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By Peter Hassebroek on August 25, 2011
Writing about what you know and have experienced can be a great tonic to exorcise one’s demons while remaining authoritative at the same time. It can also turn into a self-serving rant. Thomas Thonson is a veteran of the Hollywood film industry and the theme of his unpretentious collection, You Don’t Die of Love, is Hollywood and its people, particularly Harry Dare, an old time actor of Westerns whose private life was more dramatic than his cinematic one.
Posted in Fiction, Literary, Reviews | Tagged book review, collection, Fiction, hollywood, short story, thomas thonson |
By Peter Hassebroek on August 12, 2011
Collectively, Inklings (Very short stories and other babies born of ink) by Aparna Warrier, is shorter than a conventional short story. Undoubtedly the shortest book I’ve ever read without pictures.
Posted in Fiction, Literary, Reviews | Tagged aparna warrier, book review, collection, Fiction, flash fiction, short story |
By Peter Hassebroek on July 8, 2011
Collected stories, like songs on LPs, often share a theme or tone related to its title. In that sense, the title of Wade Alan Steele’s collection, A Sudden Dominance of Shadows, correlates to the opaqueness of many of its stories that delve into the murky psyches of its protagonists. Otherwise, though, the disparate styles and quality of the stories makes this book more like a collection of B-Sides.
Posted in Fiction, Literary, Peter Hassebroek, Reviews | Tagged book review, dominance, Fiction, shadows, short story collection, sudden, wade alan steele |
By Peter Hassebroek on June 24, 2011
Against the intense drama of ilms like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, The Deer Hunter, and so on, Frank Jolliff’s memoir, 365 and a Wake-Up, paints a comparatively benign picture. That contributes to both its strengths and its drawbacks.
Posted in Biography/Memoir, Non-Fiction, Peter Hassebroek, Reviews | Tagged book review, draft, frank jolliff, memoir, vietnam |
By Peter Hassebroek on May 20, 2011
Several weeks ago, a post on Henry Baum’s Self Publishing Review blog offered a succinct perspective on quality in self-publishing, questioning whether readers would care or even notice so-called gatekeeper issues when they’re paying less than a buck for an E-Book. False Refuge by Steven Anderson is an under-a-buck book and the post made me pause to consider whether, as a reviewer, I ought to consider the price in reviewing this novel and be more forgiving about any copyediting issues I might come across.
Posted in Action/Adventure, Fiction, Peter Hassebroek, Reviews | Tagged AWOL, book review, Conscientious Objector, false refuge, Fiction, hawaii, Kona, steve anderson |
By Peter Hassebroek on April 10, 2011
A fictional parallel to Facebook called MyFace links the geographically diverse lives in Bonnie Rozanski’s Six Clicks Away. The action begins at Xavier College in New Jersey with the lovely and superficial Rachel who is obsessed with accumulating as many MyFace friends as possible.
Posted in Fiction, Mainstream/Nostalgia, Peter Hassebroek, Reviews | Tagged Bonnie, facebook, Fiction, friend, Milgram, MyFace, Rozankski, Six Clicks Away, Six Degrees, social network |
By Peter Hassebroek on March 14, 2011
I can’t say I fully grasp why the title Past; Tense was chosen for the second story, let alone the entire collection. A double-, triple-, or even quadruple-entendre I imagine, involving grammatical tenses, emotional tension, and chronology. Its phonetic awkwardness does foreshadow Joe Harding’s collection as literary fiction; yet these ten well-written, well-edited stories, narrated in ten unique voices, are surprisingly accessible.
Posted in Fiction, Literary, Peter Hassebroek, Reviews | Tagged book review, British, collection, Fiction, joe harding, literary, short story |
By Peter Hassebroek on February 20, 2011
When travelling, kids don’t want to see things, they want to do things. Scavenger Guides Chicago addresses that need by offering a guidebook designed and written for kids. This guidebook is meant to be used more than consulted and, ideally, become a lasting memento of a trip to the windy city. Challenges and questions about popular top tourist sites and activities encourage involvement. A travel guide, game, journal, photography course, and souvenir all in one.
Posted in Non-Fiction, Peter Hassebroek, Reviews, Travel | Tagged book review, chicago, daniel ireland, guidebook, kids, parents, scavenger, Travel |
By Peter Hassebroek on February 2, 2011
All his life Charlie Winger has been climbing. He rose up out of his recidivistic destiny to a successful white collar career, ascended some fascinating and daunting peaks around the world, and overcame prostate cancer. Now, past seventy, he’s taking on the bureaucratic mountain of gaining an official pardon for his earlier crimes, to rid himself of that shadow. Two Shadows is his mountaineering-focused memoir.
Posted in Biography/Memoir, Non-Fiction, Peter Hassebroek, Reviews | Tagged book review, climbing, memoir, mountaineering |
By Peter Hassebroek on January 10, 2011
Dead Forever: Awakening (Book 1 of a trilogy) by William Campbell brings us into a world of human beings who have cultivated reincarnation into a procedure essentially as simple as an appendix removal. You die and you get a brand new adult body, complete with all the emotional and experiential memories you possessed at death for an eternity of cycles. Sounds pretty good. Sign me up for bungee jumping, parachuting, etc.
Posted in Fiction, Peter Hassebroek, Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy | Tagged awakening, book review, dead forever, Fiction, reincarnation, science fiction, william campbell |
