Category Archives: Books

C.S. Lewis on His Dark Materials, Harry Potter, and The Da Vinci Code

Or whatever certain circles think is the controversial-book-we-need-to-protect-people-from du jour. There are earnest people who recommend realistic reading for everyone because, they say, it prepares us for real life, and who would, if they could, forbid fairy-tales for children and romances for adults because they ‘give a false picture of life’—in other words, deceive their […]

Visit to Maine

Today we took a day trip with my mother to Maine, mainly to see the house of author Sarah Orne Jewett, who was the subject of my mother’s masters thesis. Jewett had an odd fascination with her initials; she would carve them on random items, including the window pane of her room, which you can […]

Harry S Truman

A few weeks ago I finished David McCullough’s Pulitzer prize-winning biography. I started the book mainly because I enjoyed McCullough’s history of the Brooklyn Bridge, and when I find an author I like I try to read his other books. Even though I think some of Truman’s policies as President were misguided, and I despise […]

Christine Rosen’s Fundamentalist Education

After hearing an interesting NPR interview with Christine Rosen, author of My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Girlhood, I thought her book would describe why she left “fundamentalism.” Other books do that: Leaving the Fold is a collection of testimonies of former “fundamentalists” who end up everywhere from milquetoast Christianity to bizarre spiritualistic […]

In the Red Zone

Steven Vincent authored In the Red Zone almost a year before he was murdered in Basra, Iraq. When I read about his death, I knew I had to read the book. A freelance journalist (actually a former art critic), he wrote articles from Iraq that were published in the National Review and The New York […]

The Great Bridge

We visited New York recently and on the advice of JRC walked the Brooklyn Bridge at dusk. The experience inspired me to pick up David McCullough’s book The Great Bridge. McCullough, who won a Pulitzer for his biography of Truman and whose book about the Adams was a best-seller, knows how to tell a story. […]