Briar Patch Books

Category: Commentary

  • Life in a van, and a lot more

    By Linda C. Brinson If you have access to the Greensboro News & Record today (May 26), please read my interview with Ken Ilgunas and my review of his book Walden on Wheels. The N&R doesn’t provide its copy free online, so I can’t offer a link. Ken is a thoughtful, engaging young man who’s…

  • She’s back, in great style

    Readers who have access to the Greensboro News & Record’s lively book page will find my interview with North Carolina native Jill McCorkle there today, along with my review of her wonderful new novel, Life After Life, just being published by Shannon Ravenel Books (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill). Her fans will recall that McCorkle made…

  • Move over Queen Elizabeth – I’ve had a James Bond moment myself

    By Linda C. Brinson Readers who have access to the Greensboro News & Record may have seen my James Bond spread on its book page Sunday, Aug. 5. I can’t link to it here because the News & Record is trying to avoid giving away its content online. I wish it well in that endeavor…

  • On the latest from Anne Tyler

    On June 24, my review of Anne Tyler’s latest novel, The Beginner’s Goodbye (Knopf, $24.95), ran in the Greensboro News & Record’s book section. I appreciate the News & Record’s dedication to running locally written reviews when so many newspapers have abandoned that effort, and I urge those who can to check the review out.…

  • Good food, good reading

    By Linda Brinson Those who have access to the Greensboro News & Record might want to take a look at my review on its Books page today of Maya Angelou’s new cookbook, Great Food, All Day Long: Eat Splendidly, Eat Smart. It’s a cookbook that offers both delicious recipes and common-sense advice for losing weight…

  • Let the debate continue!

    Paul O’Connor’s amazing (?) feat of reading Moby-Dick on his iPhone prompted Stephen Wishnevsky of Winston-Salem to write about another classic of American literature, Huckleberry Finn, and to confess to an act of literary heresy. By Stephen Wishnevsky. In the same thread as Paul O’Connor’s review of “Moby-Dick; or, The Whale,” by Herman Melville, I…

  • Hello Again – Tentatively

    Forgive me reviewers and readers. I have been remiss in posting reviews. I have a number of good reviews waiting in the wings, and they’ve been waiting for a while. But it’s not my fault. Or if it is my fault, it’s only in that I celebrated publicly the coming of high-speed Internet to the…

  • Michael Malone’s latest (I think), and editors or their lack

    Michael Malone, a North Carolina writer, is one of my favorite contemporary authors. He’s also one of the most frustrating. At times, he goes long stretches without publishing a novel. Somehow, when he does come out with a new novel, it takes me by surprise. Even though I’ve been a book-review editor for 25 years,…

  • Christmas, Winter Novels

    By Linda Brinson A few days ago, I posted a review here of Anne Perry’s 2010 Christmas novel, A Christmas Odyssey.  For my reviews of three additional new Christmas- or winter-themed novels, take a look at today’s (Dec. 12) book page in the Greensboro News & Record. I nominated The Christmas Chronicles: The Legend of…

  • In praise of editors

    By Linda Brinson What an interesting feature on National Public Radio this week: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130838304 It seems that even though Jane Austen’s brother Henry said that “Everything came finished from her pen,” the great writer really did need an editor. Recent research shows that Austen’s writing needed quite a bit of work before it became the elegant,…