Newly named “The Junior High Book Report” and living at a new URL:
http://www.thejuniorhighbookreport.com/
As it turns out (that phrase intended to reference part of The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams), some people (i.e. Carter) have told me that the quote I selected here (to demonstrate my thoughts on Ant Farm by Simon Rich) is not that funny.
As a second try, I am including a link to Simon Rich’s [...]
I have often thought that the best first sentence in a novel is in The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger.
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied [...]
I first learned about The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennetts when I read a review of it in the Washington Post here. Suitably intrigued, I picked it up and read.
The Feminine Mistake darts around like a minnow and continually circles back to a couple of core points. It is a little Momento-ish since each chapter [...]
A collection of vignettes called Ant Farm by Simon Rich is the funniest book ever. I know that is a big statement, but it is true.
You must arrange to come in to possession of this book, but you can’t read it yourself. You have to find someone to read it to you (and then switch [...]
(plus, he gets interviews sometimes.)
When it comes to non-fiction (and maybe fiction, but I am not sure), it seems that Guy Kawasaki is always out in front and cranking out the book reviews and author interviews.
Sometimes, I have already bought the book and am wondering when I am going to read it and “boom” Guy [...]
Some books don’t wrap it up well (The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve, Becoming Strangers by Louise Dean, A Certain Age by Tama Janowitz and many, many others) and they leave the divination to the book club.
The workplace novel Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris is the only book that [...]
Recently, the Queen of England came and went (Carter had some interesting comments here in a post titled “Send the Queen Home”).
Isn’t it totally absurd that any modern country has a heredity ruler (figurehead, whatever)?
Jeremy Paxon (author of On Royalty: A Very Polite Inquiry Into Some Strangely Related Families) was on the Daily Show with [...]
A new Wonder Woman, written by Jodi Picoult, is coming out. I really enjoy graphic novels and think that they (hands down) make the best movies (300, Sin City, A History of Violence, V for Vendetta etc).
I am certainly excited to read what Picoult produces despite the fact that I have never read any of [...]
It has been almost twenty years since I bought a magnet with this quote on it (attributed to Mark Twain). I think it is useful advice.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the [...]
