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Glory Trail by David R Lewis My rating: 4 of 5 stars The eighth installment of David R. Lewis’s Trail series gets Rubin, Marion, and Homer saddling up to protect a wagon train of black folk as they wade through racism to get to Glory, Kansas, an all-black community. I have to admit I wasn’t…

Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt My rating: 4 of 5 stars In many ways this book reminded me of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The narrator, the tone … It just put me in mind of the other book. That’s a pretty good thing. Our narrator here is Jack, a sixth grader whose…

Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach My rating: 4 of 5 stars Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, read when I was in 8th grade, was a real eye-opener to me at the time, and I re-read it every few years now as a reminder that we can be better than we…

My Ántonia by Willa Cather My rating: 2 of 5 stars There are some fantastic lines in this novel. Some great scenes. I liked the characters a lot. But ultimately … nothing happens. There’s no crisis. No villain. No problem that has to be overcome. It’s just kinda there. What’s the story about? Well ……

The Day the Cowboys Quit by Elmer Kelton My rating: 3 of 5 stars I haven’t read a whole lot of Elmer Kelton’s Western fiction — in fact, this is only the second novel of his I can recall reading — but that needs to change. I really enjoy his style of writing, his level…

Orphans of the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein My rating: 3 of 5 stars A friend told me about this novel way, way back in the early 1990s. I kept forgetting the name of it, but finally bought a copy several years ago, and just now got around to reading it. From the moment Bruce…

Stranded: A Novel by Bracken MacLeod My rating: 4 of 5 stars This was a good one. Is it a horror novel? A science fiction novel? An adventure story? Why choose? It’s all the above! Noah Cabot is a deck hand on the Arctic Promise, and the ship is in a very violent storm as…

Fate and The Exorcist: An In-depth Interview with William Peter Blatty by Brian James Freeman My rating: 3 of 5 stars Not really a biography, but an extended interview with William Peter Blatty. It left me with a lot of questions that still aren’t answered, but it was an interesting read. You’ll learn more about…

In the Season of the Sun by Kerry Newcomb My rating: 2 of 5 stars I just didn’t care for it. The story was too heavy on the romance. This will sound sexist, I know, but honestly, the romance was such an important element of the story that I thought Kerry was a woman. Yeah,…

Wolf: The Lives of Jack London by James L. Haley My rating: 3 of 5 stars The Call of the Wild has long been one of my favorite books, and it’s the first novel we read together in my AP Literature class to illustrate The Hero’s Journey and introduce literary movements. I’d read London’s The…