Book Review for “Ana Turns” by Lisa Gornick. Summary: "A kaleidoscopic story, unspooling over the twenty-four hours of a very contemporary woman’s sixtieth birthday. Nine years have passed since Ana Koehl had sex with her pot-addicted anesthesiologist husband, seven since she began an affair with a gonzo journalist. She’s gratified by her work as a ..read more

Book Review for “Ladies' Lunch and Other Stories” by Lore Segal. Summary: "Beloved New Yorker writer Lore Segal, at 95-years-old, is a national treasure. Working at the height of her powers, in this story collection she turns her gimlet eye and compassionate humor on aging and life in the slow lane. From the master of ..read more

Book Review for “By the Rivers of Babylon” by Mary Glickman. Summary: "Joe and Abigail Becker, a Jewish couple from Boston, have inherited a house on Sweetgrass Island in South Carolina's Lowcountry. Though they feel like fish out of water, the couple is excited to give the South a try--and maybe even find it a ..read more

Book Review for “The Believers” by Zoë Heller. Summary: "When Audrey makes a devastating discovery about her husband, New York radial lawyer Joel Litvinoff, she is forced to re-examine everything she thought she knew about their forty-year marriage. Joel's children will soon have to come to terms with this unsettling secret themselves, but for the ..read more

Why I can't write a Book Review for “Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan” by Ruth Gillian. Summary: At the start of the twentieth century, a young girl and her family emigrate from the continent in search of a better life in America, only to pitch up in Ireland by mistake. In 1958, a mute ..read more

Book Review for “To be a Man: Stories” by Nicole Krauss. Summary: “In one of her strongest works of fiction yet, Nicole Krauss plunges fearlessly into the struggle to understand what it is to be a man and what it is to be a woman, and the arising tensions that have existed from the very ..read more

Book Review for “The Boys Next Door: A Novel of the Beatles” by Dan Greenberger. Summary: “Alan Levy is a college student who, in the fall of 1960, spends a semester abroad in Hamburg, Germany. There, he has the misfortune to rent a room next door to an up-and-coming rock and roll band from the ..read more

  As you already know from my post last week (where you'll find the concept and the topics), I invented a new meme to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah with all of my book blogging friends, of all races, creeds, religions, genders, and whatever. I'm calling it... The Chocolate Lady's Eight Candle Book Tag ..read more

  As you already know from my post last week (where you'll find the concept and the topics), I invented a new meme to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah with all of my book blogging friends, of all races, creeds, religions, genders, and whatever. I'm calling it... The Chocolate Lady's Eight Candle Book Tag ..read more