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Recent Posts
- On “Die My Love”: Jennifer Lawrence Channels Her Inner Kristi Noem, and Does Not Write the Great American Novel
- “The Salt Path” (2025): An Underappreciated Film That Includes Actual Humanity
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- The Year Without a Winter (in the Southwest): 2025-2026
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Tag Archives: Book Reviewing
The Goodwill Genius: On Discovering Vladimir Nabokov's "Bend Sinister"
So back in December my editor at the Dallas Morning News asked me (and other contributing writers) to pen a brief essay about a book I’d been given as a gift some time in my life, and I actually wrote … Continue reading
On Adventures Gone Wrong: Stephane Gerson's "Disaster Falls" and Jason Kersten's "Journal of the Dead"
So I stumbled upon a book that touches close to home for me, as a naturalist who drags his young daughter with him to various outdoor locales seething with both beauty and danger, filled with the confidence and aplomb that … Continue reading
On Ian McGuire's "The North Water": a Revisionist "Moby Dick," With Echoes of "Blood Meridian" and "The Revenant"
So last week I had the gripping-if-ghastly reading experience of zooming through Ian McGuire’s new novel, The North Water. I’ll try to be circumspect in my comments here so as not to spoil the reading “fun” for others, as I … Continue reading
On T.J. Stiles's "Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America": a Pulitzer That Deserves It
So I’ve been a fan of both (the celebrated myth of) George Armstrong Custer and the excellent historian/biographer T.J. Stiles for many years, and when these two worlds collided, it’s not surprising that I read Custer’s Trials: A Life on … Continue reading
Posted in books, books/film, The West
Tagged Book Reviewing, Custer's Trials, Film, George Armstrong Custer, T.J. Stiles, The West
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Review of Dominic Smith's "The Last Painting of Sara de Vos" in the Dallas Morning News
So interested readers can find my review of Dominic Smith’s novel The Last Painting of Sara de Vos in today’s Dallas Morning News here. I liked the book: quiet and understated. I don’t really know anything about Smith, though I … Continue reading
On Sonia Shah's "Pandemic" and Antarctica's Looming Meltdown: Drowning in a Sea Full of Germs
So a few years back I often wrote about Climate Change and its slo-mo catastrophe, especially when it seemed that we had the chance to alter our Titanic-like course toward that (melting) iceberg, but of late I’ve been more reticent, … Continue reading
Posted in Birding, books, books/film, Climate Change, Uncategorized
Tagged Book Reviewing, Climate Change, David Quammen's Spillover, Gwyneth Paltrow, Horror Movies, Sonia Shah's Pandemic, Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, The Bird Saviors, The Great Influenza, The Great Mortality, Viruses
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They Eat Horses, Don't They? "The Revenant" v. "Backcountry": A Tale of Two Bears, With Nods to Peter Stark's "Astoria" and David Roberts's "A Newer World"
So I’ve been getting caught up on some of the Oscar-bait for this year, as in watching Matt Damon’s improbable space rescue in The Martian, and seeing The Revenant in a local theater, where I laughed and made too many … Continue reading
Posted in Bears, books/film, Cormac McCarthy, The West
Tagged Backcountry, Book Reviewing, Cormac McCarthy, Fiction Writing, the film, The Revenant, The West
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The Year Without a Winter: Two Centuries Later, a Climate Switcheroo
So some years back I read a good book titled The Year Without a Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History (2013), by William and Nicholas Klingaman (that name makes you wonder: or are they … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, Politics, The West
Tagged Book Reviewing, Climate Change, The Bird Saviors, The West
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On Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and J.J. Abrams's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," Or a Journey from the Sublime to the Ridiculous
So over the holidays I was holed up on a mountainside in Colorado reading Leo Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace (1869), which, at 1224 pages, is an undertaking. I felt compelled to read it as quickly as possible, lest the … Continue reading
Metro v. Retro Jon Krakauer: On the "Everest" Film and Jon Krakauer's "Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town"
So last weekend I happened to see the new film Everest, which recapitulates many of the events in Jon Krakauer’s bestseller Into Thin Air (1997), about the disastrous year when 11 climbers died on Mount Everest, circa 1996—which has since … Continue reading
Posted in books, books/film
Tagged Book Reviewing, Everest (2015 film), Film, Jon Krakauer's Missoula
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