Booknotes, Brian Lamb

Booknotes:  America's Finest Authors on Reading, Writing, and the Power of Ideas by Brian Lamb is a series of short interviews with a huge number of authors.

Started: sometime in 2008

Completed: 2/1/2011

Recommendation: It is rather dated, so a book that was intended to be "current" is not.

Recommended by:  Found in a library book sale and was intrigued.

Review:

This book does not really lend itself to a review, so I'm just noting books that I'd like to read as a result of having read this book:

The Man in the Mirror:  The Life of Benedict Arnold, Clare Brandt

Edison:  Inventing the Century, Neil Baldwin

Lincoln, David Herbert Donald

A Bright Shining Lie:  John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, Neil Sheehan

All of One Peace, Colman McCarthy

Failure is Impossible:  Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words, Lynn Sherr

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (recommended by Bill Clinton)

The Supreme Court: How it Was and How It Is, William Rehnquist

Jarrettsville, Cornelia Nixon

Jerrettsville, is a novelization of a true story involving a murder not far from Washington DC on the 4th anniversary of the Civil War.

Started: February 3, 2010

Completed: February 7, 2010

Recommendation:  Very well written, most of interest to those who find the period interesting.

Recommended By:  My wife picked it up at the library as a book she thought I might like.

Words I looked up:

  aureole - a ring shaped zone around an igneous intrusion (I looked this word up, because I thought it referred to a portion of the breast, but it has a more general meaning indicating a "ring shaped" surrounding.  The way it was used in the book seemed odd to me when I read it.  The definition given is the 4th, but the closest to the meaning in which it was used.  The first definition is "halo").

Review:

This is a very interesting story about a young woman in a difficult position in the ante-bellum North.  The book opens with a murder and the rest of the book gives the background.  It is irritating to not really know who was killed for quite some time (about half way through it becomes clear).  It is told from the point-of-view of several different characters over time and was largely based on family paperwork, letters, and newspaper accounts of the actual events.  The author has clearly made some stuff up to carry the story and fill in details, but it seems to run rather along the lines of the newspaper stories reprinted at the back of the book.

I enjoyed this book, but my taste runs to the eclectic and this is far from a happy story.