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Hindsight’s clear vision
Paul O’Connor once again has put his driving time to good use, this time listening to a troubling book about how the U.S. put Nazi scientists to work in this country after Hitler’s defeat. Reviewed by Paul T. O’Connor OPERATION PAPER CLIP: THE SECRET INTELLIGENCE PROGRAM THAT BROUGHT NAZI SCIENTISTS TO AMERICA. By Annie Jacobsen.…
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Beware the “undid”
Victorian London, with its veneer of manners and morals and its dark realities of poverty and crime, is often depicted in fiction. In this first novel by a young English woman, the dark side of Victorian London is even darker – and more terrifying – than usual. THE QUICK. By Lauren Owen. Read by Simon…
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Not your typical sailor
Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson ANOTHER GREAT DAY AT SEA: Life Aboard the USS George H.W. Bush. By Geoff Dyer. Read by Jonathan Cowley. 5 hours, 52 minutes. Also available in hardback from Pantheon. 208 pages. Geoff Dyer is an eccentric, irreverent, funny, peripatetic, brilliant, Oxford-educated British writer of fiction and nonfiction, bending the “rules”…
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A Buffalo girl – detective
A few books and CDs sit heavily on the table in my office, emanating a cloud of guilt whenever I look their way. These are books I read or listened to and liked enough to review – but something happened, and that review never made it out of my head and into print. One of…
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Crime, Minnesota style
By Linda C. Brinson It should come as no surprise to me or anyone else that John Sandford’s novels are very good. After all, everything he writes lands at the top of the bestseller lists. He brings the writing and investigative skills of a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist to his fiction, with good result. He’s a…
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Those binding ties
In my mind, one of the great values of audio books is that I’ll try something that I wouldn’t normally sit down and read in the print version. Although I’ve abandoned audio books that were really bad or just not interesting to me, I’m more likely to give something I think I might not much…
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When “peace” isn’t peaceful
As frequent readers of this blog know, I’ve long been intrigued by the World War I era in England – the war itself and the aftermath, the effects of the war. So many men were killed, and so many others were maimed in body or spirit or both. And the war profoundly changed British society.…
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Adventures with the Amazons
Often when reviewing an audio book, I consider whether I would have enjoyed the book more or less had I read the print version. Some books are so good I savor them both ways. Although I was entertained, for the most part, by the audio presentation of Anne Fortier’s The Sisterhood, I doubt that I…
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What an amazing life she led
Some books are entertaining but unapologetically superficial, a good read or listen but nothing more. That’s fine, and sometimes, that’s exactly what we want. Other books are richer and more complex, telling a good story, to be sure, but also offering layers of memorable information and insight. Such is the new novel by Elizabeth Gilbert.…
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Spinning a good tale
Before the textile mills came to my home state of North Carolina, they were major economic forces in New England. This fascinating historical novel by the author of The New York Times bestseller The Dressmaker is built around the true story of a murder at textile mill in Massachusetts that was one of the first…