Book review: True Believer by Nicholas Sparks

Reader #529 wrote: Good summer read - romance and supernatural mystery. Grade: B.

Book review: Scarlet Feather by Maeve Binchy

Reader #529 wrote: An okay read, a little predictable. Grade: B.

Book review: The Joys of Reading by Burton Rascoe

Reading old books about books is enlightening. One discovers that authors were considered great and lasting in 1937 are completely forgotten now, and one is perhaps reminded that many authors currently in favor may fade from view in another few decades. THE JOYS OF READING: LIFE'S GREATEST PLEASURE by Burton Rascoe (copyright 1937, and of course there is no ISBN) has hapters on "The Joys of Reading" and "How to Judge Literary Values," but it also has lists. The list of twenty-five favorite authors from 1900 to 1925 includes many that have withstood the
test of time: H. G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton, Rudyard Kipling, Henry James, and Jack London. But it also includes Joseph Hergesheimer, Gamaliel Bradford, May Sinclair, and W. J. Locke, and omits (for example) Arthur Conan Doyle. A list of the twenty-five favorite books lists two by Wells: THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY and MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH. Admittedly, his classic science fiction novels were written before 1900, but this century still saw THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, THE FOOD OF THE GODS, and IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET. Grade: B-.