Reviews

I heard Piper Kerman talking about her new book on NPR’s Fresh Air one afternoon. I was very interested and wanted to learn more about her experience serving time in a U.S. federal women’s prison. She highlights the federal prison system's failure to offer rehabilitation opportunities for female prisoners and the judicial system's attitude toward drug offenders.

Adriana Trigiani is an award winning author of popular romantic fiction. This book introduces us to the life of Italian-American Valentine Roncalli. Valentine is a beautiful single woman, who recently inherited a successful shoe business and fell in love with an Italian man.

This historical fiction takes us to Honolulu of the early 1900s, the era of early Chinese, Japanese and Korean settlers arriving in Oahu. The women arrive as "picture" brides, and the men come to work on the sugar plantations.

In this sequel to Wings, author Aprilynne Pike further leads you into the world of Avalon and the life of its fairies.

There are many things we practice for: a test, an interview, a sports event. In the early and middle part of last century women sometimes practiced being a mother. There were home economic programs at some colleges that offered female students the opportunity to learn about motherhood firsthand. Orphaned babies were loaned to the program for a year or two in order for the student, or practice, mothers to learn about taking care of a real baby.

Daniel Pinkwater has been one of my favorite authors since I was a kid. Just because I've gotten older doesn't mean I've grown out of Pinkwater's children's books, which is good, because I'm not sure Pinkwater has really grown up either.

Editor’s note: A longer version of this piece on John Updike’s Rabbit Is Rich originally appeared on “Critical Mass,” the National Book Critics Circle blog (see http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/Its_Not_About_the_Car_John_Updikes_Rabbit_is_Rich). Re-posted here by kind permission of the NBCC.

Often maligned as a self-indulgent “progressive” rock band by critics, King Crimson over the last 40 years has proven several times that an exploratory approach to music doesn’t have to equate with wretched excess.

“Thrak,” the band’s 1995 effort, is one of its masterpieces. The title track and “VROOM” demonstrate the group’s talent for playing very aggressive pieces, but other songs here, including “One Time” and “Walking On Air,” evince a gentle beauty that King Crimson’s harsher detractors always have overlooked.

Author Daniel Woodrell was born in Springfield, Missouri and graduated from KU before heading over to the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He currently lives in the Ozarks and this is his second book to be adapted to film. The main character, Ree Dolly, is a scrappy teenager who works hard to care for her two younger brothers and their mentally ill mother.