Apparently, the bullying specter has raised its ugly head in the world of books and reviewing, which is difficult to reconcile. Readers are generally quiet, harmless people, more likely to shush you than verbally attack. Somehow, though, in these days where the volume is getting higher and the content is getting lower, people use the mask of anonymity to say truly dreadful ... Read More...
Semi-Charmed Life
Beatrice Bernstein, of the art world Bernsteins, is faced with a difficult decision: spend her senior year living in a roach and mold infested basement apartment or ghost-write a blog for the chic and mysterious socialite, Veruca Pfeffernoose. Balancing her ethics against sleepless nights fully clothed to avoid any contact with anything in her closet-apartment and Beatrice’s ... Read More...
Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox
August 5 will mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe and 50 years later the attention on both her life and death is still strong. In Marilyn: The Passion & the Paradox, Lois Banner goes beyond the plethora of material already published about this glamorous American icon. While it might be hard to believe that there is anything left unknown, Banner’s ... Read More...
The After Wife: A Novel
One of the reasons reading is such a marvelous thing is because it can be tailored to suit every mood. When I’m reading a book to be reviewed I need to pay attention, a bit like studying in college but if you only ever had to study your favorite subject. Sometimes, I want to read the way I watch bad TV- blindly with no greater goal than to be amused. No thought involved. Gigi ... Read More...
What We’ve Come To
This is one more reason why comic books are now called graphic novels or "sequential art". And why I despair for the future of mankind. Advice to writers: WRITE BELOW THE 8th-GRADE LEVEL. Some writers worry that this may insult their readers' intelligence. In reality, no one complains that something is too easy to understand. Studies show that writing below the 8th-grade ... Read More...
Suite Française
There are novels that come with a backstory so complex and heartrending the book itself can be overwhelmed. Irène Némirovsky, was a Ukrainian Jew living in Paris with her husband and two young daughters. She was a successful author and had written the first two parts of Suite Française in Paris during the German occupation. In 1942 at age 39 she would be sent to her death ... Read More...
