Archive for October 2006
Three Faces of Fear
Rarely do I speak—let alone write—about politics. I admit that without reservation. I understand that politics are complicated. I also understand that powerful and influential forces work to simplify political issues. The skeptic in me harangues to guess at the motivations of such political rhetoricians bent on simplification.
The Dante Club
A literary murder mystery in mid-nineteenth century Boston. Matthew Pearl introduces a reluctant, elite group of American Dante scholars to catch the serial killer. My intitial feelings on the book betray a certain discontent. Despite my interests in both the subject matter and the time period, I am not particularly compelled by Pearl’s execution of […]
Busting Vegas
Returning to non-fiction I have picked up Ben Mezrich’s new book. To quote the back cover Busting Vega$ is a true story about a team of geniuses and a barely legal system for beating the blackjack tables: a riveting account of monumental greed, excess, hubris, sex, love, violence, fear, and statistics that is high-stakes entertainment […]
Traveling in Greece
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
For Whirl and me it was not the desert across which we fled. We fled across the ocean. For over two weeks we traveled the Cyclades. These strange, magnificent islands have transfixed me. I have wanted to visit them from the time I first […]
