Black Lamb

June 2007 in Black Lamb

Volume 5, Number 6 — June 2007

June 1st, 2007

The Black Lamb Review of Books

In our cover story Terry Ross wonders how people find time to read books and talks about the 14 books on his shelf waiting to be read. In our page 2 feature, Tales from the Crypt, Ed Goldberg reviews two books haunted by dead white American authors. In A Lot of Learning, William Bogert offers an appreciation of memoirs by Dick Francis and Anne Fadiman. Cate Garrison reviews The Bookseller of Kabul in We Believe Her. You Read It Here First: Terry Ross celebrates the reissue of Evelyn Waugh’s travel books, the 5-volume autobiography of Leonard Woolf, and Irene Handl’s wonderful The Sioux, published in 1965.

In Dreaming of the Dart, Gillian Wilce reviews the poetry of Alice Oswald. Alan Albright reflects on the difficulties of translation in Two Different Worlds. Rod Ferrandino (With a Dash of Bitters) takes on Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth. In The Secret of the Old Cupboard, Elizabeth Hart delves into Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. Lorentz Lossius offers a poem, “To Elizabeth’s Secondhand Bookshop,” in the form of a job application. In Blows Against the Empire, Toby Tompkins places Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day in the context of his life work. In I Love Papa, Dan Peterson confesses to a not-so-secret admiration for Hemingway. Greg Roberts thinks John Hersey’s Blues is Something Fishy. In Vanishing Act, Bud Gardner takes a look at Deepak Chopra’s advice for managing your hereafter. David Maclaine looks into the Middle Ages & Beyond to examine two books on medieval studies and an uplifting photography book by Frank Cordelle. In Magnificent Obsession Rosemary McLeish reflects on a life bound up with books. Dean Suess reveals that as a prisoner he has gained immense solace from Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son. Andrew Darrel (Doom, Doom, and Thrice Doom) relishes the end-of-the-world predictions of Bill McGuire’s Global Catastrophes. Sage Cohen takes a quirky look at Jami Attenberg’s novel Instant Love. Joel Hess writes about Portland, Ore., City of Books. Our Honorary Black Lambs column salutes Scottish novelist James Kelman and English travel writer and novelist Colin Thubron on their birthdays. Our amusing Literary Quiz offers twenty-three comments by writers on writers. In If at First, bridge columnist Trixie Barkis cautions against playing too quickly to the first trick. For this all-book issue, Wretched Excess features yet another gift suggestion from the Whole Whog Catalog: the Braille Bra, inscribed with excerpts from The Kama Sutra and The Song of Solomon. Our Black Lamb Recipe, from Marcella Hazan’s classic book on Italian cooking, is for baby lamb chops fried in Parmesan cheese batter. Our advice columnist Millicent Marshall, given an etiquette book to review, throws it against the wall and wonders what ever happened to good manners. And Endgame offers yet another devilish Black Lamb Cryptic Crossword.

Posted by: The Editors
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