Reviews and comments on books both old and new

Not the book her fans expected. Scout takes the shine off her dad, Atticus Finch, and presents him as a far more complicted individual that we suspected from our reading of To Kill a Mocking Bird. Atticus is now a man we see disappointingly trapped by a Southern Culture steeped in racism. None have escaped, and nothing , it seems, is what it seems.

Harper Lee is a most complicated author. Understanding her and the politics of her two best known public works presented a unique problem. Those books, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Go Set a Watchman are vastly different books. This has been commented on many times, but from a literary and biographical standpoint.  Click anywhere on th decription and go to my 1500 words on Lee as a political writer

Let me say first that Gillian Flynn is an incredibly talented writer. She gives every appearance of being endowed with a natural gift for spinning a yarn and is wordsmith enough to deliver some fine writing. Flynn herself admits that she had scads of assistance and encouragement; however, none of this boosting would have meant a thing had Flynn not possessed the inner artist. Her writing skill is much to be admired. 

 The Disappeared is the tale of a missing English businesswoman, the mysterious burning of bodies in a lumber mill’s furnace, and a governor’s political shenanigans surrounding a puzzling green energy project; these are some of the plot features that propel this story forward. I selected the CJ Box, Joe Pickett book, The Disappeared, largely at random, hoping that it would be a fair sample of the author’s extensive Joe Pickett series.