And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The original title of this book was horrible and I saw a cover that makes things even more racist. And it doesn’t seem necessary to the book but then gratuitous and casual racism was the order of the day back in 1939 when this novel…
Hello America by J.G. Ballard
Some time ago I went to a favorite used bookstore and there were many of Ballard’s books being sold in new editions and I bought several of the ones I hadn’t read. ‘Hello America’ is one of them. I am more a fan of the…
The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr.
While this is very much a story of plantation life mostly from the perspective of slaves, it is the two male slaves very much in love which centers and focuses the heart and integrity of the action. As a gay man, I chose to read…
frank: sonnets by dance seuss
Messy, painful, honest, funny, profound, mystical, lowdown are what comes to mind with this book of poetry. That they are ‘sonnets’ seems useful only in that it gives each of them a consistent form that helps one poem to flow into the next. Yes they…
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
This book has been on my priority reading list for a long time and finally I tackled it. This is really three books; one on antisemitism, another on imperialism and the final and most relevant on totalitarianism. There are many wonderful insights and she provide…
The Art of Mesoamerica by Mary Ellen Miller
This volume is part of a series of art from around the world and through history. This one focuses particularly on the Mayan period with some Aztec art thrown in at the end. They are a few things that attract me right now to this…
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The first adult novel I ever read was by Agatha Christie when I took a plane across country at the age of twelve. I don’t remember the title but it was definitely a Hercule Poirot mystery and I was hooked. For some reason though, I…
How We Live is How We Die by Pema Chodron
About twenty years ago a friend gave me, ‘When Things Fall Apart,’ my first book by Ms. Chodron and I was hooked. If I had to summarize that book and all of Chodron’s life wisdom in one phrase it would be to lean into what…
Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty
This was a surprising bestseller almost ten years ago. It has been on my list ever since then and I finally got around to reading it. Piketty takes a Darwinian approach to evidence collection. By this I mean he is scrupulous both on the source…
Marcel Duchamp, The Afternoon Interviews by Calvin Tomkins
This slight volume takes less than an hour to read but my Duchamp obsession knows no bounds so I snatched it up greedily. The interviewer Calvin Tomkins wrote the definitive biography on Duchamp and it is definitely worth reading. There are obvious gems here but…
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