Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy; The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters by Anne Boyd Rioux; W.W. Norton, 2018. 273 pages; $16.95 (paperback); reading level: adult. Rioux spends two thirds of her book on background material (a biographical sketch of Alcott and her family, the reception and popularity of Little Women through the… [Read More]
Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy; The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters by Anne Boyd Rioux Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott; Signet Classic, 2012 (originally published in 1828 and 1829). 507 pages; $5.95 (paperback); reading level: high school/adult. I hadn’t read this book as a child and, with the 150th anniversary of its publication upon us and a new movie adaptation due out, I thought it might be time. It… [Read More]
On My Reading List – September 2019 through June 2020…
Early each year I pick out the books I’ll be reading with my Book Discussion Group for the coming year. We read books from September through June. After reading reviews, getting opinions from readers I trust, and scanning classics I might have missed, here are the titles I’ve come up with and the reasons they… [Read More]
The Year I Was Peter The Great by Marvin Kalb Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
The Year I was Peter the Great; 1956, Khrushchev, Stalin’s Ghost, and a Young American in Russia by Marvin Kalb; Brookings Institution Press, 2017. 290 pages; $24.99 (hardcover); reading level adult. This “professional memoir” by famed NBC/CBS news correspondent Marvin Kalb (who is now in his 80s) looks back on the year 1956 when Kalb (fluent… [Read More]
Steam Jobs in Cyber-Security by Cynthia Argentine Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
Steam Jobs in Cyber-Security by Cynthia Argentine; Rourke Educational Media, 2019. 48 pages; $10.95 (paperback); reading level: grades 4-8. This book’s lively page layout will be the first thing to engage young readers. A traditional text is surrounded by three running sidebars suggesting a computer screen with multiple open windows. But Argentine’s words more than… [Read More]
Improvement by Joan Silber Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
Improvement by Joan Silber; Counterpoint, 2017. 227 pages; $26.00 (hardcover); reading level: adult. Part I of this three-part novel dangles the prospect that this will be an intriguing but straightforward story. It’s 2012 and Reyna, living in Brooklyn and the single mother of a four-year-old, narrates. We meet Aunt Kiki, Reyna’s boyfriend Boyd and, after… [Read More]
The Mayor of Mogadishu by Andrew Harding Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
The Mayor of Mogadishu; A Story of Chaos and Redemption in the Ruins of Somalia by Andrew Harding; St. Martin’s Press, 2016. 278 pages; $26.99 (hardcover); reading level: adult. As Harding admits in his introduction, this is both a biography of Mohamud “Tarzan” Nur (mayor of Mogadishu, Somalia from 2010 to 2014) and a recounting… [Read More]
The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017. 247 pages; $26.00 (hardcover); reading level: adult. In the opening chapter of this brilliant novel, set in Brooklyn in the first half of the 20th century, 32-year-old Jim commits suicide and three nuns sweep in to comfort his pregnant wife, who, in the final paragraph… [Read More]
Happiness TM by Will Ferguson Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
Happiness TM by Will Ferguson; Canongate, 2003. 309 pages; reading level: adult. First written in 2001, then re-titled and re-issued in 2003, this is a satirical look at pre-9/11 America through the eyes of a Canadian writer. It was recently recommended by one of my favorite authors (also Canadian) so I was surprised to find… [Read More]