Where is your nonfiction section please.
Finding Dora Maar, by Brigitte Benkemoun, translated from French by Jody Gladding (Amazon / Book Depository) Author Brigitte Benkemoun's husband lost his Hermes agenda so she bought him a vintage replacement on eBay. When it arrived, she noticed that its old pages were intact. They dated back to 1951, an address book filled with a... Continue Reading →
How to Feed a Dictator, by Witold Szabłowski, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Amazon / Book Depository) Polish journalist Witold Szabłowski saw a movie about army cooks that featured Branko Trbovic, the personal cook to Marshal Josip Broz Tito, "the absolute ruler of Yugoslavia" and describes it as being a lightbulb moment: "I started wondering what... Continue Reading →
I only finished two of these, but I'm going to tell you about all three anyway. First up is a new release that's a read-in-one-sitting deal, in case you want a quick but fairly intense and even gritty read: Phyllis Grant's Everything is Under Control. Grant was a dancer training at Julliard, living in New... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Romanovs, by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Amazon / Book Depository) Marx wrote that 'History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.' This was witty but far from true. History is never repeated, but it borrows, steals, echoes and commandeers the past to create a hybrid, something unique out of the ingredients of... Continue Reading →
Book review: American Sherlock, by Kate Winkler Dawson (Amazon / Book Depository) Innocent men were being hanged while criminals escaped justice. The complicated crimes of the 1920s demanded a special type of sleuth -- an expert with the instincts of a detective in the field, the analytical skills of a forensic scientist in the lab,... Continue Reading →
Book review: Dressed for a Dance in the Snow, by Monika Zgustova (Amazon / Book Depository) I am not that woman. It must be someone else who is suffering. I could never withstand it. Monika Zgustova, a Czech author based in Spain, gives voices to female former Gulag prisoners (and in one case, a woman... Continue Reading →
One post of new nonfiction to look forward to is never enough, so here's a second roundup of some upcoming titles in 2020 that have caught my eye. This time I've got macabre science stories, tales of obsession, badass women of World War II, current social and political commentary, multiple trips to Paris and Siberia,... Continue Reading →
Book review: Young Eliot, by Robert Crawford (Amazon/ Book Depository) What a few weeks it's been for T.S. Eliot, huh? There've been news stories referencing the poet every day: between the much-anticipated release of his letters to Emily Hale, his one-that-got-away who, despite rejecting him, seemed to carry a torch for him anyway; and the... Continue Reading →
What new nonfiction did you love this year? I have to be honest, this wasn't a completely stellar year in new nonfiction for me. There were lots of great ones but I didn't have one that stood out above all the rest. Instead of a clear favorite, there are three I can separate as being... Continue Reading →
