This book caught my eye due to its title: John Henry Days. My sons’ names are John and Henry. So I picked it up at Half Price Books, skimmed the excellent reviews on the back and tossed it into my cart. Shouldn’t have. While there were a few interesting parts, overall it was a difficult book to read, one that I completed in about twice the amount of time that it should have taken, simply because I didn’t feel like picking it up. The writing […]
No Way to Treat a First Lady by Christopher Buckley
No Way to Treat a First Lady is now the third Christopher Buckley book I’ve read, and while it’s not my favorite so far, I did like it enough to order a couple more of his novels off of Amazon. His particular brand of humor (smarmy, sarcastic political satire) really does it for me and the fun plots of his books are icing on the cake. In No Way to Treat a First Lady, First Lady Elizabeth MacMann (aka Lady Bethmac) is put on trial after her cheating husband […]
Bluebeard’s Egg by Margaret Atwood
I normally don’t like short stories. With the exception of horror stories, which don’t really require it, I dislike them because there’s so little characterization. You get a few pages to learn all you can about a person, and then it just cuts off. I want miles and miles of information about a person; their thoughts and habits and dreams and flaws and all the good stuff that makes me want to read a story. Margaret Atwood is such a talented writer that she creates […]
Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz
“And then she occurred to her that she was the ghost in her story. She had spent years haunting her own life, without ever noticing.” The romantic comedy starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd based on Jean Hanff Korelitz’s book was very different from the source material. I enjoyed the movie, as I would probably anything starring Fey and/or Rudd. But while the movie was a fun romcom about an unhappy admissions officer finding love and family, the book is much more serious and in my […]