My review of this book appeared originally in another publication and is reprinted here:

Brooklyn Follies
By Paul Auster
Henry Holt and Company, $24.00, 304 pages
ISBN 0-8050-7714-6

Meet Nathan Glass. He is eager to tell you all about himself. But to hear Nathan tell it, he is—at least at the outset of this superbly comic novel—a cynical fifty-nine year old man who has returned to Brooklyn for only one reason: He is quietly waiting to drop dead.

My review of this book appeared originally in another publication and is reprinted here:

Edited by Lou Anders
Roc/Penguin, January 2006
ISBN 0-451-46065-0
Trade Paperback

H. P. Lovecraft, one of the great writers of supernatural horror, said that the “oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” The collected stories in Futureshocks probably won’t allay anyone’s fears about the unknown, but they do, at least, try to anticipate it.

My review of this book appeared originally in another publication and is reprinted here:

David and Solomon:
In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition
by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman
Free Press / Simon & Schuster, February 2006
ISBN 0-7432-4362-5
Hardcover

David, as every child can tell you, was the young fellow who armed himself with a slingshot and some stones, and then he marched out onto the field and killed the Philistine giant Goliath.

My review of this book appeared originally in another publication and is reprinted here:

About Writing: 7 Essays, 4 Letters, & Five Interviews
Samuel R. Delany
ISBN: 0-8195-6716-7 / $24.95
Trade Paper / 432 pages / 6 x 9
Wesleyan University Press
Publication date: January 4, 2006

If you are, like me, a writer—or if you are, also like me, involved in the teaching of writing—you regularly find yourself reading books about writing because you are intent upon finding the perfect writer’s instructional resource.

My review of this book appeared originally in another publication and is reprinted here:

The World Made Straight
By Ron Rash
Henry Holt, $24.00, 304 pages
ISBN 0-8050-7865-5

Seventeen year old Travis Shelton lives in the mountains of western North Carolina, and—when Ron Lash’s superb tale of redemption and healing begins—young Shelton knows little of his family’s or his region’s history.