A Fresh Look by Paul Willis Unlike many of my friends in Santa Barbara, I have never been to Europe. So, when I recently received an invitation to teach a…
Author: Admin
Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice, 1967-1975 by Richard Thompson with Scott Timberg
Review by George Yatchisin When my physical therapist saw the book I brought to PT, asked what I was reading, and looked totally nonplussed, I have to admit it hurt…
Duplicity by Peter Selgin
Review by Linda Lappin In this darkly unsettling farce, Duplicity, novelist Peter Selgin lures the reader into the eerie parallel universe of doppelgangers, impostors, and multiple selves, while musing on the nature…
Black Writers, White Gaze
by Jinny Webber Yaa Gyasi’s essay in the March 20, 2021 book section of the Guardian throws out a challenge. Author of the new novel, Transcendent Kingdom, Gyasi describes her…
Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl
Late Migrations is an elegantly-crafted collection of brief essays, many less than a page long, that focus on Renkl’s family history and the way she sees reflections of that history…
Still Life with Timex by Elisabeth Murawski
by Walter Cummins Poets have written about the death of children, the saddest and most intimate of griefs, from Ben Jonson’s “On My First Son—”Farewell, thou child of my right…
I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are by Rachel Bloom
Review by George Yatchisin Think of Rachel Bloom’s memoir I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are as a bathroom book. It’s written in zippy chapters—some lists, some mini-screenplays,…
Blue Swan Black Swan: The Trakl Diaries by Stephanie Dickinson
Review by Walter Cummins The Austrian poet Georg Trakl endured a short, distressed life (1887-1914) before he overdosed on cocaine in a psychiatric hospital in Krakow, sent there after a…
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
Review by Walter Cummins Has climate change reached a tipping point? Is it too late, or do we still have an opportunity to redeem the planet? Some optimists, citing previous…
Having and Being Had by Eula Biss
Review by George Yatchisin Eula Biss wants me to be better and I’m not sure I’m up for that. When I refer to the quick several page essays that build…