Terry’s Book Reviews

Although Alice Randall’s Black Bottom Saints is not an epistolary novel, it read like a love letter to this famous black Detroit neighborhood. The narrator Ziggy Johnson is a dapper, African American man-about-town. He writes a weekly column for the Michigan Chronicle and emcees at a popular nightclub. But Ziggy’s proudest endeavor is his School […]

There are several wonderful things about the book club I’ve been in for many years: thirteen women get along, we usually quickly agree on each other’s book suggestions, and when we don’t, it’s friendly and amicable. Perhaps the best thing, besides friendships that have grown over years is that we read selections that I’d otherwise […]

Until I read Bryan Stevenson’s gut-wrenching book “Just Mercy,” I thought I was well informed on inequities in the American justice system. How wrong I was, particularly about the South, but also in many other locales throughout the country. Police, prosecutors, jails, judges and the public frequently look the other way or operate with impunity […]

Woodson’s compact novel, “Red at the Bone” is a tenderly written multigenerational story. It covers love, sexuality, sorrow, independence and disappointments in an upscale black American family. Having attained status and material comforts, that many black people aspire to, does not relieve this family of past history and heartache that is destined to follow them.  […]

The opening premise for Catherine Ryan Hyde’s novel, Take Me With You, quickly drew me into what I sensed was going to be a different kind of feel-good story. Early on, we meet August Shroeder, a science teacher whose teenage son Phillip has recently died. August is driving cross country to Yellowstone National Park to […]

The Long Take by Robin Robertson is a beautifully composed but dark narrative poem about Walter, a traumatized World War II veteran. Walter, we’ll learn in emotionally savage flashbacks, has witnessed and participated in the most horrific aspects of war. Thus, he’s depressed, angry and mentally scarred from PTSD— a condition his generation called shell […]

About fifty pages in, it becomes obvious why Laura Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken” has topped bestseller lists for three years and is again at number one in this week’s New York Times. It’s a riveting account of what American POWs endured in Japanese captivity during World War II. The book focuses on Louie Zamperini, a colorful character […]

LIFE IS A WHEEL, by Bruce Weber is a memoir of his 4000-plus mile, 79 day bicycle ride across America in 2011. At the time, Weber was a New York Times obituary writer and a very good one. The paper serialized his journey with many readers sending him messages along the way.   The author […]

Warlight Warlight, by Michael Ondaatje is a nonlinear, atmospheric novel set in post-World War II London. The city is thick with fog, electricity is spotty, and a sense of foreboding hangs over the story. Despite the war’s end and a desire for normalcy,  “… Partisans fighters refusing defeat” make their presence known.  The storyline follows […]

In 2004, Rory Stewart, author of The Places in Between, trekked  400 Km (250 miles) across Afghanistan between the cities of Chaghcharan and Kabul. HIs mission was to follow in the footsteps of Babur, the first emperor of Mughal, who did the same walk in 1507. Babur also chronicled his travels which Stewart shares, along […]

Usually, I either can’t, or won’t, complete books like Gabriel Tallent’s, debut novel, My Absolute Darling. It’s a gripping, exhausting, page-turner about a fourteen year-old nicknamed Turtle who lives in an isolated, but stunningly beautiful location along the Northern California seacoast. Turtle lives with her father Martin, a psychological, sexual, and sadistic abuser. Tallent’s luminous […]

Animals Strike Curious Poses, Elena Passarello’s collection of essays about animals, is…well, different. She mixes fact and fiction to create what might be dubbed entertainment science. The anthology begins with “Yuca,” who was a 39,000 year-old mammoth. Throughout the book, readers are continually reminded of the magical nature of animals and the pleasure and wonder […]

The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse That Inspired a Nation As a little girl growing up in Harlem in the 1950s, peddlers in horse-drawn wagons were always a happy sighting. Elizabeth Letts’ book, “The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, The Horse that Inspired a Nation,” took me back to those days, when horses were still part of […]

Hillbilly Elegy J.D. Vance, is the author of the bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. Before the reader even opens the cover, the book’’s alliterative title grabs you. The timing of its release was prescient, as it coincided with Donald Trump’s campaign theme to “Make America Great Again.” To […]

A Woman in Berlin, by Anonymous, is a book about mass rape during Word War II, including the author’s own violations. The forward and introduction state that the thirty-four year-old author was a professional journalist, who remained objective, even instilling bits of humor into her story.  In 2001, after her death, the public learned that […]

Snowblind by Daniel Arnold is a collection of fictional short stories highlighting extreme weather conditions and how they relate to the obsessions and excesses commonly found among mountain climbers. We learn that some men and women will risk anything, from disfigurement of severe frostbite, to the life of a fellow climber, if that’s what it […]

Reading Lights Out by Ted Koppel, reminded me of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel, The Road. McCarthy writes fiction, some would call it science fiction, but Lights Out is a 279 page, real life wakeup call filled with expert testimony, solid research, and examples of what would happen if the United States experienced a major cyberattack.  […]

George Hodgman, the author of Bettyville, a moving and often funny memoir, is a middle aged gay man who lives in New York City. For months at a time, he puts his life on hold and returns to Paris, Missouri to lovingly care for his still viable but frail, 90 year-old mother, who is losing […]

George Hodgman, the author of Bettyville, a moving and often funny memoir, is a middle aged gay man who lives in New York City. For months at a time, he puts his life on hold and returns to Paris, Missouri to lovingly care for his still viable but frail, 90 year-old mother, who is losing […]

Ken Follett again tackles great chucks of history in Edge of Eternity, the final installment in his Century Trilogy, which covers 1961 through 1989, and includes such epic events as Vietnam, Kennedy’s assassination, the Civil Rights movement, the Cold War and the fall of Communism. Follett also takes on two pop culture issues: the genesis […]

Rules of Civility Set in 1930s Manhattan, Rules of Civility by Amor Towles follows the lives and longings of the city’s idle rich and two determined, thirty-ish working class wannabes, Kate and Eve. Along with happenstance and sheer ballsiness, Kate and Eve also use wit, intelligence and good looks to eventually claw their way into […]

‘Leaflets,’ the opening chapter of All the Light We Cannot See is two paragraphs long: “At dusk they pour from the sky. They blow across the ramparts, turn cartwheels over rooftops, flutter into the ravines between houses. Entire streets swirl with them, flashing white against the cobblestones. Urgent message to the inhabitants of this town, […]

At first glance I wondered why Sue Grafton’s latest mystery, “W is for Wasted,” was such a thick book. Fearing she’d stepped into the novelists’ trap of thinking more is better, it didn’t take long to realize that “W” is a bloated mess. The main positive about the novel is that it gives a multifaceted […]

We’ve all heard that “good things come in small packages.” That would be the case for Remembering Arlie, a Glimpse Into a Remarkable Life, a compact biography, lovingly written by Arlington Neutzel, namesake and grandson of Arlie.  Born in a German community in East St. Louis, Illinois in 1893, Arlie was eleven years old during […]

Author Stephen L. Carter should be happy about the recent thaw in Cuban-American relations because his latest novel, Back Channel, a political-espionage thriller, revisits the 1962 Cold War Cuban Missile Crisis.  The novel’s title and premise is based on the fact that during the crisis there was a secret, or back channel of communication between […]

A fine thing about The Goldfinch is how Donna Tartt captures the way a place looks, smells and how it feels to be there. The story opens in post-9/11 New York and readers are soon inside the MMOA, home to “The Goldfinch,” Carel Fabritius’s priceless 1654 painting, which titles this long novel. Much of the […]

FAIL, Rick Skwiot’s timely new mystery has all the elements of a story that’s been plucked from headline news: crumbling urban neighborhood, corrupt public officials, economic inequality, greed, violence, failing schools.  The action begins with Carlo Gabriel, a hip, African-American Mexican-American St. Louis police detective — with a secret of his own — who is […]

“Covering, The Assault on Our Civil Rights” is a compact and meticulously researched book by Kenji Yoshino, a gay Japanese law professor. It is both a memoir about the demons Yoshino wrestled before coming out and a report, with legal overtones, on what life is like for all stripes of gay people in America.    […]

Telegraph Avenue Telegraph Avenue focuses on a group of Oakland, California residents who are juggling various crises. The current issue on Telegraph is the pending opening of a mega-sized record store. The store, to be called Dogpile, threatens the existing Brokeland, a local and beloved down-at-the-heels purveyor of vintage vinyl.  It takes a while to […]

About fifty pages in, it becomes obvious why “Unbroken” has topped bestseller lists for three years and is again at number one in this week’s New York Times Book Review. It’s a riveting account of what American POWs endured in Japanese captivity during World War II. The book focuses on Louie Zamperini, a colorful character […]

Mink River was a total surprise and a pure joy! The action takes place in the fictional Northwestern coastal town of Neawanka. The narrator, twelve year-old Daniel Cooney, tells the story of his Irish-Salish-Indian family and how their lives intertwine with the environment and a cast of lovable and oddball characters. For starters, there’s Moses the […]

I almost didn’t read this book because I’d heard the author, Piper Kerman, described as a stereotypical, mean rich girl who only cozies up to the unfortunates with whom she’s incarcerated because she’s a calculating narcissist bitch. I totally did not detect that vibe. Sure, Kerman grew up in a well off family and we […]

Notes From No Man’s Land, by Eula Biss ‘Time and Distance Overcome,’ the first essay traces the invention of the telephone and use of telephone poles to explore America’s history of racism. It’s an interesting, unusual and provocative way to approach the issue. Eula Biss successfully uses her odd ball juxtapositions in many essays, which […]

  Like many readers, I strive to finish books but, with so many wonderful choices and the proverbial, so little time, even accomplished authors like Hilary Mantel should not get a pass from the editorial department. Doing so is a disservice to faithful readers. Also, the cynicism of turning what should be a 300 page […]

How often can you find a book with 400-plus gorgeous photos that’s reasonably priced, not awkwardly sized or ridiculously heavy to pick up? That’s what I got when I bought Humans of New York, which I think is one of the most exciting and best photography books I’ve seen. I’m not a connoisseur, but I do […]