Article first published as Book Review: A Wilderness of Error by Errol Morris on Blogcritics. About: A Wilderness of Error : The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald by Errol Morris is a true-crime non-fiction book about the MacDonald Trial. Jeffrey MacDonald, former Captain in the Green Berets, a medical doctor, Princeton graduate, father and husband was convicted for murdering his family in 1970. The publisher is giving away one copy of this book –to enter fill out the Rafflecoptter form at the end of the post 544 pages Publisher: The Penguin Press HC Language: English ISBN-10: 1594203431 My rating for A Wilderness of Error – 5 Buy this book in paper or electronic format* More Books by Errol Morris Thoughts: Errol Morris (website | @ErrolMorris) has a career full of interesting and thought provoking movies including “The Thin Blue Line” which freed Randall Dale Adams from after being wrongfully convicted for murder and sentenced for life, as well as the academy award winning documentary “The Fog of War”. I had a chance to revisit “The Fog of War” in the past few weeks, knowing I would be reading Mr. Morris’ book, the documentary has very little narration and relies on interviews,…

Article first published as Book Review: The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller on Blogcritics. About: The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller is a German novel taking place in a Soviet forced labor camp at the end of World War II. Ms. Müller won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. 304 pages Publisher: Metropolitan Books Language: English ISBN-10: 080509301X My rating for The Hunger Angel – 4 Buy this book in paper or electronic format* More Books by Herta Müller Check out this & more World War II books on Man of la BookStore Thoughts: The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller takes place in 1945, when the Soviet Union demanded that all Romanian Germans who are 17 to 45 years of age be relocated to forced labor camps in order to help rebuild the devastated nation. According to the author’s note at the end of the book, she spent many hours talking to poet Oskar Pastior who suffered under the decree. Müller filled four notebooks with Mr. Pastior’s testimony until 2006, when he suddenly passed away. This is an extraordinary book about the hardships the German people faced after the war, as Leo Auberg, the protagonist states: “To this day, the hunger angel speaks out of your mouth. But no matter what he says, this…

Nat Jaffe and Archy Stallings are the owners of Brokeland Records, one of the few bastions of vinyl record stores left in Oakland, CA circa 2004. In comes Gibson Goode, ex-NFL star, multi-millionaire and entrepreneur who wants to open his Dogpile megastore in the area. The megastore will force Brokeland Records, who are struggling as it is, to close

Thunderball by Ian Fleming begins with M, MI6’s head, sending James Bond, our hero, to a two week vacation in a health clinic due to poor health caused by lots of drinking and smoking sixty cigarettes a day.

The novel starts off with a section in which Tolstoy writes his thoughts about the nature of historic action. At first this annoyed me (as I continued reading I discovered that this was not unique to this section) because it seems to bring the story to a grinding halt. At firs this type of meditations annoyed me, but the more I read the more I realized that Tolstoy was keeping to the theme of War & Peace, the human condition. Only instead of pontificating on the subject of human condition while telling the story of a bunch of disgusting and somewhat less disgusting people, Tolstoy turns the table on the readers and discusses the subject on a much bigger scale.

Yesterday I reviewed Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero by Larry Tye, a wonderful book and even a big Superman fan like myself learned a few things. While all of the facts below might not be in the book (many are), I do hope you’ll read it and let me know what you thought. 1 ) Superman’s original artist, Joe Shus­ter, stylized the Man of Steel on Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. Comic movies star Harold Lloyd influenced the look of Clark Kent. 2 ) Superman is the first superhero whose alter ego is a man. 3 ) Lois Lane was modeled after Joanne Carter. Joanne later married Jerry Siegel – Superman’s writer. 4 ) It took Siegel and Shuster six years to find a publisher. 5 ) Superman’s earth parents, known today as Jonathan and Martha Kent, had numerous name changes. They were: “passing motorists” in Action Comics #1 (1938), “Mary Kent” in Superman #1 (1939) “Eben and Sarah Kent” in The Adventures of Superman (a 1942 novel by George Lowther) and in the Adventures of Superman TV series “John and Mary Kent” in Superman #53 (1948) Mr. Kent is given the first name of Jonathan in Adventure Comics #149 Mrs….

Superman – the granddaddy of all superheroes, the one who started it all, the icon who is held to higher standard in fiction and has set the standards for many of us in the non-fiction world. It’s no wonder why the franchise is almost 80 years strong and growing stronger.

There was a time when i was absolutely fascinated by the American Civil War. I read every book (reviews to come) I could get my hands on, scoured websites, went on battleground field trips and talked to other aficionados. To this day I still have a big interest in that time period, even though not as enthusiastic. At the time of this post, the books below were free or $0.99 — please check before downloading. Authors: If you’d like your book to be fea­tured on Tight­wad Tues­days please email me. Battles and Leaders of the Civil War: The Struggle for Round Top (Illustrated) by Evander M. Law *Illustrated with maps and pictures of the battle and its important generals *Includes Table of Contents Without question, the most famous battle of the Civil War took place outside of the small town of Gettysburg from July 1-3, 1863. Over those three days, nearly 8,000 would die, over 30,000 would be casualties, and the most famous attack of the war, Pickett’s Charge, would fail Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The South would go on to lose the war, and when it did, the importance of Gettysburg as one of the “high tide”…

If you do not know the plot of the Hunger Games by now, then where have you been living? Under a rock? Well, it goes something like this: in a future time, the world is divided into twelve areas and controlled by the Capitol. The evil leader, President Snow, makes each area give tributes, one teenage boy and one teenage girl, to the Hunger Games- a fight to the death in a natural arena. Much like the Roman tradition of pitting gladiators against animals and each other, these battles resulted in only one victor. Buy The Hunger Games Trilogy in a boxed set or electronic format* After the big movie release, reviews of the Hunger Games series probably came out of the woodwork. Truthfully, I had no interest in reading the books until after I watched the movies. My friends kept telling me how great they were and how I should go read them now, but I did not see the appeal. After all, aren’t they just another young adult series? That plus the idea of kids fighting to the death kind of put me off to the whole thing. Eventually, however I caved in enough to rent the movie…

Article first published as Book Review: Vlad by Carlos Fuentes on Blogcritics. About: Vlad by Carlos Fuentes is a short novel taking place in Mexico City, Mexico. The story was part of the 2004 collection “Inquieta Compañía” and recently came out as its own book translated by Alejandro Branger and Ethan Shaskan Bumas. 112 pages Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press; Tra edition Language: English ISBN-10: 1564787796 My rating for Vlad – 4 Buy this book in paper format from Amazon.com* Thoughts: Vlad by Carols Fuentes takes on an interesting premise, what if Dracula still lived and settled inMexico City. As one might expect, there is a lot of dark humor in this book, starting with the strange requests the client is making of the real estate agent (“remote”, “easy to defend”) to the client’s look which consists of a silly wig and glued on mustache. What I found to be different in this book is that the reader knows a lot more than the narrator. This style of storytelling invigorates the dark comedy and brings a sense of ominous foreboding to banal and meaningless lines said by the famous Count. In this rendition of the story, Fuentes marries vampire and lawyers – both server as vessels for…