Where is your nonfiction section please.
Book review: Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs by Douglas Smith (Amazon / Book Depository) The life of Rasputin is one of the most remarkable in modern history. It reads like a dark fairy tale. An obscure, uneducated peasant from the wilds of Siberia receives a calling from God and sets out in search... Continue Reading →
Book review: Eat, Live, Love, Die, by Betty Fussell Before she started writing, Betty Fussell, who's now over 90, was married to author Paul Fussell. Her marriage and family life, and the problems therein, became the subject of her memoir My Kitchen Wars, which also focused on her divorce and issues of domesticity. She'd started editing some... Continue Reading →
Book review: True Crimes, by Kathryn Harrison Amazon I see the bravado required to be funny and beguiling when what you really are is old and aching and breathless from congestive heart failure, when what you really are is afraid. Kathryn Harrison is such a tricky author. A writer of quietly powerful, serious talents, her... Continue Reading →
Book review: Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah Amazon Where most children are proof of their parents’ love, I was the proof of their criminality. Apartheid is one of those subjects that I know embarrassingly little about beyond the basics. If you're in the same position, I highly recommend comedian and Daily Show host Trevor Noah's 2016... Continue Reading →
Book review: Riverine, by Angela Palm (Amazon / Book Depository) Angela Palm grew up in rural Indiana, in a house built in a dried-out riverbed created by redirecting the Kankakee River, their little town not even designated on maps. Next door lived a boy named Corey, and they had the typical girl-and-boy-next-door relationship, into their adolescence. They... Continue Reading →
Book review: Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso, by Kali Nicole Gross (Amazon / Book Depository) In 1887, in a pond just outside of Philadelphia, the dismembered torso of a man was discovered, triggering a search that eventually led to Hannah Mary Tabbs, a Maryland native and seemingly very unpleasant lady, according to many... Continue Reading →
Book review: Truevine, by Beth Macy (Amazon / Book Depository) Beth Macy, a former Roanoke Times journalist, first heard about the Muse brothers during her work at the paper in the 1980s. Their story was well-known, but not in much detail: the outline was that two albino African-American brothers were kidnapped by the circus and spent... Continue Reading →
Book review: A Murder Over a Girl, by Ken Corbett Psychologist and professor Ken Corbett exhaustively covered the trial of Brandon McInerney, who at age fourteen, executed a classmate, Larry King (not THAT one.) Supposedly because King, who was gay and beginning to express himself in ways that indicate he was probably transgender, was sexually harassing him.... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo, by Amy Schumer I like Amy Schumer's comedy, but I'm not enough in love with it that her book was a priority when it came out nearly a year ago. Until I happened upon a review praising it as something much more meaningful than a reiteration of Schumer's... Continue Reading →
Book review: Putin Country, by Anne Garrels (Amazon / Book Depository) "When the meteor hit Chelyabinsk, it blazed across the sky, spewed out its shards, and then sank quietly into a lake. That's what many hoped the breakup of the Soviet Union would be like. It would end with a compliant Russia as benign as the rock... Continue Reading →
Book review: Who Killed These Girls?, by Beverly Lowry (Amazon / Book Depository) What do we actually know and how do we know it? Neuroscience teaches us that our brains are never still, even when we're asleep and have plunged into dreams. Neurons still continue to spark and fly, jumping synapses, digging up memories, creating new... Continue Reading →
Book review: A Good Month for Murder, by Del Quentin Wilber (Amazon / Book Depository) Reporter Del Quentin Wilber spent an extended chunk of time shadowing the homicide division of Maryland's Prince George's County Police Department. He wasn't exactly sure what he intended to write about the embedded experience, but he was interested in how... Continue Reading →
What's Nonfiction? 