About Book Marks
Harper Barnes Harper Barnes worked in St. Louis for more than 25 years as a reporter, editor, and critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Atlantic Monthly, and Rolling Stone. A former editor of the Boston Phoenix, he is the author of Blue Monday and Standing On A Volcano.
Recent Reviews
Andrea Barnet
Positive The St. Louis Post-Dispatch Visionary Women is a fine book, a thorough examination of the life and work of four fascinating women. At times, it overstates the case that the women were the prime movers behind movements ... The book contains four thorough biographies, each of which could stand alone and be judged superb. But there is added power in the fact that each of the subjects worked generally on ideas that stressed a return to a more natural and humane way of life, a way of life that is threatened by the frightening march of technology ... Barnet has added greatly to our understanding of the way human beings with a vision can change society for the better by pursuing their dreams.
Curtis Sittenfeld
Positive The St. Louis Post-Dispatch You Think It, I’ll Say It is a fine book, full of serendipitous wit and unexpected pathos. In Sittenfeld’s world...the present is full of pitfalls but also open to joy. The past is usually a lie. The stories are often droll as the author pokes fun at herself and her friends while at the same time taking all concerned as seriously as they deserve.
Bill Minutaglio and Steve L. Davis
Rave The St. Louis Post-Dispatch \"The book is a deeply researched, entertaining and informative look at the symbolically joined paths Nixon and one of his nemeses, LSD guru Timothy Leary, followed in the early 1970s, the era that would ultimately be defined by Watergate … The book is filled with such amusing and enlightening tidbits.\
Paula Hawkins
Mixed The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ...although the novel is generally entertaining and sometimes strikingly insightful, at times the tangle of narrators, characters and plotlines can be confusing ... Into the Water is a moderately successful mystery that offers a sometimes intriguing portrait of the interconnectedness of small-town life. At times, its seems needlessly complicated with characters and plotlines, as if Hawkins were trying to juggle too many balls at once.
Michael Chabon
Rave The St. Louis Post-Dispatch What we learn is painfully poignant. All in all, Moonglow is a fascinating, richly written ride through a territory that the author knows well. He should — he mostly made it up.
T.C. Boyle
Positive The St. Louis Post-Dispatch The Terranauts surges with surprise and complex irony, and Boyle has the rare ability to make human foibles both universal and character specific. Still, The Terranauts which is more than 500 pages long, flags at times and can be repetitive ... falls short of ranking with Boyle’s best works ... Still, on the whole Terranauts is a thought-provoking, witty and even wise examination of humanity under the glass.