Books High and Low

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Cinema love, by Jiaming Tang

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  I liked this book about a group of Chinese immigrants who struggle with life and love in New York's Chinatown. The story actually span...
Thursday, January 23, 2025

The secret adversary, by Agatha Christie

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  I really enjoyed the second novel of Agatha Christie's. It's the first of five books starring the characters Tommy and Tuppence. I...
Saturday, January 18, 2025

The Friday afternoon club: a family memoir, by Griffin Dunne

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  I enjoyed this celebrity memoir written by actor, director, and producer Griffin Dunne. It brought to life the crazy life of his parents a...

Edmund: in search of England's lost king, by Francis Young

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This is a good introduction to Edmund the Martyr, King of East Anglia until his death in 869. Edmund was killed by the Danes, reportedly tie...
Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Deep & wild: on mountains, opossums & finding your way in West Virginia, by Laura Jackson

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  I enjoyed this collection of personal essays about West Virginia. Author Laura Jackson is a West Virginia native and writes lovingly about...
Thursday, January 9, 2025

The enchanted April, by Elizabeth von Arnim

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I really enjoyed this 1922 novel about four women who travel to Italy, renting an old castle for a month. All of the women are unhappy for d...
Friday, January 3, 2025

Dear Evan Hansen, book by Steven Levenson; music and lyrics by Benj Pasek & Justin Paul

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  Dear Evan Hansen is a musical that will be coming to Eisenhower Auditorium in April, so I thought I'd read the play before going to s...

Devil is fine, by John Vercher

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  Devil is fine tells the story of a biracial man who has just lost his teenage son. He inherits a plot of land that was meant for his son ...

An unfinished love story: a personal history of the 1960s, by Doris Kearns Goodwin

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  This is a wonderful look at not only the relationship between Doris Kearns Goodwin and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin, but also an in...

The Brooklyn follies, by Paul Auster

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I really enjoyed this novel by Paul Auster, one of my favorite authors. The Brooklyn follies tells the story of a recently retired, divorce...

The Plantagenets: the kings that made Britain, by Derek Wilson

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  This is a good introduction to the Plantagenet dynasty in Britain. It devotes a chapter to almost all of the kings from Henry II through H...
Thursday, January 2, 2025

The mysterious affair at Styles, by Agatha Christie

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  I read what I thought was a lot of Agatha Christie mysteries when I was a teenager, probably a few dozen, but that's only a fraction o...
Saturday, November 30, 2024

How to connect, by Thich Nhat Hanh

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  This is the second book in a series of "how to" books by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh that I've read; other book...
Wednesday, November 27, 2024

Headshot, by Rita Bullwinkel

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I was prepared to dislike Headshot because I really don't like boxing as a sport, but I was surprised by how engaging this book was. It...
Sunday, November 24, 2024

Much ado about nothing, by William Shakespeare

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  I really enjoyed this play about Beatrice and Benedick, Hero and Claudio. I read it in anticipation of seeing the play performed at Penn S...
Sunday, November 17, 2024

Long after we are gone, by Terah Shelton Harris

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In this family drama, author Terah Shelton Harris reveals the problems inherent in "heir property," which is land that has been in...
Saturday, November 9, 2024

Trust her, by Flynn Berry

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  I didn't realize when I began Trust Her that it is a sequel to Northern Spy , which I haven't read yet. I would have preferred to...
Thursday, November 7, 2024

Traitor's gate, by Jeffrey Archer

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  This is a bit of escapist fiction featuring a group of Scotland Yard officers who are tasked with protecting the crown jewels when they...
Saturday, October 26, 2024

Two tales: Betrothed & Edo and Enam, by S.Y. Agnon; translated from the Hebrew by Walter Lever

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  These are two novellas written by celebrated Hebrew novelist S.Y. Agnon, who was the recipient of the Nobel prize in Literature in 1966. B...
Thursday, October 17, 2024

You're doing great! ... and other reasons to stay alive, by Tom Papa

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I'm a big fan of Tom Papa's standup, which led me to this book of essays. Papa is very funny, and the essays included here cover som...

My year of rest and relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh

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I have to admit that I approached this book with some skepticism since I disliked her earlier book, Eileen . I'm sorry to say that I did...

The panic zone, by Rick Mofina

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  This is an edge-of-your-seat thriller that follows a young woman who's lost her husband and son in a car crash (although she swears sh...

Maybe you should talk to someone, by Lori Gottlieb

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  This was a really interesting book in which the author Lori Gottlieb, a therapist, writes about her own need for therapy when she experien...
Saturday, October 5, 2024

The thread collectors, by Shaunna J. Edwards and Alyson Richman

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I enjoyed this historical novel, based loosely on the two authors' family histories, that tells the story of a Jewish Northerner, Jacob ...
Thursday, October 3, 2024

James, by Percival Everett

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  I really liked this retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the enslaved man Jim's viewpoint. I found the story to be al...

The cure for women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women's Lives Forever, by Lydia Reeder

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  In the 19th century, women who wished to become doctors had limited opportunities to study because they were not welcome in most America...
Monday, September 2, 2024

Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon

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  I have mixed feelings about this book. I like fantasy and time travel books, as well as historical fiction, so this book seemed like a pro...
Saturday, August 24, 2024

The heaven and earth grocery story, by James McBride

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  I really loved this novel by James McBride about a diverse collection of people living in Pottstown, Pennsylvania during the 1930s and 197...

The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz

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  I have mixed feelings about this 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a nerdy second-generation Dominican American man who is highly in...
Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Blue: A history of postpartum depression in America, by Rachel Louise Moran

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  Moran’s (history and women’s studies, The Pennsylvania State University; Governing Bodies: American Politics and the Shaping of the Mode...
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