Category: Book Reviews

July 14, 2010

Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes *** (of 4)

This is such an accurate rendtion of 1960s Harlem I could smell the trash in the streets, sense the despair, hear the sirens, and feel...

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July 14, 2010

The Careful Use of Compliments by Alexander McCall Smith * (of 4)

Maybe McCall Smith writes like a woman or is writing for women: his characters notice intricate details and reveal their feelings about scented tissues and...

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July 14, 2010

Bethlehem Road Murder by Batya Gur ** (of 4)

At the height of the second intifada, with tensions between Israelis and Palestinians at the ignition point, a Jewish girl of Sephardic origin is found...

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July 14, 2010

Bangkok Haunts by John Burdett **** ( of 4)

It’s difficult to write a series of detective stories with the same cop in the same location and not get stale. Burdett, now writing book...

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July 14, 2010

Bangkok Tatoo by John Burdett *** (of 4)

This is the second in Burdett’s series starring a devout Buddhist cop whose boss is corrupt and whose mother runs a successful whorehouse for aging...

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July 14, 2010

Bangkok 8 by John Burdett *** (of 4)

It’s a mystery. I read mysteries not for the crime but to learn something about other places and times. This one takes place inside the...

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July 14, 2010

The Art Thief by Noah Charney ** (of 4)

Mildly entertaining. A Caravaggio is stolen from a baroque church in Italy. A 20th century painting is taken from the Kazimir Melevich Society in Paris....

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July 13, 2010

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel *** (of 4)

A coming of age memoir of a girl discovering her lesbianism at the same moment she is learning that her obsessive-compulisive, tyrannical father was a...

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July 13, 2010