Book Club Selection for November 09
The book club selection for November is ' Carl Sagan: A Life’ by Keay Davidson .
I guess I'll start out this set of comments (hard for me to call it a review) by saying that I rarely read biographies. Three Cups of Tea was sort of a biography, but it had a notional story line also. I think I mentioned this to someone, but the last biography I read before this one was an autobiography by Allan Sherman. So let's see of I can decipher the little bookmarks I have made in this tome. Overall I liked the book well enough; it was apparent that Davidson did a huge amount of research on Sagan. There were a few stylistic quibbles I had: I got tired of reading early on in the book "more about this later" (there was even one page (130) where the device was used twice...arrgh). Another cliche he recycles is "...a series of misunderstandings..." It is used earlier in the book and on page 385. Perhaps the frequent asides to deliver personal thoughts into the story is commonplace for biographers; Davidson seemed to disrupt the flow of the narrative to take a pot shot at William F Buckley ("strange facial expressions...", p 371) and Ronald Regan ("deep box of newspaper clippings..." p 357).
All in all, a worthwhile read. Someone who reads more biographies can give a better assessment on how it matches others in this genre.
I guess I'll start out this set of comments (hard for me to call it a review) by saying that I rarely read biographies. Three Cups of Tea was sort of a biography, but it had a notional story line also. I think I mentioned this to someone, but the last biography I read before this one was an autobiography by Allan Sherman. So let's see of I can decipher the little bookmarks I have made in this tome. Overall I liked the book well enough; it was apparent that Davidson did a huge amount of research on Sagan. There were a few stylistic quibbles I had: I got tired of reading early on in the book "more about this later" (there was even one page (130) where the device was used twice...arrgh). Another cliche he recycles is "...a series of misunderstandings..." It is used earlier in the book and on page 385. Perhaps the frequent asides to deliver personal thoughts into the story is commonplace for biographers; Davidson seemed to disrupt the flow of the narrative to take a pot shot at William F Buckley ("strange facial expressions...", p 371) and Ronald Regan ("deep box of newspaper clippings..." p 357).
All in all, a worthwhile read. Someone who reads more biographies can give a better assessment on how it matches others in this genre.
posted by Bill Rock | 6:07 PM
1 Comments:
I have posted a rewiew of Keay Davidson's _Carl Sagan: A Life_ on my new Web site, bookplaces.info. From the home page, click on "What We're Reading" on the menu at the top of the page.
(The purpose of the site is to list every bookstore in the world. I'm counting on bookstore owners to supply much of this info and am currently writing software to implement this. When the site becomes more fully operational in approximatey one week, you'll be able to click on an individual bookstore and get information about it and a Google map showing its location. Chain bookstores will headed under drop-down panels that expose specific stores in the vicinity of the user's search area. A user can save his setup on his computer so that he goes to the latest update of nearby bookstores every time he visits the site.
I'm not an "anti-chain fascist". I do most of my own shopping at Amazon.com or Borders and Barnes & Noble. But I do dig large used bookstores. In any case, my goal is to list all stores in "brick-and-mortar" storefronts that allow admission to all, thus eliminating mail-order places in people's houses and adult-oriented stores that have age restrictions and a few trade stores that deny entrance to the general public.)
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