a novella by Denis Johnson

Read it because it sounded interesting on the Diane Riehm show; award-winning book (National Book Award).  Has some interesting parts, but I didn't find it particularly inspiring or meaningful.

by Carrie Fisher, 2011 ( Read more... )

by Kunal Basu, 2011 ( Read more... )

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch (with Jeffrey Zaslow), Hyperion, 2008.

a stolen life by Jaycee Dugard, Simon & Schuster, 2011.

I read these two memoirs back-to-back.  In Pausch's book, his life is soon to end, being cut short due to pancreatic cancer.  In Dugard's book, her childhood was stolen by a kidnapper who raped her, in the process fathering ( Read more... )

an education in war, by Megan K. Stack.  Doubleday, 2010 ( Read more... )

. . . by Martha Southgate ( Read more... )

I've been wanting to blog about this book, because I loved it, but I'm going to have the author herself describe it to you:

Lady of the Butterflies is the fictionalised story of Lady Eleanor Glanville, the first female butterfly collector. The Glanville Fritillary is named after her but she is best remembered for the fact that her relations ( Read more... )

Something about the title of this book, a collection of essays, caught my attention.  I had never heard of the author--Gene Weingarten, of the Washington Post--even though he's won two Pulitzer Prizes.  And the picture inside the cover, of famed violinist Joshua Bell, attracted my interest, too.

The essay that inspired the title of this collection ( Read more... )