Book Review: Into the Heart of Our World
/A new book offers a fascinating look at a complex and turbulent alien world - the one beneath our feet
Read MoreA Sensible Career Path in the Penny Press!
/Impossible for me to pass over Michael Dirda’s “Freelance” column from last week’s TLS, and likewise impossible for me not to respond. Dirda uses the little space this time to reflect on his long stint as an editor at the legendary Washington Post Book World, and in his typical fashion, he manages to build enormous […]
Read MoreBook Review: The Vatican Princess
/A new historical novel joins the ranks of those trying to rehabilitate the reputation of poor Lucrezia Borgia
Read MoreLibrary: An Unquiet History!
/Our book today is Library: An Unquiet History, a hymn of praise from 2003 to public libraries. It’s written by Matthew Battles, who worked at the Houghton Library (and lived in scenic Jamaica Plain!) at the time, and its touchstone throughout is Harvard’s mighty Widener Library, whose wonders he very effectively evokes: The library … […]
Read MoreWriters by Nature in the Penny Press!
/One of my newer magazine subscriptions is The Nature Conservancy, published by the deep-pocketed conservation group of the same name. The magazine is slightly oddly-sized, and it’s full of great nature photography, and the small handful of issues I’ve read regularly so far have impressed me with the breadth and sensitivity of their prose. The […]
Read MoreBook Review: The Boiling River
/A young explorer enters the Amazon in search of a legendary river that boils as it flows.
Read MoreMystery Monday: Jane and the Waterloo Map!
/Our book today is Jane and the Waterloo Map by Stephanie Barron, the latest in her long-running series of murder mysteries in which Jane Austen takes time out from being a novelist to try her hand at being a crime-solving sleuth. The series started back in 1996 with Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor […]
Read MoreComics: The “Rebirth” of the Legion?
/Our book today is a brightly-colored celebration from 2008: Legion of Super-Heroes: 1050 Years of the Future, sub-titled: “Celebrating 50 Years of Everyone’s Favorite Super-Team of Tomorrow!” It reprints some of the best issues from the long run of the various incarnations of the Legion of Super-Heroes, DC Comics’ sprawling super-team of teenagers fighting interstellar […]
Read MoreAlive in the Wild!
/Our book today is Alive in the Wild, a 1970 compilation of short pieces of nature-writing by two dozen different hands, all of it introduced by Victor Calahane, a popular and busy mid-century mammalogist and science writer who was also the author of an absolutely wonderful book called Mammals of North America, which we’ll certainly […]
Read MoreBook Review: Skeptic
/Popular debater and science writer Michael Shermer's latest book collects some of the columns he's written for Scientific American
Read MoreBook Review: The Lightkeepers
/Many kinds of violence haunt a remote California island chain when a nature photographer takes a one-year assignment there
Read MoreIslands and Lagoons … of Venice!
/Our book today is a gorgeous “coffee table book” from 1980 with the Vendome Press: Islands and Lagoons of Venice, with text by Peter Lauritzen and stunning photography by Fulvio Roiter. The book lavishly, lovingly celebrates the vast, strange world of the other Venice, the 200 square miles of lagoon, inlets, and islands sprawling around […]
Read MoreBook Review: Strange Gods
/Throughout human history, people have found reasons to change their religions - Susan Jacoby's brilliant new book examines the phenomenon of adopting strange gods
Read MoreInk Chorus: Never in Doubt!
/Our book today is Never in Doubt, a collection of book book reviews from stalwart bull terrier Peter Prescott, who reviewed books for Newsweek for two decades and adored our ragged fish-wrap art form with a sharp wit, a punchy prose style, and, underneath some thick plates of armor, a true believer’s heart. He was […]
Read MoreA Polar Vortex Romance Round-Up!
/Sometimes, the only fitting answer to a Polar Vortex plunge into sub-zero temperatures is a readerly plunge into the steamy world of romance novels. Curled up in bed, listening to the freezing sleet hit the window, I decided to indulge myself in a trio of sumptuous historical romances: Heir to the Duke by Jane Ashford […]
Read MoreBook Review: The Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome
/Popular French science-fantasy writer Serge Brussolo gets makes his debut appearance in English with a story of men and women who treasure-hunt in the dreams of other people
Read MoreBook Review: The Perfect Bet
/An illuminating new book takes readers inside the calculus of gambling
Read MorePilgrim at Tinker Creek!
/Our book today is one of those modern classics every reader should read: Annie Dillard’s great Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize back in 1975. In these pages – part memoir, part natural history, part crackpot seat-of-the-pants philosophy – she muses on the natural world of her surroundings in Virginia’s […]
Read MoreA Time in Rome!
/Our book today is Elizabeth Bowen’s winsome 1960 glory of place-writing, A Time in Rome, in which she blends history and travelogue and memoir in an entirely successful attempt to capture in words what the Rome and its environs had meant to her for half a century. As with everything else she wrote, whether it […]
Read MoreOn the Runways of Alpha Centauri This Season in the Penny Press!
/Fortunately, no matter how frustrating or confusing the Penny Press is on any given week, we’ll always still have the beacon of clarity that is high fashion.
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