http://www.philly.com/r?19=960&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F Inquirer book news and reviews en-us Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT 2009-11-08T08:01:00Z en-us http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=69367717&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091108_Heaps_of_evolution_evidence.html If I believed in God, I would thank him for blessing us with Richard Dawkins. The British biologist has become renowned lately for denouncing religion, most recently in his 2006 best seller The God Delusion. But I prefer his explanations and celebrations of "eating, growing, rotting, swimming, walking, flying, burrowing, stalking, chasing, fleeing, outpacing, outwitting" creatures, as he describes them in The Greatest Show on Earth. Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT 6628efb5d4fda42ce94cbdd9221636bc 2009-11-08T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=69367722&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091108_A_jazz_great_who_played_what_he_felt.html In Manhattan in the late 1950s, it was great to be young and a jazz fan. The drinking age in New York state was 18, so a college student with a draft card and the price of a couple of beers could sit at the bar of a club and catch a full evening of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, or other greats. Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT 99e4486ee6bee71a73531364d336f28e 2009-11-08T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=69367662&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091108_The_year_of_living_without.html Enough about the toilet paper already. If people would just quit obsessing about it, Colin Beavan could get on with more important aspects of his year-long experiment in living with no - or, as it turned out, significantly less - impact on the planet. Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT c4d08f5cc0567751890ca8b76309d6e7 2009-11-08T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=69367652&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091108_Celebrating_love_in_society_s_underbelly.html Dark, often crushingly grim, Box 21 introduces us to a world of characters who hate what they do for a living. I count at least two police detectives, one junkie, one doctor, a welter of crooks, and at least one social servant who see the veneer peel off their careers, revealing the shabby, agonized self-deception beneath. Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:01:00 GMT f5fb90c9cb3ac1b88fd73f2c282527b2 2009-11-08T08:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=67880802&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091031_Drama_s_here__but_so_is_inconsistency_in_plot_and_writing.html If ever there were a woman devoid of maternal love, it's Ava Middlebrooks, and now that she's out of prison, she's out for vengeance against the one person she holds responsible for her incarceration - her daughter, Yancey Harrington Braxton. Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:01:00 GMT 7b6924a95ac1e97b466e33bc0fe2165e 2009-10-31T07:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=67562602&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091101_An_accident_s_consequences.html 'Well, it's a world of accidents, isn't it?" concludes "Cookie" Baciagalupo in John Irving's new novel as random events threaten him yet again. He's right, but in Last Night in Twisted River, it's the consequences of those accidents that really matter, that shatter lives, upset intentions, and send the formerly comfortable scattering in all directions in a vain search for solace. Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:01:00 GMT e402c890558976225c2da9139b6a46f1 2009-11-01T09:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=67562532&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091101_Locale_as_a_key_to_civilization_.html Barry Cunliffe is the emeritus professor of European archaeology at Oxford, and Europe Between the Oceans is perhaps the boldest work of ancient history in recent memory. It draws on an impressive array of scholarship to paint a 10,000-year portrait of European civilization from 9000 B.C. to A.D. 1000. Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:01:00 GMT 8d27e785d28a5ec8d35f600b5a92d519 2009-11-01T09:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=67562597&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091101_What_drove_Vermeil_-_to_the_brink.html He's probably the most popular man ever to coach a professional sports team in Philadelphia, even though he didn't bring home a Super Bowl title and left town burned out. Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:01:00 GMT 62cfe224373d70d38bea57a9a4e994e2 2009-11-01T09:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=65764087&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091025_Detective_Bosch_is_back.html Investigating what initially appears to be a commonplace liquor store holdup and homicide in Los Angeles, LAPD Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch becomes involved in a strange case that will lead to Chinese Triad gangsters, the kidnapping of his teenage daughter, and a desperate and violent confrontation in Hong Kong. Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:01:00 GMT c9fa9a155e4f7d99ee5f557af56f2202 2009-10-25T07:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=65764092&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091025_There_s_no_burying_vampire_mania.html I'm a vampire, he's a vampire, won't you be a vampire too? Gee, thanks, Count. Thanks, but no. Despite being a lifelong vampire aficionado (um, does that sound creepy?), I'd rather be a vampire hunter right now. We're crypt-deep in vampires, thanks in part to an avalanche of mega-selling books and films, including Twilight, True Blood, the Underworld Trilogy, and their rapidly mutating spawn. Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:01:00 GMT 0e28ce11a3ea495575ca39b1aac59da7 2009-10-25T07:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=65763997&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091025_From_1910_s_ashes_rose_ecological__political_renewal.html It's hard to write about fire, which is such a dynamic, swirling, chaotic force. It's hard also to write about politics - the sumo-wrestler shoving of wills that takes decades to decide, with the accumulation of small events, speeches, bills, and battles accruing to gradually tip a nation one way or the other. Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:01:00 GMT 22e958545d93a7501997f12c2df1e712 2009-10-25T07:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=65764002&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091025_Monster_mashup__Another_altered_Austen.html What makes a thing funny? You certainly know it when you see it, but it can be hard to explain how and why it works. Maybe it just comes down to obeying the principles of storytelling itself: knowing where the story begins, as well as when to end it. Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:01:00 GMT 20b7a1d314280533d9c4d465888ab23f 2009-10-25T07:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=65433467&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091022_Vic_takes_on_a_mystery_nearly_as_old_as_she.html As she approaches 50, V.I. Warshawski, the Chicago P.I. with the volatile temper and the susceptible heart, remains much as she was when introduced 13 novels and 27 years ago. Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:01:00 GMT d7e994247ef16217e15d8dd244d5e93c 2009-10-22T07:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=64485617&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091018_Exploring_a_time_when_poetry_and_science_mingled.html Future chroniclers might well classify today's science as a product of the Age of Cynicism. From climate science to evolution, from stem cells to genetically modified foods, political ideology and religious belief often lead some to distort the very essence of science by denying data, or branding theories as talking points from the "other side of the aisle." Sun, 18 Oct 2009 07:01:00 GMT 85a388b69ad56ed0edd693709a5dc65b 2009-10-18T07:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=64485677&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091018_Oblivious_to_looming_cataclysm.html A.S. Byatt's magnificent new novel starts as an idyll and ends in hell. It is like one of those vast canvases by Fragonard depicting figures in silk and lace playing lawn games, oblivious to the huge, menacing clouds looming behind them. Sun, 18 Oct 2009 07:01:00 GMT fdd31bdffb1f416e7071bfdefac097ef 2009-10-18T07:01:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166696&44=64485682&32=3796&7=195632&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Finquirer%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2F20091018_Characters_confronting_truths__regrets.html 'I realised my eyes had filled with tears." This sentence, seemingly innocuous, could have been lifted from any of Kazuo Ishiguro's six novels, and within it lies the key to the author's oeuvre. Here we find the dislocation between speaker and action, the cracked surface of self-delusion revealing the chasm of dashed hopes. Ishiguro's characters invariably meet us at a time when they are no longer able to contain their disappointments; they always cry first and notice later. Sun, 18 Oct 2009 07:01:00 GMT 4f299912eb0252b4e65d14d05aee4ede 2009-10-18T07:01:00Z