BOOK REPORTS—

The Fight for English by David Crystal

A light but penetrating look at the history of the English language. “Crystal— ever scholarly yet entertaining—explains why we should say no to zero tolerance” regarding accepting change to the language. Yet, in his text he opines, “Left to themselves, people will descend into barbarism.” ‘Tis lots of lexicography with a hefty dose of philosophy.


The Berlin Wall by Frederick Taylor

The book’s flyleaf hype says, “...captivating....Gripping and authoritative....” I’ll give you ‘authoritative’. It is 449 pages of academic tome. It is about as “captivating” and “gripping” as the typically bland history textbooks I can remember from high school. I didn’t finish this one. Unless you are a serious scholar on the subject you do not even want to start it.


High Season by Jon Loomis

This book continues to convince me “first novels” are generally a good read. After all, the author has had lots of time to develop his idea before he finds a publisher. This story is set in seaside Provincetown, MA where a tired Baltimore detective hopes to ease toward quiet retirement. Naturally, that does not happen. The funky town delivers lots of plot (in spite of two glaring errors regarding handguns) and an otherwise entertaining read for the author, an award winning poet no less.


A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

A haunting tale of two generations of Afghanistan families struggling to survive in their war-torn country from the Soviet invasion to the Taliban rein of terror and its current struggle to rebuild. There is heart-wrenching love and violent death in this marvelous story that leaves me wondering how any contemporary woman could ever freely choose to exist under Islamic law.


Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Now regarded as a classic, this futuristic tome, first published in 1932, envisions a population, 600 years hence, cloned into a caste system of hedonists who enjoy free sexuality without the nuisance of reproduction to perpetuate the species. Initial reviews of the book were “surprisingly negative”. One reviewer then wondered why Huxley, “…bothered to turn this essay in indignation into a novel,” describing it as “inert as a work of art.” I agree.