by Donna | Jun 12, 2012 | Fiction, Merely Impassioned
Rating: Time to toss your copy of Zeitoun in your curbside recycling bin; it can land on top of Three Cups of Tea in the corner of the bin reserved for books that don’t even deserve donation to a library because they turned out to be dishonest accounts...
by Donna | Oct 12, 2011 | Angry, Other
Rating: Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way, by Jon Krakauer. Anchor (2011) 96 pages. Vindication! I read Three Cups of Tea a couple of years ago, well before the scandal broke (via the April 17 episode of 60 Minutes),...
by Donna | Jul 2, 2011 | Fiction, Merely Impassioned
Rating: What a disheartening year it’s been for those of us who want to believe that an author’s subsequent book will be as good as the one that preceded it. Such a string of much-anticipated follow-ups that have fallen flat on their face…we at The Book...
by Donna | Apr 26, 2010 | Merely Impassioned, Opinions
Did we really need a new book in which the author (according to the most recent issue of Publishers Weekly) “peppers the narrative with neologisms supposedly coined by famous gossip columnists, and annoyingly styles the text so that nearly every name, brand name, and...
by Donna | Oct 25, 2009 | Merely Impassioned, Opinions
Who doesn’t love a vintage photograph from the author’s childhood on the cover of her memoir? When the image is just right, these covers are among the best. But if a photo that speaks directly to the story does not exist, why force an inappropriate one upon the book?...
by Donna | Oct 15, 2009 | Angry, Opinions
HarperCollins has made a horrendous, unfathomable decision that will surely be studied in future college marketing courses in the same chapter as the “New Coke” blunder of 1985. In a woefully misguided attempt to keep the Little House series “relevant and vibrant” to...