Somehow, Blood Diamonds slipped past me in 2006. My brother lent me a copy of the movie so I finally had a chance to watch it. The movie is set in Sierra Leone in the late 1990s when civil war made the country a killing ground. Into this hellish chaos appears Leonardo DiCaprio who plays a diamond smuggler, Jennifer Connelly plays a feisty and intrepid journalist, and Djimon Hounsou plays a victim of the civil war. The title refers to diamonds mined in African war zones and sold to finance the conflicts. Psychopathic warlords train children to become murderous soldiers. Djimon Hounsou’s character discovers a rare “pink” diamond that DiCaprio covets. Jennifer Connelly’s character wants to expose the blood diamond jewelery companies that work with the warlords. After you watch this film, you’ll never want to visit Africa. GRADE: B-

There are few contemporary novels set in Western New York so when Stephen Talty’s Black Irish came to my attention, I read it for St. Patrick’s Day. It was fun to read about local sites like the Skyway, Mighty Taco, the Peace Bridge, and Chippewa Street. Much of the action of the book is set in Irish-dominated South Buffalo. Troubled Buffalo Detective Abbie Kearney finds herself investigating a series of ritual murders. The victims all were members of a secret society called The Clan which had links to the IRA in Ireland. This is Stephen Talty’s first novel so there are some excesses. Talty’s heroine, Abbie, has an ex-husband, a demanding retired father (who used to be a cop), and she suffers from depression. That’s a little too much to burden a character with. But I’ll be looking for Talty’s next novel. GRADE: B-
I want to thank the Youngstown Free Library for providing this book

Today is “Selection Sunday” on CBS where the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament determines the participating teams and their brackets. The matchups are always surprising and confounding. As an alumnus of Marquette University, I’ll be rooting for the Golden Eagles to go deep into the 2013 Tournament. What teams will you be rooting for?

I’ve read all of Phillip Lopate’s previous collections of essays and enjoyed them. Lopate presents himself as a common man and his essays reflect this stance. The first part of Portrait Inside My Head concerns Lopate’s family, his wife, his ex-wife, his sick child, and the common annoyances of Life. In later sections, Lopate writes about movies, books, and celebrities. If you’re in the mood for a wide-ranging collection of intelligent essays, look no further than Portrait Inside My Head. GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction: In Defense of the Miscellaneous
I. The Family Romance
Tea at the Plaza
The Camera Shop
The Countess’s Tutor
My Brother the Radio Host
Wife or Sister?
The Limits of Empathy
The Lake of Suffering
II. The Consolations of Daily Life
Memoirs of a Wishy-Washy Left-Liberal
Why I Remain a Baseball Fan
Novels and Films
On Changing One’s Mind About a Movie
Laws of Attraction
Duration, or, Going Long
Warren Sonbert
III. City Spaces
Brooklyn the Unknowable
Robert Moses Rethought
City Hall and Its Park
Walking the High Line
Getting the South Wrong
IV. Literary Matters
“Howl” and Me
The Poetry Years
The Stubborn Art of Charles Reznikoff
The Improbable Moralist
James Agee
On Not Reading Thomas Bernhard
Worldliness and Regret
Coda: The Life of the Mind

The past few FFBs, I’ve been reviewing faux-Jack Vance novels from Matthew Hughes (the best practitioner!) to Ray Aldridge to L. Warren Douglas. But this week, I’m reviewing the Real Deal: Magic Highways: The Early Jack Vance, Volume Three. Most of these stories were published in the 1940s and 1950s when Jack Vance was learning his craft. I’m a huge Jack Vance fan, yet half of the 16 stories in this wonderful just published collection were new to me. Subterranean Press and editors Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan should be commended on publishing these collections of Jack Vance’s early work. The glimmers of Vance’s genius appear on every page!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Phalid’s Fate
Planet of the Black Dust
Ultimate Quest
Men of the Ten Books
The Planet Machine
Dover Spargill’s Ghastly Floater
Winner Lose All
Sabotage on Sulfur Planet
The House Lords
Sanatoris Short-cut
The Unspeakable McInch
The Sub-Standard Sardines
The Howling Bounders
The King of Thieves
The Spa of the Stars
To B or Not to C or to D

After shelling out $24,000 for a new roof we decided to get new gutters as well. I never liked our old gutters. I didn’t think they were pitched right (they weren’t) and lately the gutters leaked at the seams. Our new gutters don’t have any seams. Diane and I plan to stay in this house for the next 20 years so we decided to invest in home improvements. How much do new gutters cost, you might wonder. In our case, $3200.

Every major publication from the New York Times Book Review (front page review) to Time Magazine (cover) to an interview with Nora O’Donnell on 60 Minutes to a column by Maureen Dowd (pom poms!) to significant discussion time on Meet the Press and This Week With George Stephanopoulos recommend Sheryl Sandberg’s “feminist reboot” book, Lean In. Sheryl Sandberg went to Harvard, worked for the World Bank, worked at GOOGLE, and is now second-in-command at FACEBOOK. She’s a billionaire. Sandberg’s critics (and there are plenty of them) maintain Sandberg’s advice is best aimed at similarly privileged women. Further, critics say Sandberg’s “advice” would be useless for a single-mother trying to hold down a minimum wage job. Basically, Sandberg says in Lean In that women need to be more assertive and go for more leadership positions. She thinks society in general and women in particular censor women’s ambitions. I suspect the election of a woman President might change much of that. GRADE: B+

Despite the dizzying helmet-cam fire footage, despite the pounding music, despite the riot of flames in this documentary, you’ll remember the brave Detroit firefighters who struggle to save their city. In the past couple of weeks I’ve read Detroit City Is the Place To Be by Mark Binelli and Charlie LeDuff’s Detroit: An American Autopsy. If anything, Burn tops those two fine books simply because of the intensity and spectacle provided by Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez who spent a year embedded with Engine 50 on Detroit’s dangerous east side. You cannot watch this film and not be moved by the heroic efforts of Detroit’s firefighters battling fires in such hellish conditions. GRADE: A

J. C. Carleson’s slim book contains plenty of provocative insights. Treat information as an asset–and protect it! Competitors may try to place a mole in your work teams. Carleson outlines steps to take to prevent that from happening. In the process of delineating steps to secure a workplace difficult to penetrate, Carleson also shows indirectly how the CIA operates. If you’re a fan of spy fiction, you’ll find J. C. Carleson’s observations enlightening and surprising. GRADE: B+

Maureen McLane is a poet with two published volumes of poetry: Same Life and World Enough. My Poets explores the poets who most affected Maureen McLane: Chaucer, Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H.D., Louise Gluck, Fanny Howe, Emily Dickinson, and Shelly. Each chapter sparkles with insights on the poets McLane finds so inspirational. If you love poetry, you’ll love Maureen McLane’s guided tour of her favorite poets. GRADE: B+