reviews

Tennis time travel... Author:  Andre Agassi I think I'm still living in the 1990s.  I have to admit that from a tennis perspective, I haven’t really moved on from the years when Andre Aggasi and Pete Sampras battled for supremacy.  When Sampras retired in 2002 and Agassi followed him in 2006 my interest in professional tennis abruptly faded.  As a result I didn’t pay much attention when Aggasi published his memoir to much acclaim in 2009.  Over the ensuing years, I’ve come across enthusiastic recommendations that placed it amongst some of the greatest sports biographies ever written.  So I decided [...]

A Classic Story of Broken Innocence and Forbidden Love Author: Colleen McCullough The Thorn Birds, known to many from the epic mini-series of the early 80s, is a story of forbidden romance, heartrending choices, love verses duty, spiritual love vs earthly love, and the rugged splendor of Australia. It begins with the Clearys, a poor family living in New Zealand, barely keeping ends together as progressively more children are added to the brood (we count seven at the high point). This is not a childhood of playing and school, but one of instant labor and chores. Among these children there [...]

The Intentions of the Past Author: Chanelle Benz Billie Jean has a lifetime of secrets, and on this sultry Mississippi night, transformed from city girl to a desolate young woman in a falling down shack, she contemplates them and what answers her past and this weird inheritance have for her. Her father, famous black poet Clifton James, mysteriously died in his prime, back in 1972, after returning from the city to his Mississippi roots. Her white mother, James’ much neglected wife, died many years later in a fading battle with cancer. Neither parent left answers for their strange union, for [...]