by George Yatchisin If you’ve ever wondered how historical nonfiction can be dry like a martini and not dry like a textbook tome, you need to pick up Cecelia Tichi’s…
Category: Genres
The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present and Future of Trump’s America by Adam Serwer
Review by Brian Tanguay When Donald J. Trump ran for president in 2016 he made many promises, from rebuilding America’s infrastructure to reducing the federal deficit to replacing the Affordable…
A Year with Swollen Appendices by Brian Eno
Review by David Starkey Several years ago, as I was listening to the ambient music of Brian Eno, which has kept me company through decades of reading, writing and grading…
Cuttings from the Tangle by Richard Buckner
Review by George Yatchisin Richard Buckner, songwriter, singer, can open a song with the lines “Tough is as she does, won’t you slump on over and stir my shuffle down,”…
The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California by Mark Arax
Review by Brian Tanguay On the coast of California where I live drought has been a constant feature of the past twenty years. Enough rain some years made us forget,…
Phase Six by Jim Shepard
Review by David Starkey Right about now, probably the last thing most readers are looking for is another book about pandemics, and Jim Shepard’s new novel is a pandemic book…
We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto by Alice Waters with Bob Carrau and Cristina Mueller
Review by George Yatchisin In Charles Laughton’s fantastic 1955 fairy tale noir Night of the Hunter, Robert Mitchum’s curdled preacher is infamous for having “love” and “hate” tattooed across the…
How Icasia Bloom Touched Happiness by Jessica Bell
CRB Brief Review by Peter Snell How Icasia Bloom Touched Happiness is a tale of ordinary people and their struggles to have a happy and satisfying life. It is set…
Ladies Who Lunch: a satirical taste of L.A. by Josef Woodard
Review by George Yatchisin It’s 1990-something, and although fabulous Danielle Wiffard’s marriage is about to blow, fortunately for her (and this book’s readers), all of L.A.’s eligible bachelors, not to…
We Are Pilgrims: Journeys In Search of Ourselves by Victoria Preston
Review by Linda Lappin As Bruce Chatwin relates in Songlines, our remote ancestors revered features of their landscape: mountain, rock, river, tree, cave, imbuing them with spiritual meaning and celebrating them in…