Book Review of "Before, During, After" By Richard Bausch

I listened to the audio book edition of this novel. I personally liked the characters in this story. I thought both Michael and Natasha were believable, yet flawed characters. The story revolving around 9-11 was more of a plot device than anything else. The impact to the characters was due to either personal factors or personal tragedy.

Bausch could have left out the 9-11 part from the plot and the novel would have worked just as well. The main theme of this novel is "Can we put our past behind us and forge a new better tomorrow?" I also liked how Bausch explored the themes of fear, guilt, regret, and anger.

As a reader I felt what the characters felt. The dramatic tension was there. Bausch succeeds in this regard. Where he did not succeed was with the novel's ending. It lacked emotional closure in my opinion. At the end of the story, Bausch gives the reader hints that things will work out for the best. I would have liked to have read about how they actually did work out. I would have like to have seen a little of their lives together. Also of interest is the baby. Who's is it? If it had not been Faulk's, would Faulk have tried to track down Nicholas Duego? Would he have done something drastic? What was Duego's point of view?

Book Review of “I Funny: A Middle School Story” By James Patterson

Book Overview (amazon.com)

Jamie Grimm is a middle schooler on a mission: he wants to become the world's greatest standup comedian--even if he doesn't have a lot to laugh about these days. He's new in town and stuck living with his aunt, uncle, and their evil son Stevie, a bully who doesn't let Jamie's wheelchair stop him from messing with Jamie as much as possible. But Jamie doesn't let his situation get him down. When his Uncle Frankie mentions a contest called The Planet's Funniest Kid Comic, Jamie knows he has to enter. But are the judges only rewarding him out of pity because of his wheelchair, like Stevie suggests? Will Jamie ever share the secret of his troubled past instead of hiding behind his comedy act?

Following the bestselling success of the hilarious Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life, James Patterson continues to dish out the funnies in another highly-illustrated, heartfelt middle school story. (Includes more than 175 black-and-white illustrations.)

Author Introduction

It is no surprise that in January, 2010, The New York Times Magazine featured James Patterson on its cover and hailed him as having "transformed book publishing," and that Time magazine hailed him as "The Man Who Can't Miss." Recently, NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams profiled Patterson's prolific career, AARP named him one of the "50 Most Influential People Who Make Our Days a Little Brighter," and Variety featured him in a cover story highlighting his adventures in Hollywood.

Book Review of "The Age of Edison" By Ernest Freeberg

Book Overview (amazon.com)

The late nineteenth century was a period of explosive technological creativity, but more than any other invention, Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb marked the arrival of modernity, transforming its inventor into a mythic figure and avatar of an era. In The Age of Edison, award-winning author and historian Ernest Freeberg weaves a narrative that reaches from Coney Island and Broadway to the tiniest towns of rural America, tracing the progress of electric light through the reactions of everyone who saw it and capturing the wonder Edison’s invention inspired. It is a quintessentially American story of ingenuity, ambition, and possibility in which the greater forces of progress and change are made by one of our most humble and ubiquitous objects. 

Author Introduction

Ernest Freeberg grew up in New England, attended Middlebury College, and worked as a reporter for Maine Public Radio. Now a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of Tennessee, he has published two award-winning books. The Education of Laura Bridgman won the Dunning Prize from the American Historical Association, a biennial prize for the best first book in any field of American history. His more recent Democracy's Prisoner was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist in biography, and won both the David Langum Award for Legal History and the Eli Oboler Award from the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Roundtable. His 2013 book, Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America, examines the social and cultural impact of electric light on American society in that invention's early decades.