bookeywookey

James Purdy's voice is dirt plain and when he is telling a gritty story of desperation in depression era Southside Chicago, as he did i...

I used to write 2, 3, and 4 page letters in complete and descriptive sentences to friends, family, and at least a couple of paragraphs to ...

DID YOU KNOW THAT... The part of the eye with cells that are sensitive to light is called the retina. Only its smallest central par...

The Book of Jonah   by Joshua Max Feldman (Henry Holt and Co., 2014) is a debut novel I received courtesy of the publisher.  Billed as a m...

As regular bookeywookey readers know, I have multiple careers in both the arts (theatre, opera) and sciences (neuroscience) and am an invete...

These guys have gone viral doing cello duets of rock and roll, but their classical playing is also intensely musical - how they listen to ea...

John Green's latest YA novel The Fault in our Stars is one of those rare creatures - a deserving best seller.  It hasn't a fault ...

I started with big plans for the new year and then what happened?  Two excuses have kept me away from writing here at bookeywookey.  The fir...

After the look back at the past year ( here and here ) it is time to look ahead at some of the reading to come in 2014 (theoretically). ...

The summing up of my reading for the year 2013 moves now from hard, cold statistics to content.  Here are my best of... lists.  Rather than ...

I never ended up having time before 2013 ended to sum up.  I don't know what this does for the rest of you, but I always enjoy reviewi...

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar's The Time Regulation Institute (Penguin, 2013) is a mid-20th century satire by one of the most respected Turkis...

I remember liking Diane Setterfield's debut The Thirteenth Tale , but I simply could not wrap my enthusiasm around her latest offering...

It's a useful thing to read a John Banville novel every few years or so, just to remind oneself what really great writing can accompli...

Jafar Panahi is an Iranian director who has been sentenced to 6 years in jail and banned for making films for 20 years because of the ...

I was quite taken with novelist Paul Auster's memoir of his corporeal self, Winter Journal , as I wrote last year.  It was an intimate...

Shorter days and colder temperatures made me crave a long, enveloping story with equal parts warmth, adventure, suspense, and romance.  I ...

I've noticed that whenever I tell the story of going to look for Thomas (all it takes is a couple of beers, like quarters into a juke...

Hofesh Shechter's irrepressible dance piece Sun is joyous and aggressive by turns, filled with images of war, street violence, and...

At the corner of science and culture sits a mollusk, a Nautilus , to be exact.  While we're both waiting for me to post something b...