Book review: “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck
It’s clear that John Steinbeck’s 1937 novella Of Mice and Men was written to be read as a parable. But a parable for what? I mean, what’s the lesson it [...]
Book review: “Carry the Dog” by Stephanie Gangi
Stephanie Gangi’s Carry the Dog is an overwrought potboiler of the old school, packed to the brim with modern-day hot-button issues. It’s a lot like the 1966 Jacqueline Susann novel [...]
Book review: “The Art of the City: Rome, Florence, Venice” by Georg Simmel, translated by Will Stone
The Art of the City: Rome, Florence, Venice is made up of four essays that German polymath Georg Simmel wrote between 1898 and 1907, translated by Will Stone and published [...]
Poem: “Concrete and other measures of a neighborhood”
Concrete and other measures of a neighborhood By Patrick T. Reardon . Let me tell you about my neighborhood. Like any neighborhood. Like yours. . In the curb, in the [...]
Book review: “The Feud” by Thomas Berger
Thomas Berger’s 1983 novel The Feud is a screwball comedy which features two killings, a natural death after a fistfight, a botched suicide, a car bomb and a hardware store [...]
Poem: Chemistry
Chemistry Patrick T. Reardon . The 1904 book is chemistry formulas for mixing drinks, and, paging through, I wonder, if the bartender blueprint for Whiskey Daisy No. 3 calls for [...]
Book review: “The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death” by Timothy Taylor
Timothy Taylor raises many questions in his 2002 book The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death, and, like any good anthropologist, he doesn’t provide clear-cut answers. How could he? The [...]
Poem: First parents
First parents Patrick T. Reardon . Eve and Adam, the Bible’s Barbie and Ken, lived in the Garden, a Dreamhouse of empty echoing outdoor rooms, an insipid Paradise, except for [...]
Book review: “Cat Chaser” by Elmore Leonard
Early on in Cat Chaser, I realized that the 1982 novel just didn’t have Elmore Leonard’s usual pizzazz and punch. For one thing, George Moran, a rundown motel owner-operator [...]
Book review: “But Come Ye Back” by Beth Lordan
When Mary Curtin, a Boston nanny in the late 1950s, gets the telegram MOTHER DYING, she thinks, I’d be too late. She’ll never admit that she doesn’t know what she’d [...]