Up from the Ashes Book review by Jude Joseph Lovell “Armageddon ain’t supposed to be fun,” an elderly man reminds a small-town politician (and the reader) in Burn Scar, a new novel from T. J. Tao. I have to wonder, What about extremely tragic natural disasters? Because there were times as I read this fiction Read more
Plagues and Problems: Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Years by Stu O’Connor Memento Mori (“Remember, you must die”). The awareness of inevitable death has been a concern of philosophers since at least Socrates. And not just death’s inevitability but its potential suddenness. As Marcus Aurelius wrote in his Meditations: “You could leave life right now.” Read more
Eye In the Sky Book Review by Jude Joseph Lovell I’ve been running into the English crime novelist Kate Atkinson’s books for years. More than one reader has recommended her work to me, and I’ve seen her titles appear many times on various “Best of the Year” lists for fiction. While this would normally pique my Read more
Fantasy: The Epic Genius of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire Series by Jude Joseph Lovell The writer George R.R. Martin has managed to pull off a true miracle. If you think he’s finished the last two, long-awaited novels in his magisterial A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series and delivered Read more
Move Toward the Light Book review by Jude Joseph Lovell My late father held four advanced degrees. Although he had great interest in the arts, philosophy, and theology, his ultimate profession was neurochemistry—brain science. I knew that from early on, of course. But not until I was an adult did I learn that around the Read more
Reading Aloud to Seniors: Top 10 Tips by Lucy E.M. Black Several years ago, when a family member was hospitalized and in a great deal of pain, I was striving to find something that would comfort her. In desperation, I picked up a Gideon Bible and began to read aloud from the Psalms. Occasionally she Read more
Two Favorite Books of 2019 by Jude Joseph Lovell ’Tis the season for year-end lists! Picking up on a new “tradition” I started last year in these pages, and as someone with a passion for reading and writing about books, I now offer my favorite nonfiction and fiction titles from those I read in 2019. Read more
Bruce Springsteen Born to Be You Book review by Jude Joseph Lovell American music legend Bruce Springsteen turns 70 years old on September 23. This prompted me to pick up his 2016 memoir, Born to Run. The book is a magnificent, colorful, unruly story of an epic, valley-to-the-mountaintop life in performance. Reportedly, Springsteen wrote every Read more
Indie Author Day: Grow Your Creative Community By Angie Littlefield This year’s Indie Author Day will be held on Saturday, October 12. Because that day is also Canadian Thanksgiving, my local library in Pickering, Ontario, will host its event a week earlier, on Oct 5. Graphic designer, photographer, and webmistress Mary Cook and I are the Read more
As the Crow Flies Book review by Jude Joseph Lovell In a recent, good-natured debate I had with my brother-in-law about books, he let me know that he didn’t care for a novel I had recommended. There were too many open-ended questions at the end of the story, he explained. “I don’t like that,” he Read more
