Regrets and no regrets: a review of two books
Daniel Pink’s “The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward” (Riverhead Books, 1922, 256 pages) opens with a brief account of Edith Piaf’s “Je Ne Regrette Rien,” or “I regret nothing,” a song which includes the lines in English “No, not a thing.”
Making a positive change in the world
“Eleutheria” is the Greek word for “freedom.” It is also the reference name of an island in the Bahamas (Eleuthera). And it is the title and the setting for Allegra Hyde’s first novel (Vintage Books, 2022).
The boy monk: a review of ‘Monastery Mornings’
To be human is to suffer. In the case of third-grader Michael O’Brien, that meant watching the apparent disintegration of his family: a father who left home and divorced his wife, a series of moves that eventually led to making a home in Utah, and the struggles of his mom as she tried to pay her bills and raise her four children, of whom Michael was the youngest.
Pride, ignorance and high tech equal disaster
About halfway through “Blue Fire” (Kensington Publishing Corp., 2022, 326 pages,) John Gilstrap’s apocalyptic novel about a worldwide nuclear war, I paused and asked myself a question: “Given the state of the world right now — the sabre rattling of nations like Iran, North Korea, and China, the war in Ukraine, the economic and cultural devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the foolish fiscal policies of our federal government — do you really want to be reading a book about hundreds of millions of people dying while many of the survivors become savages?”
Shipwreck, survival and faith all in one novel
Novels that touch on faith and God have long intrigued me.
A well-told history of the Lakota Sioux
Having grown up in these Cherokee hills, I became interested in things native from an early age. This interest, spawned by my boyhood friends over on the Snowbird Reservation, has continued throughout my life and until today.
Off to the beach with “Shrimp Highway”
Too much time has passed since I last visited the coast.
I don’t get it: A Review of ‘The Ballad of Laurel Springs’
Sometimes a book I’ve read, particularly a novel, will leave me mystified, which is not always a good thing.
One man’s vision of the Southern Appalachians
In my recent passion and ongoing interest in reviewing books by local and regional authors, I am offering here, yet another from our cache of talented writers that are close to home. In this case, it’s a book just released in the month of June by regionally heralded Hub City Press in Spartanburg, S.C., just over the North Carolina line.
A quick review and a word of gratitude
Recently in this space I reviewed “The Broken Spine” by Dorothy St. James, a murder mystery set in a small town in South Carolina. At one point, I described the novel as “a perfect book for an escape from the trials of the day or for that trip to the beach.”
