I did not like this. It’s not even the material, but the production that I was not on board for. After listening to the masterful rendition of Emma and weird but well put-together I’m From the Sun, I was expecting good quality from an Audible Original. It immediately said “podcast” to me, which is fine if you want a podcast, but I was expecting a book. And this is a book, or at least based on one. The production quality just wasn’t there. There are […]
Who What When Where Why and How…..
Who Was Mark Twain? He was an author, adventurer, tall-tale maker and the subject of this book by April Jones Prince. There are several different people in the Who Was/Who Is series. I read Mark Twain and Who Was Joan of Arc by Pam Pollack and Meg Belviso last night. While each has its own author(s) each are illustrated by a different artist (John O’Brien and Andrew Thomson respectively). They are a non-fiction story about their subject. You can have everyone from Joan of Arc […]
The Corrupting Effects of Sivilization
Do you remember how the last third of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn made you hate Tom Sawyer? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Robert Coover takes Mark Twain’s iconic characters, ages them about 30 years, places them in Deadwood just before America’s centennial, and uses them to expose the ignorance, violence and cruelty at the heart of America’s westward expansion. If The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was mostly an adventure story for boys, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a story of the loss […]
I have just read Mark Twain for the first time.
I am ashamed to admit that until this past week, I had never read any Mark Twain. How does a person enter their 6th decade of life, born and raised in the United States, and not have read Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn? I have no explanations or excuses, but I thank Badkittyuno, who drew my name in the holiday book exchange, for guarding my shameful confession and sending both books to me. In some respects the two classic novels are like a lot of […]



