'Books' Category
Obedience
Some time in May I ran across a description of this book and wrote down the name as something I might be interested in reading. When I read the jacket cover to Whirl she responded that it did not sound like my typical choice in books. I’m not exactly sure how to take that. […]
Under The Banner Of Heaven
Under the Banner of Heaven will be the third book I have read from author Jon Krakauer. The other two books include his moving non-fiction account of the harrowing 1996 summit of Mt. Everest, Into Thin Air, and the compelling research retrospective about the last two years of life for Christopher McCandless in Into […]
The Foundation Trilogy
I decided to return to the classics of science fiction. I have read science fiction for a number of years but there are some standbys that I missed the first time through. Most noticeable on the list of works I missed on the first go is Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy: Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and […]
Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible + Fried
My first experience with Wax Trax Records happened in the mid-80s. I happened upon the store late. The founders had moved on to Chicago to start a record label by the same name. They maintained ownership of the original store in the seedy Capital Hill area of Denver, just south of Colfax Avenue behind the […]
Rock On
I perused a couple of the local bookstores a few days ago. I was looking for a copy of The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler. I found it. I bought it. I have completed reading it. At the time I was looking for it, however, I stumbled upon Rock On by Dan Kennedy. I picked […]
The Long Goodbye
Twice a year– once in the spring and once in the fall– the Chicago Public Library selects a book for the entire city to read. This spring, “One Book, One Chicago” enters its seventh year as a program to promote reading and discussion among all city residents. The selection is the 1953 Raymond Chandler crime […]
Into the Wild
It is uncommon for a film to have a dramatic impact upon me. While I like film as a general rule and I enjoy discussing them with my friends and family, I generally reserve my highest praise with more than a little caution. To confess in public to a film having significant impact upon me […]
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Three years ago, in January 2005, I suffered a serious traumatic brain injury. The injury placed me in a coma for ten days and the hospital for weeks more. The injury changed my life. Since that time I have looked for voices and means of expression of what I went through and continue to carry […]
Oil!
I knew the Oscar-nominated film There Will Be Blood was inspired by the novel Oil!. What somehow slipped through my awareness was that Upton Sinclair was the novel’s author. This would be the same Upton Sinclair who wrote The Jungle, the seminal novel about the Chicago stockyards in the 19th Century. I ran across […]
Generation Kill
The wars in Iraq have figured as prominent cultural events in my adult life. I arrived in Berlin two weeks before the 1991 invasion and experienced firsthand the anti-American sentiment that decision fostered. When I returned to the States, I noticed how differently my experiences were from those of my friends and family. Germany’s perspective […]
