Frank Chambers, the scuzzy main character in James M. Cain's noir masterpiece The Postman Always Rings Twice, is not a nice guy. He will not come to a happy end. Nor will his adulteress in crime, Cora. These folks are dour, desperate and defeated. They plot. They murder. They rot from inside out, like a tapeworm slowly sucking the humanity from their life-blood. The Postman Always…
Read moreThe gadgets of today mean news is constant and everywhere. From an air crash to a murder, a celebrity interview to a political scandal, The News: A User's Manual by Alain de Botton analyzes the impact events have on our minds. Why is a celebrity's life fascinating and war in a far off land...boring? And, how is this shaping our everyday worldviews? Jacki @ Central
Read moreJean Hanff Korelitz's addictive and disconcerting mystery You Should Have Known will make you wonder... Grace Reinhart Sachs, a therapist in Manhattan, contends that there's no good reason for women to keep choosing the wrong men, if they'd just listen to their instincts. She's about to publish a book, titled 'You Should Have Known', with advice on how to spot a creep on the first date…
Read moreIt's a very simple idea: a woman receives a notebook with newspaper clippings from the Bintel Brief, a long-running letter column in turn of the century Yiddish newspaper The Forward. When she opens this notebook, the ghost of Abraham Cahan springs to life and they read the columns as they interact in the present. This is the charming premise of Liana Finck's graphic novel A…
Read moreImagine coming to terms with your life and realizing that you are boring and everything bad that has ever happened to you was of your own doing. This is what happens to Liam Pennywell in the Anne Tyler book Noah's Compass. After suffering a head injury, Liam becomes obsessed with gaining back his lost memories of the night of the accident. He has plenty of…
Read moreOn Such a Full Sea is about a future America where society is strictly organized by class, and long abandoned urban areas have become labor colonies. Descendants of those brought over years ago from ruined provincial China make up the labor class. They work to provide perfect produce and fish to the exclusive villages that surround the labor settlement. When the man she loves vanishes,…
Read moreSince its founding in 1948, Israel has been at the center of the crisis in the Middle East. Discussing the country's longstanding troubles is difficult and often fraught with emotion. Max Blumenthal's Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel is a book that is stirring up emotions on all sides of the issue. In it, Blumenthal provides a history and analysis of Israeli policies toward…
Read moreLouise Blanchard Bethune (July 21, 1856 - December 18, 1913) was the first woman known to have worked as a professional architect in the United States. Born Jennie Louise Blanchard in Waterloo, New York, she had two educated parents (her father was a school principal; her mother a teacher) and as was common at the time, was herself educated at home. Her parents eventually moved…
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