Book Reviews—Themes by Month

June '15 — The Sibs
Brothers and sisters make for some of our most intimate life relationships. Undergirding the rivalries, jealousies and suspicions, is a shared history and often deep, abiding love.

Apr '15 — Stranger Than Fiction
Real-life events and personalities in this month's nonfiction works are far stranger than can be found in most novels. When it comes to the incredible, history trumps fiction...easily.

Mar '15 — The Western, 21st-century style
The Westerns of yore—cowboys, Indians, and stagecoach robbers— have given way to far more nuanced stories. The vast spaces and endless skies are the same, but characters struggle with complex issues of love, memory, and redemption

Feb '15 — We Are All Looking for Ourselves
Three wonderful books with characters in search of themselves—arguably literature's most enudring theme..

Jan '15 — Stuck
It's easy to get stuck—in a dull job, untenable relationship, or humdrum life. But this month we follow three men, often with hilarity, who find themselves stuck in unimaginable situations.

Dec '14 — Women Unboxed
This month's books look at three women who defy convention and tackle careers traditionally reserved for those with the Y chromosome. These are women who think—and live—outside the box.

Nov '14 — End times
Three remarkable books offer glimpses into end times: one imagines the end of civilization; another examines medicine and the end of life; and a third considers ... well, it's hard to say.

Oct '14 — Strangers in Their Own Land
This month's book take a look those who through racism, misogyny, or maltreatment are excluded from the full rights and comforts of their own culture. They're aliens in their own land.

Sept '14 — Hell's a Kitchen
Conditions are brutal in restaurant kitchens. So what keeps chefs and cooks standing for 12-hour stretches, non-stop, in 110-degree heat? Find out.

Aug '14 — Grumpy Old Men
Three books in which older men have reached the age where more of life lies behind them then ahead. Still, maybe it's not too late to start living large.

June / July '14 — The Bawdy Politic
A double standard has long existed when it comes to the feminine body. The daring heroines of this month's books fight that standard in ways that even today we find troublesome. But what's a girl to do?

May '14 — Women and the Bomb
This month's theme was inspired by two recent books on women and the Manhattan Project—fiction and history. Then we added a 2005 biography on Madame Curie, who helped usher in the nuclear age.

Mar '14 — War Lines: at the front and behind
Extraordinary books continue to be written about the Mideast wars, and despite the lack of media coverage, we believe they're essential. They cover those on the front lines and those behind the lines.

Feb '14 — Marriage: For better or for . . .
For worse? If Gone Girl gave you a thrill, these books centered on spooky marriages will too. The fun is in not knowing who's nuts—is it he or she?

Jan '14 — The Cinder-Fella Complex
Young boys, bereft of parents, struggle to find love, belief in themselves, and maturity—in a hard-knock world that works against them.

Nov '13 — LOL Books
Yes, we're laughing out loud. Sometimes it feels good to take a break from all the heavy lifiting. Each of this month's books is a humorous take on a particular slice of life.

Oct '13 — The JFK Assassination: 50 years
Three books on the death of the president: one, a portrait of Kennedy and Oswald; one fiction, and one challenging the lone gunman theory.

Sept '13 — D.C. Dysfunction...was it always so?
Given the state of the nation's capital, this month's books take a good look at the ins and outs of life as it is—and was—in the District of Columbia.

Aug '13 — Scott & Zelda, Beautiful & Damned
America's first Jazz-Age couple. Fitzgerald's famous Flapper girl stories, inspired by Zelda; a fictional bio of Zelda; and The Great Gatsby, a love story paralleling Scott's deep attachment to his wife.

June '13 — The Power of Perfume
Three books explore the age-long hold that exotic scent has over the human imagination—it's power to evoke memory, elicit passion, and inspire crime. Two works of fiction and one nonfiction.

May '13 — Class Conscious / Class Conscience
We like to think of ourselves as a "classless" society. But as this month's books show, socio-economic divisions are part of our history and still with us today.

Apr '13 — The Process of Becoming
Young women who withstand hardship, in both body and soul, as they struggle to become the person they know they're meant to be.

Feb '13 — Mystery Meet
What makes people fall in and out of love, hurt those closest to them, even commit murder? And how is justice best served? Questions our three mystery books ponder.

Jan '13 — Family Matters
What makes a family? This month we consider three books with different ideas of what constitutes family.

Dec '12 — War
Three books about the brutality, randomness, and absurdity of war—and the impossibility for civilians to ever comprehend combat.

Nov '12 — The Age of Edith
We've been through "The Age of Jane"; now it's Edith's turn. We feature a fictionalized biography of Edith Wharton, a re-make of her  masterpiece, and the masterpiece itself.

Oct '12 — Quests: Personal & Epic
This month's books are about quests—one to find love, one to answer to a desperate question, and one to rid the world of evil. Ultimately, though, all quests are about the search for Self.

Sept '12 — The Ways of Grief
Grief—the most painful and universal of emotions but experienced in profoundly different ways. Two recent novels and Shakespere's greatest drama explore how those left behind cope with loss.

August '12 — Hollywood, vanity of vanities
We take aim at the self-consuming, self-important world of Hollywood. Yet all three books remind us it's our wider culture that drives Hollywood's vanity.

June '12 — River Journeys
Authors often use rivers to represent life's passage —and journeys on rivers to explore mysteries of the human soul.

May '12 — Good Books, Tough Subjects
Some books tackle difficult, painful subjects but do so with exceptional prose, wit and, most of all, compassion. They make for compelling reading.

Mar '12 —Pride & Prejudice, Murder & Mayhem
Pure fun. Start with Austen's original...then turn to either P.D. James's mystery...or Graham-Smith's zombie send-up. Have fun comparing the homage to the "homagee." Oh! 'Tis too much joy.

Feb '12 — Baseball, the Art of Perfection
In the eyes of literature, baseball is life—the heroic individual standing against forces both within and out. Three books pit players' drive for perfection against their own human frailties.

Jan '12 — The Past Is Never Past
As Faulkner put: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." This month's characters are haunted by events of their childhoods. To move on, each must achieve understanding and let go.