Part of me feels guilty for posting about a second memoir by a second Los Angeles area librarian within less than three months, but Quiet Please   Dispatches from a Public Librarian was just barely too good to pass up.  Scott Douglas’ memoir of his career with the Anaheim library lacks some of the pizazz of [...]

Sometimes, it seems to me, Rita Mae Brown is simply out to taunt me.  It was if she had somehow heard (or perhaps read) my wish that she write again about the old Runnymeade gang, and give us a break from all those mysteries, which Brown has been cranking out exclusively of late.  So I [...]

Chas Newkey-Burden’s Great Email Disasters is a UK trade paperback book about e-mails that have come embarrassingly to light, leaving their senders to look like real schmucks.   While reading titillating e-mails is fun I suppose,  the fact that I really didn’t Know who most any of these people Were detracted for the experience for me.    [...]

I have to say right off, going in, that I really wanted to like Clifford A Wright’s Bake Until Bubbly– The Ultimate Casserole Cookbook.   But Wright in several ways made that very hard for me to do.    The first time in the early pages he decried using canned cream of whatever soups in favor of [...]

If you’ve ever hesitated to eat seafood due to concerns about mercury or other pollutants or concerns about sustainability OR if you’ve ever hesitated to try cooking some exotic variety of seafood or other out of ignorance,  Paul Johnson has written the perfect book for you.   Subtitled "the definitive guide to understanding, selecting and preparing [...]