Books News & Reviews A Book A Week: The Dovekeepers by Alice HoffmanBecky Holmes on Monday 05/14/2012 6:00 pmAnother name for Alice Hoffman's The Dovekeepers could be "The Mists of Avalon for Jews," with Shira, the Witch of Moab, standing in for Morgaine, and Eleazar ben Ya’ir as Uther Pendragon. >More  A Book A Week: The London Train by Tessa HadleyBecky Holmes on Monday 05/07/2012 6:00 pmSome books are greater than the sum of their parts; The London Train is one of these. Tessa Hadley's novel is really two novellas about two characters (Paul and Cora) who at first appear to be unconnected to one another. But of course that's not the case, and we see eventually how their stories wrap around each other's. >More A Book A Week: The Glass Palace by Amitav GhoshBecky Holmes on Thursday 04/26/2012 6:00 pmWhere has Amitav Ghosh been all my life? To my chagrin, I discover that he's been writing since the early 1990s, garnering praise, winning literary prizes, all right under my nose but heretofore undetected by me. I hate when this happens. >More A Book A Week: Drifting House by Krys LeeBecky Holmes on Saturday 04/21/2012 6:00 pmRegular readers know that I like fiction about the immigrant experience. Books like Away, by Amy Bloom (Eastern European Jewish immigrants); Brooklyn, by ColmToibin (Irish); Shanghai Girls, by Lisa See (Chinese); and Voice of America, by E. C. Osondu (Nigerian), offer insight into how people deal with loss and change and how they survive (and with any luck, thrive) in new situations. >More A Book A Week: Emily, Alone by Stewart O'NanBecky Holmes on Thursday 04/12/2012 6:00 pmEmily, Alone is the story of several months in the life of Emily Maxwell, an 80-year-old widow in Pittsburgh. On the surface this is a simple story of the day-to-day activities of an elderly woman and a rare glimpse into a phase of life that is usually ignored in fiction (and popular culture in general). >More UW's Dictionary of American Regional English documents a changing AmericaOne language, many varietiesJay Rath on Thursday 04/05/2012After 50 years, the Dictionary of American Regional English is finally complete. The University of Wisconsin-Madison project has been called "one of the glories of contemporary American scholarship" by The New York Times. The dictionary collects more than 60,000 little-known regionalisms. >More A Book A Week: A Test of Wills by Charles ToddBecky Holmes on Saturday 03/31/2012 6:00 pmCharles Todd's A Test of Wills is so boring I can barely summon the energy to write about it. I really wanted it to be good because I am craving a good mystery. I was also in the mood to read more about Britain in the World War I era, having just finished watching Downton Abbey on TV. >More A Book A Week: The Book Club Cookbook by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy KruppBecky Holmes on Thursday 03/15/2012 6:00 pmI love to read about food in fiction. Apparently so do other people, and some people even try to cook the food that they read about: witness the successful blog Inn at the Crossroads, which re-creates recipes from the George R. R. Martin fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, and whose bloggers are now published cookbook authors with the release of A Feast of Ice and Fire, coming out in April from Random House. >More A Book A Week: The Lacuna by Barbara KingsolverBecky Holmes on Wednesday 03/14/2012 6:00 pmI have a love/hate relationship with Barbara Kingsolver. No, wait, that's too strong. It's more of a "this is good"/"this is surprisingly dull" kind of split. Poisonwood Bible? Loved it. Prodigal Summer? B-O-R-I-N-G. Luckily The Lacuna falls into the "good" basket. >More A Book A Week: The Old Romantic by Louise DeanBecky Holmes on Wednesday 03/07/2012 6:00 pmI often complain about books where I dislike all the characters. Sometimes I can't even finish them. When I first met the characters in The Old Romantic, I hated them all, but I pushed on and I am very glad I did. >More Madison bookstores prepare for brisk sales of Russ Feingold's While America SleepsJudith Davidoff on Tuesday 02/21/2012 1:23 pmThe publicists at Crown must not know just how gaga Badger progressives are over former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold. How the tears flowed when he lost to political newcomer and tea party favorite Ron Johnson in 2010. How his supporters have begged him, in vain, to run against Gov. Scott Walker in an all but certain recall election. >More |
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