#TBT It’s Harold Robbins’ The Lonely Lady
In the spirit of #tbt is Harold Robbins? 1976 novel, ?The Lonely Lady.? I’d thought a lot of Robbins’s work was a slight step above dime-store schlock, but ?The Lonely Lady? is a surprisingly timely story about a woman who strives to be a successful screenwriter, yet is repeatedly stonewalled by men in power?men who…
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Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists … and a whole bunch of other phonies
When you create a work of fiction, the world is whatever you want it to be. But “Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News”?isn?t about fiction as it applies to novels?it?s also fiction disguised as memoirs, personas, and especially P.T. Barnum’s world of ?curiosities.” Author Kevin Young dons his Columbo…
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The Brothers: A tragedy decades in the making
Through a recent conversation about Russian politics, I learned about Masha Gessen?s 2015 book ?The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy,? about Tamerlan and Dzhokhar “Jahar” Tsarnaev, the brothers behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Both had been written off as radicalized Chechens whose newfound religious zeal caused them to avenge their Muslim brothers,…
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Love is a baseball field: “Shoeless Joe”
?If you build it, he will come.? Besides ?Shoeless Joe,? there are few sports novels (actually, none that I can think of) that have such an iconic line. W.P. Kinsella connects with it on page one. ?Three years ago at dusk on a spring evening, when the sky was a robbin?s-egg blue and the wind…
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Review: What Does This Button Do? by Bruce Dickinson
When you are a sword-wielding, jet flying, human air raid siren, it shouldn’t be surprising that your memoir stands out from the deluge of books from your peers. But Bruce Dickinson’s new book What Does This Button Do? An Autobiography still manages to surprise, entertain, and break the bold a bit. While he’s most well-known…
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