Doug Cornelius .com
Book Reviews
Book review:The Ascent of Money
Niall Ferguson had the unfortunate luck of writing The Ascent of Money just before the unveiling of the 2008′s Great Panic. At the time he finished writing the book in May 2008, only $318 billion of write-downs had been acknowledged. I was interested in the book because of its focus on the development of our [...]
Learning from Others’ Mistakes: Accidents In North American Mountaineering 2010
I always look forward to the arrival of this book. It is full of learning, tragedy, sadness, and bits of humor. I’ve been a member of the American Alpine Club since 2003, so this is the eighth edition I have read. Each edition takes the reader through the climbing accidents of the previous year. This [...]
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is Law & Order: Sweden
Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy comes to a grinding halt with the The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. I really enjoyed the cold, dark, Swedish landscape in the first book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The series then turned into an action thriller with The Girl Who Played with Fire. This third book comes [...]
Book Review: Mixed Blood
Roger Smith has written a gritty, violent thriller full of deeply-flawed people trapped in bad luck and the violence of Cape Town, South Africa. Some books slowly weave a tapestry of ideas. Mixed Blood is not one of those books. It’s rapid roller coaster with scenes quickly moving through the ups and downs of his [...]
The Girl Who Played With Fire
If you liked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, then you should like this book. Mikael Blomkvist, the intrepid reporter is back. This time the book is much more focused on the mysterious Lisbeth Salander, the Pippi Longstocking-ish investigator. She is the one who is in trouble as we find out more about her mysterious [...]
Sleepless Will Keep You Up at Night
Imagine if the recent Great Panic financial crisis of 2008 was accompanied by a realization that an illness had spread across the population. On top of the subprime meltdown, a devastating illness has left a huge portion of the population unable to sleep. It takes about a year of zombie-like existence for the sleepless to [...]
The Strangler and my Kindle
In his second crime novel, William Landay weaves together the story of three brothers, the death of their policeman father, Boston’s urban renewal projects, and the Boston Strangler. It’s Boston in 1963. Kennedy has just been assassinated. Real estate developers are bulldozing Boston’s West End to put up shiny new towers. A mob war is [...]
Eye of the Red Tsar
If you’re looking for a suspenseful crime thriller, this is the book for you. When we first meet Pekkala in 1929 Siberia, he is a barely human prisoner living in the wilderness, marking trees for the labor camp to chop down. We soon learn that Pekkala was the Emerald Eye, a special inspector for the [...]
Mrs. Kaputnik’s Pool Hall and Matzo Ball Emporium
I have mixed feelings about this book. It’s about ten-year-old Shoshi, her eight-year-old brother, Moshe, and their pet dragon Snigger as they escape the Cossacks of Russia to the streets of New York City in 1898. Kids and a dragon in a story are usually a great combination. Kids love to read about dragons. My [...]
Book Review: Face of Betrayal
Lis Wiehl has added another element to her career, from trial lawyer to Fox News commentator and now a novelist. The publisher sent me a copy of her book: Face of Betrayal. I generally would not bother writing a review for book this bad, but I agreed to write a review in exchange for a [...]
Recent Posts
The personal side of Doug Cornelius by Doug Cornelius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at dougcornelius.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://dougcornelius.com/about/contact.
Powered by Wordpress. Designed by 