When I read Bonnie Garmus’s New York Times’ best-selling debut novel Lessons In Chemistry, it reminded me of the old Monty Python phrase, And now for something completely different. The story begins in the 1950s and it reads a bit like an old-timey television show. The plot eventually evolves into a chemistry-themed television cooking show, but getting there takes some time. Elizabeth Zott is a highly motivated,…
Much as I have enjoyed reading Barbra Streisand’s nearly thousand-page opus My Name Is Barbra*, its sheer volume and level of detail had become tedious. So, about two-thirds of the way through, I switched to a nice little book I downloaded from the library called “Breaking And Entering” by Toronto Author Don Gillmor. It turned out to be the perfect diversion. I’ll return to Barbra later….
The Covenant of Water is the second book by Abraham Verghese that I have read and it was just as fascinating as his earlier book, Cutting For Stone. At more than seven hundred pages it was more than I could read in my allotted twenty-one days from the library, so I bought the hard-cover edition on Amazon so I could finish it at my leisure….
When I open a book with a boomer-aged main character, written by an author I have previously read and enjoyed, then chances are very good that I’m going to enjoy it. The Librarianist by Canadian-born author Patrick deWitt is such a book. I loved his earlier book French Exit. I read it a few years ago and can vouch for that book being infinitely better…
The Last Gift of Time, Life Beyond Sixty by Carolyn G. Heilbrun is a little book that some readers may not have the patience to read, but if you do, you will find it enormously enlightening. Heilbrun was a retired Professor of English Literature at Colombia University. She wrote the book twenty-five years ago in 1998 when she was in her seventies. I recently came…
If you can get past the seemingly unhappy subject matter and appreciate the great writing, then Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey is a wonderful read. You will appreciate it even more if you have ever been through a painful divorce because that is what this fictional, humorous book is about. The bonus is the author is Canadian and readers will relate to the Toronto…
