Tag: literature
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Story Tellers Change but Spenser Stories Stay the Same–Mostly At Least
“Robert B Parker’s Someone to Watch Over Me,” by Ace Atkins G P Putnam’s Sons, copyright 2020 306 pp Robert B Parker was the leader of American mystery/detective fiction writing for a generation or more. Born in 1932, he began to publish in the 1970’s and he died in January, 2010. There were competitors, but…
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Some reading at Christmas–but maybe not Christmas reading
Like last year I have chosen to tell you about some reading I think you might find enjoyable and/or inspiring and/or interesting. It is not “Christmas reading”in the the way people usually use that term since it has nothing directly to do with Christmas. But since it invites you into the considerations of religious philosophy–questions…
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The Poet of the Mean Streets
“Small Mercies” by Dennis Lehane, Copywright 2023, Harper Collins, 299 pgs It is not easy, at first anyway, to classify Dennis Lahane as a writer. He’s not quite a mystery writer though his books are often whodunits of a sort along with other things. “Crime writer” would likely be a better description because he nearly…
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A Riddle from a Poet and a Novelist
There is a bookstore in a part of Minneapolis, W 25th St about a mile or two west of Hennepin more exactly, which is in a location I love. This is a pleasant upper middle class area which could well be called suburbia if it were not in a leading American city. The store is…
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Some Christmas(sort of)reading
Well, Thanksgiving is past and I’m not quite comfortable yet with doing something on the election, so I guess I’ll start my idea of some books you might read for Christmas–but not necessarily the ones mostly recommended, not necessarily ones clearly definable as Christmas books (Maybe I’ll try a blog on Christmas movies later) My…
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Movies, Books and Innocence–or Perhaps Something Like It
The title notwithstanding, this is not intended as serious literary criticism. It is my criticism, partly of myself, and a commentary on a past time in USA History; this includes a couple of its leading cultural contributors, and the way we may relate to such works in different times and at different ages. I began…
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The Ghosts of Movies Past-the Two Edges of the Razor
In my third Hays code effort I referred to the two different times(1946, 1984)when Hollywood tacked Maugham’s “The Razor’s Edge.” I got so enthusiastic about it that I found myself with more than two pages of MS which should have been about two paragraphs in that article. With some somewhat heavy handed editing I got…
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Saturday thoughts
It is ironic that I chose this time to start a blog. I meant it to offer an opportunity to share some things I had long considered and maybe some new ones. I had no idea I might wind up starting at the time of a terrible world crisis. Here I am all the same…
john's thoughts 