My reading recently has been concentrated on reviewing. While I try to write up something for most anything semi-relevant/recent/interesting for this blog, I am also reviewing books for a few different places:
- My write-up of A Hologram for the King
by Dave Eggers should be appearing soon in the Lincoln Journal-Star. This book I quite enjoyed—I tend to agree with Kakutani’s review in the NY Times, mostly.
- The Ploughshares Blog is running my short review of Roberto Ampuero’s The Neruda Case, which is a must read for anyone interested in the Nobel laureate poet.
- I have to yet to read the thriller Fireproof
by Alex Kava for the LJS. (Yes, I enjoy a good —as my high school AP Lit teacher would call it—”popcorn book.”)
- I am also reviewing Joshua Henkin’s The World Without You
, which I’m excited about, as the first page was fantastic.
- And lastly in September I’ll have a review of another Nebraska-related book for L Magazine.
Reviewing books is fun. Although I am also reading, for my own edification, Tom Bissell’s Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation—he’s quickly becoming a favorite essayist, right up there with John Jeremiah Sullivan—as well as Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
, because I need to understand evolution better (at least on a fundamental level).
As a final note: clicking through any of the links on this site, and buying the book off Amazon, benefits me/the site. (I get a small cut.) So if you’re interested in any of these titles, please click through the links. This can help me justify spending so much of my time reading/reviewing, which, honestly, doesn’t bring in much income.