BOOK Reviews

This tale covers six decades of a Lebanese family in Beirut, Lebanon and is told through the eyes of, Raja, a 63 year old gay man sharing an apartment with his Mother. I can't tell you too much about the story because I fear it would be a plot spoiler, but Raja recounts the story of his life as a beloved local high school philosophy teacher and the trials and travails of coming of age in an often violent landscape. Often self isolating, Raja finds himself often being unwillingly pulled into rela

The passages of this story that inspired me were the ones that said that words sometimes "diminish" the thing they are talking about. King dealt with this problem admirably in this story. I run into that problem all the time when I am writing, be it an email, a personal note, or essay. It's a good thing we have other ways of expressing what needs to be said with other art forms including music and visual art. That's my two cents, and I'll close for now, so I don't do any more "diminishing."

As I have gotten older, my taste for fiction has considerably diminished. I am focusing more of my attention on nonfiction (biographies, memoirs, essays, journalistic reports, and humor) -- most recently, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe and Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson. I had read Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers -- assigned reading while I was in college -- and was captivated by Wolfe's "New Journalism" style. The following passage particularly tickled my fanc

While I was "sweatin' bullets" about going to Vietnam*, I read Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Both novels -- especially Trumbo's -- aggravated my anxiety and fear. Heller's satire was laudably transformed into a 1970 movie by Heller, Buck Henry, and director Mike Nichols. In comparison, Trumbo's 1971 cinematic adaptation of his allegory was, for me, less memorable and less potent. * Which I thankfully avoided, courtesy of Icky-Tray Icky-Day who pulled the U.S.

In the pursuit of happiness does wealth fulfill that desire? Gatsby, a self-made millionaire whose obsessive love for a woman from a higher social class leads to his downfall. Gatsby embodies the corruption of this dream, believing that money can buy him love and happiness, only to find that it leads to a spiritual void. 

George Orwell's dystopian classic, 1984, was neither Right or Left politically. It could be classified as a horror story to any political ideology besides authoritarian. Or, at least that's what everyone assumed until 2024! We were naive to assume that a repressive dictator constructing a police state would fly with any American. Who, knew, that post Hitler's Nazi Germany, it might ever be acceptable for an American President to depict himself wearing a crown and dumping poop on 7 million Americ

sure, the first half is full of stories passed on by word-of-mouth for generations, including commandments set in stone -- and endorses throwing stones, and was heavily edited over centuries to suit societal norms of the day, and is still used to justify an assortment of discriminations -- and accusations of abominations, BUT... the star of the 2nd half is the most liberal historical character that ever walked on earth or water. it is the bio of a man who clearly was "his brother's keeper" and "