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Defining Style

Emphasizing personal style, Joan Barzilay Freund’s Defining Style is a freeing, inspiring and extremely innovative look at interior design.
Emphasizing personal style, Joan Barzilay Freund’s Defining Style is a freeing, inspiring and extremely innovative look at interior design.
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Review

Review by bookpagedev

Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese approach to creating an environment that promotes prosperity, health, and happiness. The idea isn’t exclusively related to gardening, but to all aspects of life. In The Feng Shui Garden, Gill Hale and Sue Minter explain how you can apply the principles of Feng Shui to a garden, patio, balcony, or backyard in order to revitalize their space in a natural way.

The book offers color photos of actual Feng Shui gardens and clear instructions for the novice on the beginning basics principles of Chi, Yin and Yang, Lo Shu, and Bagua. You’ll learn how to choose an optimal garden site and shape; create balanced window boxes, roof gardens, and terraces; and place garden paths and statuary.

The Feng Shui Garden is an excellent alternative for beginner and advanced gardeners who are seeking methods and philosophies of gardening other than those traditionally Western.

Reviewed by Pat Regel.

Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese approach to creating an environment that promotes prosperity, health, and happiness. The idea isn't exclusively related to gardening, but to all aspects of life. In The Feng Shui Garden, Gill Hale and Sue Minter explain how you can apply…

Nonfiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

ifestyles of the dead Editor’s note: Each month we see lots of books. Some of the curious arrivals are featured in this space. It must be admitted that occasionally this column stoops to mocking a book. No doubt we will again yield to this righteous urge in the future, but not this month. Although Heaven and Hell and Other Worlds of the Dead, edited by Alison Sheridan, doesn’t deserve mocking, it is very much a curiosity. This 168-page oversize paperback is both informative and entertaining. “What happens after we die?” is Sheridan’s first sentence in the book. She proceeds to document the many, um, inventive ways that human beings have tried to answer this curious question.

Heaven and Hell is handsomely illustrated with color photographs and reproductions of artworks. There are wooden Nigerian staffs associated with reincarnation and Kwakiutl thunderbird masks still being made in the ancestral style. From 15th century Afghani Muslim manuscripts to Tibetan Buddhist temple paintings that reveal less than cheerful forecasts of the afterlife, this book hints that our final rest may not be very restful. Although the remarkable illustrations alone will draw you into the book, essays by Sheridan and other contributors will keep you reading. As far as we know, none of the writers has actually visited either Heaven or Hell, which reminds us of one enduring trait of Homo sapiens: a lack of information never prevents us from having an opinion.

ifestyles of the dead Editor's note: Each month we see lots of books. Some of the curious arrivals are featured in this space. It must be admitted that occasionally this column stoops to mocking a book. No doubt we will again yield to this righteous…
Nonfiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

YE OLDE CURIOSITY SHOPPE Expletives deleted Editor’s note: Each month we see lots of books. Some of the curious arrivals are featured in this space.

I don’t remember why I started swearing, James V. O’Connor writes. But start he did, as he demonstrates in Cuss Control: The Complete Book on How to Curb Your Cursing. His avowed goal is to get American language out of the gutter, but to do so he rakes through a truckload of smelly gutterspeak. The result is quite an eyebrow-raising lexicon. O’Connor’s mother may wash out his mouth with soap.

For example, he devotes a lot of space to a particular four-letter word, including exploring its likely etymology. For those who want to quit using the word (in any of the many ways he lists), O’Connor suggests alliterative replacements, including fool, fuss, futz, and fiddle. He also offers a rhyming alternative, a four-syllable word popular in rap songs.

Of course, I am dancing around the objectionable words themselves, because of BookPage’s well-known commitment to clean living and family values. O’Connor is less timid. In fact, his crusade may be hampered by aspiring cussers who buy Cuss Control for creative suggestions. Oh, the irony.

YE OLDE CURIOSITY SHOPPE Expletives deleted Editor's note: Each month we see lots of books. Some of the curious arrivals are featured in this space.

I don't remember why I started swearing, James V. O'Connor writes. But start he did, as he…

Memoir

Review

Review by bookpagedev

The man who was Mission Control during the early days of NASA has written a fascinating autobiography called Flight, a book that takes us back to a time when space exploration was still a fledgling project. As one of the leaders of the army of pencil pushers that made the space program happen, Chris Kraft, the chief of flight operations for the moon launches who later became head of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, had a unique vantage point. Full of insight into the technical, political and familial aspects of putting a man into space, his book is a delight to read, a memoir that conjures up all the optimism and bravado of a younger America.

Flight begins in the Tidewater region of Virginia, where Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr. grew up a hard-working child of the Depression. He attended college at Virginia Tech, then took a job testing aircraft for the government, eventually joining a new organization called NASA. Kraft does a good job of conveying the intricacies, personalities, excitement and frustration that characterized a career with the organization. He is also surprisingly blunt, singling out some astronauts as incompetent, some as sycophants and some as cool and intelligent. He gives similar assessments of his coworkers; at this point in his life, he clearly has no reason to pull his punches.

Indeed, Kraft writes with honesty throughout Flight. He has little patience with bureaucracy, either governmental or scientific, and blames both for the delays that kept the United States from putting the first man into space, and for subsequent decisions that have kept us from returning to the moon for the past three decades. If Kraft had his way, America would have had a base on Mars years ago. Part of what makes his memoir a genuine and refreshing read is that Kraft doesn’t spare himself from criticism. The three Apollo astronauts that perished in an on-pad fire clearly trouble him to this day. Yet, despite such bitter losses, he takes obvious pride in what he and his comrades accomplished. Kraft also seems to savor the title bestowed on him "Flight." Sometimes a mark of respect is all that we desire, and Chris Kraft certainly deserves the respect of us all.

James Neal Webb would hitch a ride on the Space Shuttle in a heartbeat.

The man who was Mission Control during the early days of NASA has written a fascinating autobiography called Flight, a book that takes us back to a time when space exploration was still a fledgling project. As one of the leaders of the army of…

NonfictionAudioEssays

Burning Questions

Review by G. Robert Frazier

Margaret Atwood, the prolific Booker Prize-winning author best known for her novel The Handmaid’s Tale, was selected in 2014 as the first author to include a piece of fiction in the Future Library Project. This undertaking collects previously unreleased works from 100 authors, one each year until 2114, at which point the pieces will be published.

In one of the 50-plus essays included in Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004 to 2021 (19 hours), Atwood writes, “How strange it is to think of my own voice . . . suddenly being awakened after a hundred years.” But Atwood shouldn’t worry about how her voice will be received a century from now. As evidenced by the huge cast for the audiobook of Burning Questions, appreciation for Atwood’s literary contributions is far-reaching. With such support, it’s unlikely her words will ever be silenced.

Atwood narrates the introduction of her audiobook, and 36 other people read her essays, including actor Ann Dowd (who plays Aunt Lydia in the Hulu adaption of “The Handmaid’s Tale”), editor Lee Boudreaux, journalists Robyn Doolittle and Yasmine Hassan, and authors Naomi Alderman, Esi Edugyan and Omar El Akkad. While it is a bit odd to hear the occasional male reader giving voice to one of Atwood’s essays, her thought-provoking observations and sense of humor are unmistakable. Whether she is ruminating on climate change, women’s issues, the zombie apocalypse or Ebenezer Scrooge, or paying tribute to authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Alice Munro, her insights will encourage readers to return to these essays again and again. As Atwood writes, “Have a listen. Confront the urgent questions. Feel the chill.”

Read our starred review of the print edition of Burning Questions.

As evidenced by the huge cast for the audiobook of Burning Questions, appreciation for Margaret Atwood’s literary contributions is far-reaching, and with such support, it’s unlikely her words will ever be silenced.
NonfictionAudioEssays

Bomb Shelter

Review by Mari Carlson

In her new book of autobiographical essays, Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives (7 hours), Mary Laura Philpott writes with gusto and pathos about navigating two extremes: practicing for what will never happen and postponing the inevitable. From removing turtles from her doorstep to dealing with middle-of-the-night emergencies, from controlling cholesterol to shopping for cashmere, Philpott assembles a trustworthy menagerie of lessons for daily life.

Philpott reads her own audiobook with a Southern lilt, at times laughing or on the verge of tears, and she builds an easy connection with her reader as she details a variety of struggles and triumphs. When she describes coming to terms with being identified as “mom” in public, she is as real and reassuring as the best kind of parent.

Written as the author’s oldest child was getting ready to venture off to college, Bomb Shelter offers hope for a better future.

Read more: Mary Laura Philpott discusses her favorite bookstores, real or imagined.

Author Mary Laura Philpott reads her own audiobook with a Southern lilt, at times laughing or on the verge of tears.

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