Category Archives: Reviews

Book reviews, as well as Reads to Reels

Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’

Posted on November 11, 2016 by smellincoffee

Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’: Country Music and the Southern Working Class© 2002 Bill C. Malone432 pages Friend of mine named Steve Goodman wrote that song, and he told me that it was the perfect country-and-western song. I wrote him … Continue reading →

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Divided Highways

Posted on November 7, 2016 by smellincoffee

Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life©  Tom Lewis 2007, 2013416 pages No engineering project in the United States is more impressive than the interstate system; dense with the connections of a street grid, it serves not blocks … Continue reading →

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Hidden Order

Posted on November 5, 2016 by smellincoffee

Hidden Order© 2013 Brad Thor383 pages The five people on the short list to succeed to the chair of the Federal Reserve have just disappeared, and Scott Harvath — former Navy SEAL,  now private security action hero — is hired … Continue reading →

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Heretics and Heroes

Posted on November 3, 2016 by smellincoffee

Heretics and Heroes: How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World© 2013 Thomas Cahill368 pages It seems the more I read of Cahill, the less I enjoy his cavalier histories, which at this point border on gossipy. Part of … Continue reading →

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The Greeks

Posted on November 2, 2016 by smellincoffee

The Greeks© 1950 HDF Kitto256 pages HDF Kitto’s history of the Greeks came highly recommended to me by another author, and I found it utterly delightful.  Here we have history written not by an archaeologist, but by a classicist whose … Continue reading →

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Dubh-Linn

Posted on October 31, 2016 by smellincoffee

Dubh-Linn: A Novel of Viking-Age Ireland© 2014 James Nelson326 pages All Thorgrim Nightwolf wanted was to go home.But the gods and Irish women have a way of…complicating things.  Thorgrim has more sense than to tangle with this benighted island and … Continue reading →

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Immoderate Literati

Posted on October 30, 2016 by smellincoffee

This is a screencap I took back in May, something I spotted while reading reviews of Wilbur Smith’s River Gods. At least no one is ambivalent about it!

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Jasmine and Stars

Posted on October 28, 2016 by smellincoffee

Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in Tehran© 2007 Fatemeh Keshavarz180 pgs Fatemeh Keshavarz’s Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in Tehran rebukes Azar Nefisi and other writers for contributing to a ‘new Orientalism’ that looks at Iran … Continue reading →

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Short rounds: explosives and Martians

Posted on October 24, 2016 by smellincoffee

Tonight I finally gave up on Hayduke Lives!, the sequel to Edward Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang. The plot only arrives four-fifths of the way into the book, having been preceded by lots of stream-of-consciousness rambling, pointless arguments, and enough breast … Continue reading →

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Reads to Reels: Brave Cowboy/Lonely are the Brave

Posted on October 23, 2016 by smellincoffee

Lonely are the Brave dramatizes Edward Abbey’s Brave Cowboy, and I daresay improves upon it.  As with Abbey’s original, the plot features a cowhand who still lives and breathes in the Old West, thrown into conflict against the forces of … Continue reading →

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