Author Archive
You have to give Laurie Notaro credit for some fun book titles. Her latest one “The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death” (Villard Books, $20) ranks with her other classics “I love Everyone (and Other Atrocious Lies)” and my personal favorite: “We Thought You Would be Prettier.”
Her book is a collection of random stories from her life. A few are hilarious. A few are dull. Some are downright disgusting. There are chapters that should be skipped or at least read when you aren’t eating or about to because they are about some nasty topics such as poop. Read the rest of this entry »
Pulitzer Prize winning author Rick Bragg will be at Davis-Kidd Booksellers, 387 Perkins Road Ext., at 1 p.m. Saturday to sign copies and discuss his new book, ”The Prince of Frogtown.”
Some books take a while to get into. I keep reading hoping things will pick up, an author thickens a plot, strengthens a character – anything to woo me into giving up my precious free time to read. Alas, some suitors sit on my nightstand, unrequited, unread.
But not Pulitzer Prize writer Rick Bragg. Whenever I see his name, whether it is a newspaper article or a book, I know I’m in until the end. Maybe it’s because he’s a Southerner that his words glide so easily across my eyes. He vacuums a scene and brings it alive with metaphor and description that never causes the reader to stumble over something that feels contrived.
Most people barely have a life interesting enough to fill one book. Bragg’s filled three. His first was “All Over but the Shoutin’,” about his mother and his newspaper career, followed by “Ava’s Man.” The latest, “The Prince of Frogtown,” is probably the most difficult to read and I suspect the hardest to write. It’s about two fathers: the cruel, pathetic alcoholic Bragg grew up with, and the one Bragg becomes to his stepson, a boy who never knew hunger, poverty or cruelty. Bragg met his wife and married her while he lived in Memphis.
The book teems with tiny details that make even a poor, gritty existence seem magical.
Allison Weir, New York Times bestselling author of Innocent Traitor, will be at Davis-Kidd Booksellers at 6 p.m. Wednesday to talk and sign her new novel “The Lady Elizabeth.” Davis-Kidd is at 387 Perkins Ext.
Any book about the Tudors requires a bit of squinting when you turn the page. With Henry VIII, and later his daughter Mary, you never know 
when a head and neck will part or a heretic will burn.
It’s not a spoiler to anyone who knows a little British history or who follows the work of actresses Cate Blanchett or Helen Mirren that the red-headed, illegitimate title character of Alison Weir’s book “The Lady Elizabeth” eventually ascends to the throne of England. That takes a little of the edge off the intrigue because no matter how real the threat of the axe, we know the blade misses the future queen of England.
But that wasn’t the case for her mother, Anne Boleyn, which drew me to my first Tudor encounter this spring with “The Other Boleyn Girl” by British author Philippa Gregory.
Anne Boleyn’s fate is well-known, but my history was fuzzy on what became of her brother George or sister Mary.
While in both books, most of the dialogue is imagined, the characters are based on real people. I’m much more comfortable in a historical novel genre then memoir because it’s clear from the beginning that while these are real people whose lives are well-documented, conversations and feelings are from the authors’ imaginations. Both authors take care to stay within the boundaries of what is believable and possible. Read the rest of this entry »
I can’t remember what led me to “Here if You Need Me” by Kate Braestrup. It was a review somewhere. I’m always looking for things beyond The New York Times to find good books. I wasn’t a huge “Marley and Me” fan and that book stayed on the list forever.
But some publication told me this was a good book. Another annoying thing is when what the critic writes is off the mark. Stephen King’s Entertainment Weekly review of “The Ruins” by Scott Smith, for example. The story was a bunch of vines and there were no heroes. No big kick-butt scene at the end.
But I stray. “Here if you Need Me” is one of the first chaplains ever appointed to the Maine Warden Service. Stop yawning! Her writing is like a warm blanket that you nestle in on a cold day with a hot cup of cocoa. It’s the person whose touch you want to feel when you’re in pain. It’s a book that holds your hand.
And that’s what she does. Her job is to be there for the parents whose child is lost in the woods, for the people searching for the child, for the people who find the child.
