by Richard Subber | Jan 30, 2025 | Book reviews, Books
just a ramble…
Book review:
The Homesman
by Glendon Swarthout (1918-1992)
New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988
239 pages
Yeah, The Homesman is a story, alright, but it’s not a page turner.
Swarthout fails to make the homesman likable or believable.
The storyline just basically rambles across the prairie, with a bit of dancing thrown in here and there.
The homesman doesn’t commit to anything, and the author doesn’t commit to anything.
Read the whole story if you want to.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
Loneliness beyond understanding…
by Herman Melville
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jan 23, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
there’s more than structure involved…
Book review:
American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century
Vols. 1 and 2
New York: The Library of America, 1993
Vol. 1 – 1,099 pages
Vol. 2 – 1,049 pages
What can I say?
In general, the poetry of bygone centuries is uninteresting to me.
The poets were convinced that structure was overwhelmingly important, or, perhaps, their readers were convinced that structure was overwhelmingly important, or, perhaps, both.
The word “relentless” comes to my mind. It’s difficult for me to read much of this work—silently or aloud—without bobbing my head, saying the emphasized syllables with increasing vigor and noise, and moving my body to match the all-too-obvious, often drum beat rhythms.
It seems to me that these poets think that the conjunction of selected words is of secondary or tertiary concern, whereas I believe it should be the overriding expression of the poetic arts.
The millions in the past disagreed. So be it.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Forget about Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Dracula is a scary book, really…
by Bram Stoker
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jan 18, 2025 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Human Nature, Politics, Power and inequality
what’s right is right…
Book review:
No Constitutional Right to be Ladies:
Women and the Obligations of Citizenship
by Linda K. Kerber (b1940)
New York: Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1998
405 pages
Kerber, a well-respected historian, makes what should be an obvious point: women are citizens, just like men, and they should share all the rights and obligations of citizenship.
She disputes, in compelling detail, that women have a constitutional right “to be ladies” when that is conceived as separating them from a complete status as functioning citizens who are the constitutional equals of men (even the ones they’ve married!).
It’s not a “feminist” thing or a “suffrage” thing. It’s a matter-of-fact thing—nothing about it doesn’t make sense.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Oops, Columbus didn’t “discover” America
…but he did get close…
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jan 12, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
writing ingenuous truth…
Book review:
Natural Life with No Parole
by Sarah Rossiter
Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press, 2016
Rossiter’s poetry is worth a second read.
I think her word choices and line breaks are a bit disorganized, but nevertheless coherent.
Natural Life with No Parole is about what she sees and hears and feels, with genuine verve and ingenuous truth about the reality of human emotions.
She finds it natural to say things like “…That’s all there was, it wasn’t much, but joy is like that.”
Let the flavor of that line wrap around your tongue.
Quoted line is from “Woman in a White Truck, Driving”
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Snow Goose
…sensual drama, eminently poetic…
by Paul Gallico
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jan 7, 2025 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Politics, Revolutionary War
…John Adams,
in the thick of it…
Book review:
John Adams
by David McCullough (1933-2022)
Simon & Schuster, New York, 2001
751 pages
Maybe you’re like me. Maybe you don’t think biography is the best way to do history. David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winner is a reason to change your mind a bit.
John Adams, simply, is a really good book. McCullough helps you to warm up to this American icon and to his personal experience in leading the American Revolution and the first formative years of the American republic.
Adams, our first vice president and second president, was among the few who were in the thick of it from the beginning, and he never shrank from doing what he expansively viewed as his duty to his new country.
McCullough’s prose is a delightful experience for the serious historian and for the armchair dabbler who likes a good read. From cover to cover, John Adams is a lush, genuine presentation of a man, his loved ones, his career, his commitment to do good works and his never-flagging appreciation that the object of government should be to do the people’s business and make possible
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Dec 26, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Books Commentary, Joys of reading
Book reviewing never has been
the noblest profession.
The art of the book review is relatively young. Edgar Allan Poe wrote some reviews for Graham’s Magazine in the 1840s. The first explicitly titled book review appeared in 1861—it was a sweetheart review, in the awkwardly reserved language of the era:
“The present work has the additional recommendation of an unmistakably useful subject…”
An interesting point is that no one thought there was a need for book reviews before the middle of the 19th century. The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History says:
“By the 1840s, improved production techniques and faster distribution networks meant that middle-class readers in America could expect convenient access to a wide range of literary materials in a variety of formats. But they also meant that readers trained to prize discernment needed more sophisticated ways to evaluate the materials passing before their eyes. This was one of the requirements that led to early attempts to define an American national literary canon.”
Book reviewers haven’t been getting a lot of respect since the early days. Poe criticized book reviews in 1846:
“We place on paper without hesitation a tissue of flatteries, to which in society we could not give utterance, for our lives, without either blushing or laughing outright.”
A century later, George Orwell had these unkind words for reviewers:
“In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be ‘This book is worthless’, while the truth about the reviewer’s own reaction would probably be “This book does not interest me in any way, and I would not write about it unless I were paid to.”
If you’re feeling the urge to be a full-time book reviewer,
take a moment and think about medical school.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: “The Gentle Boy”
The Puritans had a dark side…
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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