And the Winner is…
A lover of year-end lists, here’s “My Top 10 Books” of the 21 I read in 2022. Welcome your thoughts and recommendations for 2023. Happy New Year! The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood The Best of Richard Matheson – Richard Matheson The Sympathizer – Viet Thanh Nguyen Edgar A. Poe: A Biography […]
Read MoreYEAR OF READING PLEASURABLY
Happy New Year! Another plague-ridden year for the world meant another ideal one for page-turning pursuits. My Goodreads account tells me I finished 21 books in 2021, the majority novels and several published during the calendar year. Joining the “best of” lists making the rounds, please find below my favorite books read over the past […]
Read MoreSee You in Court!
Past month or so got you down? Want to escape from it all? Feel like getting lost in someone else’s problems bigger than your own? William Landay’s powerful courtroom page-turner Defending Jacob might just be the cure for you. The Case: Assistant district attorney Andy Barber heads a high-profile murder trial of a brutally slain teen-aged […]
Read MoreA “Fall” Worth Taking!
One measure of any great thriller, I think, is its ability to keep you gripped and guessing until the very end. Or, in this case, until right “Before the Fall.” Noah Hawley’s edgy and absorbing 2016 novel tells the story of a private plane full of rich passengers that crashes off the coast of Martha’s […]
Read MoreTime of Our Lives
Happy New Year to all! I hope you were able to ring in 2017 in style last night. Many, I know, were only too happy to leave 2016 behind. As long as I can remember, never have I heard so many people say “good riddance” to a calendar year. Whether it was the brutal war […]
Read MoreArt Imitates Death in Turkey
I never met Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov, murdered here in Turkey yesterday. Had I, I’m fairly certain, like many others, I would have disagreed with his views and especially his country’s actions in Syria, which likely caused his death. But none of this in any way justifies the killing. This incident, coupled with last week’s […]
Read MoreIn Our Own Write
Every year I eagerly await the November issue of The Foreign Service Journal, which features books written by American diplomats – and this time I’m honored to be among them! My novel A Simple Game appears as one of the fiction selections showcased in this year’s edition, titled as always “In Their Own Write.” The […]
Read MoreJump on the Train!
Believe the hype: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins is a tensely taut thriller that delivers from start to finish and is well worth a read before going to see the just-released film of the same name, starring Emily Blunt. Half the fun of this best-selling novel comes in guessing whodunit, which, I’ll admit, […]
Read MoreInnocence & Resilience
Place: Istanbul | Drink: Monkey Shoulder blended whiskey | Late Friday night, listening to fighter jets hurtle overhead as a coup attempt erupted on nearby streets, I found myself thinking about a passage from The Museum of Innocence. The concept of rebellion features only tangentially in the novel by Nobel prize-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, but the passage and […]
Read MoreLike a Virgin
Place: Istanbul Drink: 2014 Neethlingshof Estate Owl Post Pinotage With A Simple Game, I realize not only do I join the ranks of published authors I also inevitably join the ranks of first-time authors. This got me wondering, while sipping an amazing pinotage recently purchased in Cape Town and watching snowflakes fall over the Bosporus: […]
Read MoreKirk Wolcott’s First Novel
Politics, terrorism, and sports collide in this riveting debut novel by American diplomat and former sportswriter Kirk Wolcott, prompting a crucial question for our time: How far is too far when trying to change the world?
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Kirk
12/30/2022
Book Reviews, Other Writers
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