happen over night, that the industry decline was such a gradual one that its impact is only observable in a hindsight of several years. But sadly, I think we are in the middle of a perfect storm that will continue to degrade the quality of mass

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-65071138218656778382026-03-13T16:12:00.002-05:002026-03-13T16:12:42.216-05:00

 Dear Life, published in 2012, was Alice Munro’s last book. She won the Nobel Prize the following year, becoming the first and only Canadian for having done so. At the time, she was called a “master of the contemporary short story,” and I very much agree with that assessment of her talents.Dear Life contains fourteen short stories, the final four of which Munro tells us are based upon her

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-68887436653911193862026-03-09T17:20:00.003-05:002026-03-09T17:20:43.254-05:00

 Yesterday’s time-change really did a number on me. I woke up “late” and then felt sluggish all day long even though I ended up getting the same number of hours of sleep I normally get. It’s going to take me another couple of days, I think, to get into the sun’s new rhythm, and I really wish we would choose one time or the other and stick with that one for the duration. I did manage to get

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-40127291664278448672026-03-06T19:55:00.000-06:002026-03-06T19:55:19.918-06:00

 The Writer’s Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives consists of twenty-two author-interviews during which Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager ask the authors a set series of questions. Twenty-one of the interviews are conducted in person, and one, that of author Donna Tartt, via email. Despite the questions all being pretty much being the same from author to author,

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-50788166771640662402026-03-01T13:58:00.000-06:002026-03-01T13:58:00.055-06:00

Of the six books I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, half of them are still on top of my desk as I type this. That’s not to say that I haven’t read in and out of most of them, just that my wandering eye was caught by some new ones along the way. I did manage to finish The Best Revenge by Gerald Seymour and Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald and write short reviews of both. One hit and one

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-79225468027403925122026-02-28T11:39:00.000-06:002026-02-28T11:39:29.718-06:00

 I am a fan of memoirs, reading at least a dozen of them every year for the last decade or so. Sometimes I know a little (or a lot) about the author before beginning a memoir; sometimes I’ve never heard of the author at all. Isaac Fitzgerald was most definitely not someone I knew of before picking up Dirtbag, Massachusetts, and the more I read of the confessional essays that make up

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-47515789299660204542026-02-23T14:59:00.001-06:002026-02-24T14:25:20.628-06:00

 If James Bond has a direct opposite it would be Gerald Seymour’s master spy Jonas Merrick. Unlike Mr. Bond, Jonas never goes into the field to do any dirty work or to gather vital information about the threatening intentions of foreign governments. Jonas, in fact, so seldom leaves his desk once he arrives there promptly each morning that his colleagues have very little idea what he does all

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com6