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Cosmo McCulloch Graff8 lbs. 7 oz.20 1/2 in. He really, really loves The Iliad.

We’re going to the hospital today-my wife Marya is delivering our second child-and we need something to read. Two years ago, when our son Felix was born, I had put a lot of thought into our hospital reading material. The due date came and went, faded into memory, and still Felix showed no signs of [...]

Well, yesterday I filed my reviews for Gary J. Cook’s Blood Trail, C. J. Box’s In Plain Sight, and Ken Bruen’s Calibre. When I first started at Booklist, the idea of writing three reviews in one day would have made my stomach feel like that of a food poisoning victim on the tilt-a-whirl. I had [...]

I finished Ken Bruen’s Calibre last night-hard to believe he has a new one out already. He’s so prolific, he might be the Joyce Carol Oates or the William T. Vollman of crime fiction. Fortunately for me, his books are a lot shorter than theirs. In fact, they’re so much shorter that you could probably [...]

Last night I finished reading In Plain Sight, the new novel by C. J. Box. If you’re not familiar with the Joe Pickett series, I ended my review of the last one by saying, “Recommended for practically everybody”-so that gives you an idea of what I think. They’re Western mysteries-Pickett is a game warden-but calling [...]

Before I became a book reviewer, I think I assumed that book reviewers were a tweedy, pipe-smoking lot who spent their days sipping tea and reading books in book-cluttered offices, occasionally pausing to shake muffin crumbs out of the books in front of them. If I am any example, however-and who knows if I’m representative [...]

Well, I finally finished Blood Trail and I’m happy to report that it won me over. Reading the first chapter I was a little afraid that I had entered one of those parallel universes, often found in self-published books, where the author isn’t able to climb out of his head long enough to give his [...]

I’m still reading Blood Trail, and should finish today or tomorrow. On another matter, I saw David Mamet’s new play, Romance, at the Goodman Theatre on Thursday night-and loved it. Though it occurs to me that, because Mamet has carved out such a unique territory for himself, if a young playwright just starting out took [...]