A Ribbon for Your Hair: Loss. More Loss.  And How We (Sort of) Went On by Stephen Policoff

Heliotrope Review by Lisa Del Rosso A Ribbon for Your Hair: Loss. More Loss. And How We (Sort of) Went On  by Stephen Policoff, is a memoir about the loss of…

Time Traveling by Kate Deimling

Cornerstone Review by Paul Willis Kate Deimling’s debut collection of poetry travels through the reader’s mind like a stray clock, chiming the hours past, present, and future in a harmony…

A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness by Michael Pollan

Penguin Review by Walter Cummin In A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness, Michael Pollan makes an offhand reference to Plato’s cave, “where artificial agents are confined and forced to…

This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days by John Darnielle

MCD Review by George Yatchisin If the claim “songs are poetry” drives you batty, John Darnielle’s This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days will give you fits. Darnielle…

Departure(s) by Julian Barnes

Knopf Review by Walter Cummins A significant pleasure of reading one of Julian Barnes many books is enjoying his verbal inventiveness and appreciating the workings of his mind. His deeper…

When Caesar Was King: How Sid Caesar Reinvented Comedy by David Margolick

Schocken Review by Walter Cummins The hardest I’ve ever laughed took place more than fifty years ago. David Margolick’s book brought it all back in full hysterics, the experience of…

A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction by Elizabeth McCracken

Ecco Review by Walter Cummins When first reading A Long Game, I kept wondering who the book was written for. The title and the author would attract those of us…

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

Europa Review by Walter Cummins This, Miller’s tenth novel, was a finalist for the 2025 Booker Prize and received two major British awards for historical fiction. The story is historical…

The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins by Sonny Rollins, Edited by Sam V.H. Reese

New York Review Review by Walter Cummins I’ve been listening to Sonny Rollins’ saxophone for decades, including one live performance with bad acoustics that he still managed to overcome, and…

A Desert Between Two Seas by A. Muia

Georgia Review by Paul Willis A. Muia’s richly entangled grouping of fourteen short stories, A Desert Between Two Seas, explores the afterlife of the Spanish missions in Baja California.  While…