Review of Life in the Left Lane (Paperback)

No typical tourist guide is this. Emy Thomas provides a refreshingly frank account of life in St. Croix. She deals directly with the pleasant the beaches, the people, the pace of life and the sometimes unpleasant hurricanes, and occasional crime.

Emy Thomas has found her own way to enjoy this island paradise. Hers is no superficial experience. She enjoys St. Croix in all its richness. Not for her an imposing mini castle in an expatriate enclave. She goes out of her way to live modestly yet comfortably. She knows some creole, and is deeply involved in local social initiatives. She seems to blend and integrate with the majority West Indian population much better than could be expected of the stereotypical New Yorker.She joins the locals in laughing off the perpetualGovernment inefficiencies, rather thangetting upset. But her journalist background is not entirely forgotten. She still manages to take a few swipes at local politicians.

If you know St. Croix already, you will readily identify with Emy Thomas perspectives and sense of humor. If you ever wondered what a Caribbean retirement would be like - read this before you decide. It will prepare your mind, and most likely will make you want to do it even more.

Product Description
A short and lively non-fiction book about what it?

About the Author
Emy Thomas spent her first thirty-three years following a typical middle-class path, growing up in Connecticut, graduating from prestigious schools in the northeast, and working as a journalist in New York City. Then she discovered the tropics and has embraced the islands and their laid-back lifestyle ever since. For over a dozen years home was a sailboat, when she cruised throughout the Caribbean and Pacific with a typical 'yachtie,' who made wandering a way of life. They visited scores of island paradises. When it was time to leave the boat and settle down the author chose St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands as her permanent home. She built her dream house on a hillside overlooking the Caribbean Sea and finally found her true calling as an author. Her first book, Home Is Where the Boat Is, was published in 1993. Life in the Left Lane is her second book.

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Review of FDR (Paperback)

FDR, by Jean Edward Smith, proves that no highly significant historical figure or event is beyond a great writer's ability to improve a particular body of literature.Indeed FDR is a towering work of both writing and scholarship.Smith again proves he is one of our foremost biographers and captures, in a very evenhanded way, the very essence of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Indeed, this writing is up there with David Herbert Donald's Lincoln.Both took on truly larger than life topics and did so with energy and vigor.

The footnoting in FDR is highly extensive and the curious reader will look at many of them and make notes to read on additional topics as Smith piques the interest of any with any significant interest in Roosevelt.He, like Lincoln, was the President in a time where it is difficult to imagine, even for his critics, another person assuming the role.Smith explains and documents almost all of FDR's life and gives very plausible reasons for his rather radical views at the time, especially for one with his Hudson River pedigree.He tackles his many physical challenges, his relationship with his peripatetic wife Eleanor (see Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time) , his affair with Lucy Mercer Rutherford, his intimate relationship with Churchill (see Jon Meacham's Franklin and Winston) and his reliance on a cast of eclectic personal and political operatives over the years. All of his public years are well covered, perhaps even more so his early years in New York politics.

There is very little, if nothing to criticize about this book.One could make an argument that Smith tried too hard to keep it a readable 636 pages with and additional 221 pages of notes and an exhaustive bibliography.Maybe two volumes would have improved this work, but that is sheer conjecture.This book must be read by all with more than a passing interest in 20th Century American history.Simply sublime.



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Review of The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought to You by Pop Culture (Hardcover)

[A Vine Review - Thanks, Amazon!]

Nathan Rabin may be a first-time author, but I know him well from reading his A.V. Club articles and the enormous discussion threads they spawn. His discursive, caustic, and quite funny writing style has a gift for transforming a long and pointless afternoon into something longer and just as pointless, only far more entertaining.

As a critic of today, Rabin's the kind of guy who can break anything down into popular entertainment references, so it almost makes sense that when he decided to tell the story of his life, he organized it into chapters referencing famous books, records, and films.

His stay as a boy in a mental institution? He's reminded of the book "Girl, Interrupted" - and careful to point out, not the later film adaptation.

Various relationships with girls are prompted with chapters spotlighting Rabin's takes on Rod Stewart and Jean-Luc Godard. Living in a hippie co-op in Madison, Wisconsin prompts a reference to "Freaks", the Tod Browning cult film. "My fellow co-opers were the stuff of Lou Reed songs," he explains.

Movies became for Rabin a channel of expression and a shelter from the storm: "Movies afforded the rewards of human interaction with none of the terrifying hazards of actual human contact," he writes. Real life has teeth, and Rabin often felt its bite.

I've seen this done before with songs alone, which do lend themselves to this kind of subjective treatment. Movies don't, and Rabin struggles to find the same connecting strands that come more easily from a song like "Maggie May". When Rabin uses "Apocalypse Now" as a basis for comparing a mildly domineering authority figure in Rabin's life to the terrifyingly unhinged Col. Kurtz from the film, it's a sign he's really pushing for significance.

More problematically, not every episode he writes about is as interesting to us as it is to him. There's three chapters alone on Rabin's brief, unsuccessful attempt at being a movie critic on TV, something he writes about with the minute, gory precision of the Starr Report.

When something does click, though, it often clicks hard, like his meeting the woman who gave birth to him, then left him alone for 20 years. When he meets her again, he finds her utterly unconcerned about the emotional damage she has left, and nutty enough for Rabin to realize he's grateful to have escaped her notice.

"Every Mother's Day I'm struck with an urge to send Biological Mother a card but I've yet to find one with a message like 'To a Mother Who's Disappointed Me in Every Conceivable Way.'"

"The Big Rewind" is hardly a disappointment of that order. It's structurally deficient, yes, but otherwise often engaging enough to read through quickly and wonder, if this was another A.V. Club posting, what the discussion thread would look like.



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Review of What I Thought I Knew: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Alice Eve Cohen draws on her skills as a one-woman show performer and storyteller to write a harrowing, moving, searingly honest memoir about the chaos that took over her settled life at age 44 when, after experiencing health problems and told she was menopausal and infertile, she discovered that she was actually six months pregnant.

I do not want to reveal too much about what happens next, because a reader should experience the story unfolding page by page, as Alice is told new "certainties" that are dashed again and again."What I Thought I Knew" is the perfect title for this memoir, and Alice writes out ever-evolving lists of her own feelings, what her doctors have told her about her condition, and her baby's prognosis.

Nothing goes as planned, and Alice suffers ambivalence, guilt, and crippling depression.As a memoirist, Cohen shares her feelings with spare, unadorned honesty.Can she survive this experience?Can she be a mother to this child?What makes a mother?A good mother?She explores these questions directly, in simple, often poetic prose.

I am not usually a huge fan of memoir and what is being called "confessional journalism," but Cohen breaks through any reservations I have about personal narrative.Once I started, I didn't want to put the book down, so I read it in one evening.What differentiates Cohen's writing for me is that she does not use distancing techniques of irony or snark. She is incredibly straightforward and pulls us into her experience, sharing her most intimate experiences in a way that illuminates the choice to enter motherhood, along with family dynamics, depression, the fallibility of the medical system, the value of community and professional support, and ultimately, the mystery of grace.

Product Description
A personal and medical odyssey beyond anything most women would believe possible

At age forty-four, Alice Eve Cohen was happy for the first time in years. After a difficult divorce, she was engaged to an inspiring man, joyfully raising her adopted daughter, and her career was blossoming. Alice tells her fiancé that she's never been happier. And then the stomach pains begin.

In her unflinchingly honest and ruefully witty voice, Alice nimbly carries us through her metamorphosis from a woman who has come to terms with infertility to one who struggles to love a heartbeat found in her womb - six months into a high-risk pregnancy.

What I Thought I Knew is a page-turner filled with vivid characters, humor, and many surprises and twists of fate. With the suspense of a thriller and the intimacy of a diary, Cohen describes her unexpected journey through doubt, a broken medical system, and the hotly contested terrain of motherhood and family in today's society. Timely and compelling, What I Thought I Knew will capture readers of memoirs such as Eat, Pray, Love; The Glass Castle; and A Three Dog Life.

About the Author
Alice Eve Cohen is a playwright, solo theater artist, and memoirist. She has written for Nickelodeon and PBS and received fellowships and grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches at The New School in New York City.

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Review of Nora: An Ordinary Girl from Inchicore (Paperback)

Nora's story is the perfect story for those of us who think we have problems and for those of us who know we do. Either way, it takes us out of ourselves and lets us see that their are problems worse than ours and that there are people who handle them with her spunk and bravery. It's all about attitude and Nora's story shows how far the right attitude can take you. I hope she has more stories in her as I'd like to read them. Thanks Nora, for sharing your story with us.

Product Description
NORA-An Ordinary Girl from Inchicore is a poignant memoir of growing up in Inchicore, Dublin in the 1940's and 50's. With humor and pathos Nora tells of the day-to-day drama in a large Catholic family and the interaction with her nine siblings. She tells of the discipline in an all-girl Catholic school and the kindness and sometimes cruelty of the good nuns.

Nora takes us with her through the streets of her beloved Dublin as she cycles to work or takes the bus into town. We absorb the unique atmosphere-the sights, the smells and the colorful speech of Dubliners.

We go dancing with her in 'The Golden Years' of ballroom dancing and follow her romance with a handsome student from Trinity College.

We hear of the adoption of a baby and the circumstances that led her to immigrate to Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Later we join Nora in England where her plans to marry her student prince go awry.

We follow her to Toronto, Canada where she meets and falls in love with her life partner, Frank.

NORA-An Ordinary Girl from Inchicore will delight those who love all things Irish and who believe the Irish are the most fascinating people on earth.

About the Author
Born in Dublin, Nora Szechy was one of ten children. Her daughter's gift of a blank journal with the request to write about her life gave her the impetus (at 72) to recapture her memories.

She lives in Downey, California with her husband Frank. They have three married children and seven grandchildren.

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Review of Red Room Rendezvous (Paperback)

I really loved this book because the writing put me into a city which I had never stepped foot: New Orleans. (And since Hurricane Katrina has wiped out much of NOLA this book can serve as part of its rich history.) The character development is superb; I really cared about each person, from the primary to secondary characters. The detail Ms. Crain gives to her beloved New Orleans paints an eloquent picture for the reader ofthe rich tradition of the French Quarter, the architecture and its unique people. Bill Holcomb, the book's main character, brings vitality into what is normally a depressing subject of the human excesses of addiction and its depressing toll on those whose loved ones -- even friends -- are affected. It's my personal opinion that RRR would make a great miniseries on one of the pay channels to fully explore the depths of each character without holding back the true feelings of those around them due of FCC censorship.

Product Description
Meet William Lafayette Holcomb, erstwhile Southern aristocrat, erudite, witty, storyteller without peer, and more often drunk than sober as he strolls the streets of the Garden District with the author, relating one New Orleansmelodrama after another. Join the author as she lunches at Café Atchafalaya to interview Miss Iler, its eccentric and outspoken proprietor. From the jewel of Buzz Harper s manse to the end-of-the-road Rendezvous Tavern, this is a tour of New Orleans that is not likely to be in any guidebook., and proof, once again, that reality is frequently stranger and more entertaining than fiction.



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