Gabriel’s Story by David Anthony Durham My rating: 4 of 5 stars Despite a rather slow start and Gabriel being a pretty unlikable character in the beginning, this ended up being a coming-of-age Western novel that I really liked. It begins with Gabriel, his brother Ben, and their mother traveling to the Kansas plains to…

Makeup to Breakup: My Life In and Out of Kiss by Peter Criss My rating: 4 of 5 stars Maybe sometimes it’s better to not learn too much about your heroes. Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve been a KISS fan since 1976, when I was 10 years old. Granted, I didn’t know what most of…

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse My rating: 4 of 5 stars After reading The Life of Pi I wanted another book with a spiritual theme but a non-traditional philosophy. Well, non-traditional by Western standards. Siddhartha had been needling me for a while, but I thought I’d already read it back in my college days. I was…

Black Sun Rising by C.S. Friedman My rating: 2 of 5 stars I give up. It’s taken me three months to get 53 percent through the e-book. I’d kinda like to know how it ends, but I just don’t care enough to keep slogging through. The setting was pretty interesting at first, but now it…

Life of Pi by Yann Martel My rating: 4 of 5 stars It’s billed as a book to make you believe in God. That sounded intriguing, and I enjoyed the film adaptation, so I decided to give it a try. I think this is one that is going to have to sit on my mind…

On Tuesday my first grandchild was born. On Thursday I held a departing senior while we cried on each other. On Friday I printed a contract for a three-book deal with a top small press publisher. Today I watched a man I’d just met cry as he read a speech at his daughter’s wedding, where…

Watership Down by Richard Adams My rating: 5 of 5 stars Watership Down is one of those books that helped shape my entire worldview. It came to me, like so many of my favorites, during the horrible years we call junior high, when I would escape into books and was lucky enough to be in…

The Giver by Lois Lowry My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Giver is one of those rare books that my students, both AP and regular, were always shocked to learn I hadn’t read. Well, it wasn’t published when I was in the targeted age range, so I missed it. Until now. The story is…

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty My rating: 5 of 5 stars Simply put, this is still the best horror novel ever written. Blatty’s use of language — particularly simile — is beautiful and touching or sickening and depraved, but always right there, pushing the reader to see what he wants you to see. The…