About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Ash Carter and Sam Kashner
Positive Bookreporter ... there is a long section about the Nichols-and-May years that launched his career, there is no contribution from Elaine May. And that the book skids over his three previous marriages and his three children, focusing instead on his fourth marriage, to Diane Sawyer. And that there is no mention of what a biography of Richard Avedon describes as Nichols’ secret 10-year affair with the photographer ... Stipulate all those omissions, and you still get a book you can’t put down. Okay, I skipped over the long Nichols-and-May section that will be catnip to some oldsters, but everything else grabbed me hard. Just for the account of an outsider who felt like an alien no matter how successful he became. Just for the sense that everything he had could be taken away in an instant. I suspect I’m not alone in feeling that no matter how much I achieve, I’m never quite enough, which is why I think you’ll read this book non-stop. Yes, the show biz stories are great. But the pathology is the hook ... By the end of this book, you won’t envy him. But you will understand him. And you’ll have some fresh compassion for the Nichols in you.
Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
Positive Bookreporter ... powerful insight is one good reason to read She Said. But for those who love real-life thrillers, this is the description that will make you want to read the book: \'All the President’s Men for the Me Too era.\' Because this is a story of world-class reporting by world-class journalists --- it’s a master class in Getting the Story ... reveals the real story --- the one about \'gender, race, seniority and wealth\' --- beat by beat, breath by breath ... By the time the article gets published, I had cheered enough to be exhausted. If only the book had ended there. It’s not the writers’ fault, but, alas, there’s more: a section on Christine Blasey Ford, which is so depressing I could hardly get through it. At the end there’s another section, \'The Gathering\' --- at Gwyneth Paltrow’s home, Kantor and Twohey assembled many of the women they interviewed for a what-have-we-learned-where-are-we-now session. For all the smart talk and the determination to keep fighting, there’s no drama here. But on every other page… gold.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Trans. by Ulrich Baer
Rave Bookreporter He wrote letters. Many, many letters. When he died, aged 51, in 1926, Rainer Maria Rilke had written more than 14,000 letters. They’ve been collected ... Among Rilke’s correspondence are 23 letters of condolence. Now, for the first time, they’ve been collected into a 94-page book: The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation. ... You’ll mark this book often, you’ll turn many pages down. And you’ll never write clichés to grieving friends again --- you’ll quote Rilke.
Sallie Tisdale
Positive Book Reporter A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying, she confronts the most difficult subject of all. And -we like to think -the most mysterious. She’ll buy half of that: \'I have never died, so this entire book is a fool’s advice.\' But only half: \'We are future corpses pretending we don’t know.\' In 240 pages, she tells us what we need to know. Without New Age feel-good cosmology. With no inspirational message. Just liberating facts, great stories and eye-opening practicality. It’s about dying better - and about living better.
Blanche McCrary Boyd
Rave Head Butler ...personal, political and original ... Many of your favorite mystery/thriller novelists could write a strong plot starring a version of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. Few can write as well as they plot. Boyd does ... she can leap nimbly from fear to scorn to grief to comedy, doesn’t shrink from politics and racism, and still can include a love story that’s not a digression. This is the kind of novel in which the author has everyone’s number, starting with her own.
Paul Lisicky
Rave The Huffington Post The book takes a toll. The high drama sometimes wore me out —- I think my life is intense, but these people are professionals —- and yet that serves the book. In the inevitable deathbed chapter, life slowed for me as it did for everyone in that room: 'time without boundaries.' Sure, I cried, and often. But more, The Narrow Door made me want to call a few people, and say the magic words, and feel at home in the world. It’s hard to think of a book that can give you more than that.