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Editorial Review Product Description
Come Read With Me is a great resource for readers. The book essays range from historical subjects to matters of the head and heart. Here's a partial listing of what's inside.COPS AND ROBBERS 20Ed McBain ? Fat Ollie's Book 21Charlotte Williamson ? Switched 24James Swain ? Mr. Lucky 28Bill James ? Panicking Ralph 31John Ridley ? The Drift 34Robert Parker ? Back Story 37SUGAR AND SPICE 40Alicia Erian ? Towelhead 41Traci Lords ? Traci Lords: Underneath it All 44VENUS AND MARS 55Gillian Bradshaw ? Render Unto Caesar 56Travis Hunter ? The Hearts of Men 59Sonia Pressman Fuentes ? Eat First, You Don't Know What They'll Give You 63Elinor Lipman ? The Pursuit of Alice Thrift 66Wil Haygood ? In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr. 70Anita Shreve ? The Pilot's Wife, The Weight of Water 73Zora Neale Hurston ? Their Eyes Were Watching God 76What do women want in books? Love 80Sam Stahl ? Three Satisfictions 83KITH AND KIN 87Sally Simon ? Punta Gorda Dreams 88Stephen L. Carter ? The Emperor of Ocean Park 91Stella Suberman ? The Jew Store 94Graham Joyce ? Smoking Poppy 97Paul Robeson, Jr. ? The Undiscovered Paul Robeson 101Anthony Giardina ? Recent History 105TIME AND PLACE 108Betsy Tobin ? Bone House 109Francis J. Bremer ? John Winthrop, America's Forgotten Founding Father 112Arthur Jones ? Pierre Toussaint 115Gerald & Loretta Hausman ? Escape From Botany Bay 118Jill Lepore ? A is for American 122Sena Jeter Naslund ? Ahab's Wife 125John Griesemer ? Signal & Noise 128Bruce Olds ? Raising Holy Hell 131Max Byrd ? Grant 134Ev Ehrlich ? Grant Speaks 134Harry Turtledove ? How Few Remain, The Great War series 137Robert Graves ? Good-bye to All That 140 ... Read more Customer Reviews (4) 
Reviews as Compelling as the Work Itself
"Come Read With Me" by James M. Abraham is a book about books. For five years, from the podium of book columnist for the Sarasota Herald Tribune, the Fort Meyers News-Press, and the Charlotte Sun Herald, Mr. Abraham enlightened the readers of Southwest Florida and beyond on the best, and possibly the most notorious books of the times and all time. I daresay he also `created' many new readers along his course. A collection of some of his best `book essays' are included in "Come Read with Me." I don't believe I've ever read a book any harder to put down.
Mr. Abraham has a genius for the art of writing a review. His intricately thought out perceptions and analysis rumbles the curiosity and piques the interest enough to have the reader rushing to the nearest bookseller. Unlike the usual review that simply reiterates setting, characters, and plot in an overview capped with the reviewer's determination of `excellent read' to `don't waste your time', James Abraham's perceptions of the work are as compelling as the works themselves.
His expertise granted him the privilege of being allowed to choose the books he'd review. Nestled in between several of the classics and the well-known writers, the reader will find a sampling of independent and self-published authors, who, in Mr. Abraham'sown words "deserve greater attention than this small volume can offer them." True to his promise, I now have several books I didn't even know existed now positioned on my `to read' list.
Susan C. Haley, Author
RAINY DAY PEOPLE
FIBERS IN THE WEB
Highly recommended, its impressive, original, thoughtful and thought-provoking
Come Read With Me: A Collection Of Good Book Essays is an invaluable collection of what may be the greatest compendium of essays drawn from and related to what James M. Abraham has read and reflected on. Inclusive of works from well known names such as John Steinbeck, E. B. White, Sally Simon and many more, Come Read With Me contains essays that have changed the worldly paradigms and altered histories path, as well as essays purely for the enjoyment of reading and learning. Come Read With Me is very highly recommended, impressive, original, thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Come read this book
James Abraham's subtitle for this collection should say, "an excellent collection of essays about good books," for indeed readers are in for a treat. Abraham is an historian, a wordsmith with a delicious vocabulary, and an ability to enlighten and inform. Yet, the essays are not stuffy or pedantic. They are conversational, thoughtful and personal. It is as if the writer and the reader are chatting over coffee in a bookstore or café. And they make you want to savor all the essays and the books he writes about.
Take this opening sentence as an example: "Every open up a book and get yanked into a tale worth staying up late to finish? That was my reaction when I had the good fortune to open `Ahab's Wife,' by Sena Jeter Naslund."Or this: "Roy Sannella has written an autobiography that's about as exciting as tap-dancing atop a moving car." Abraham's masterful essay openers are irresistible.
"Come Read with Me" essays cover many genres, and include books from major publishers, independent presses and self-publishers. Abraham is as comfortable with humor, children's books, romance, history, race relations and Arab/Jew conflicts as he is with fiction. In fact, he confesses putting aside a tome about a controversial ex-president to read "a double volume titled `Freddy the Detective' and `Freddy Goes to Florida.' Suddenly, thoughts of the big book were swept out of my mind by memories of pleasant days spent reading about Freddy's exploits."
I think my favorite essay is one that begins, "I won't know how good a father I've been until it's too late to do anything about my parenting." It leads into Abraham's discussion of Graham Joy's "Smoking Poppy," causing me (fortunately) to read the book when he and I were newspaper colleagues several years ago.
That's what Abraham is about--drawing together readers, authors and good books, where pages are turned and discussion is stimulating. I'm looking forward to volume 2.
This man knows people and knows how to write.
Why buff a gem? Here are two of his essays from the book!
Writer well aware of what makes us human
At first glance, the act of cleaving to one's mate seems as natural as love. But love often leads to betrayal. Like absorption, that natural occurrence that leaves our fingers puckered as our bodies' liquids are sucked out toward more powerful bodies of water, a greater love or lust may draw our passion beyond the bounds of marriage.
Anita Shreve, probably the best interior writer extant, offers readers a look at love beyond the boundaries. Shreve has a new novel out, "Sea Glass" (Little, Brown, $25.95), which I can't wait to read. Her previous three studies of love and union, including "The Pilot's Wife," "The Weight of Water" and "The Last Time They Met," explores with awful intimacy what happens when the golden bowl of marriage is cracked.
Adultery doesn't happen in a vacuum. Dashed expectations and incompatibilities that grow from minute to major in the course of a marriage may propel partners outward. And a simple glance, a chance meeting or an unexpected reunion with an old flame can pull one from one's bonds.
In our simple matrix of right and wrong, it doesn't take a genius to label victims and perpetrators. But it's a credit to Shreve's talent that, while she leaves adultery as shameful as it is, she invests adulterers with the humanity that makes one understand why they would go wrong.
In "The Pilot's Wife," loneliness and distance make the aviator of the title stray. He meets an Irish woman in England and, once sucked in, commits the ultimate betrayal. He marries her, and starts a family. But that's one side of the Atlantic. At home, on the northeast coast, he's met and married a lonely bookstore worker. The Irish woman knows of his other family, but the American woman remains deceived.
The world of lies explodes with the power of a deus ex machina's arrival, when a bomb destroys the pilot and his trans-Atlantic passenger plane. That reference to an act of God is fitting, as the price of the pilot's betrayal is as exacting as that leveled by an angry deity.
The grief of knowing her husband will never return is only compounded when the American woman learns that a part of her husband had never been with her.
"The Weight of Water" and "The Last Time They Met" could be read as one book. The central theme is enduring love, and its power to disrupt and maybe even ruin lives.
They serve as a primer to both writers and readers interested in the author's craft who wish to learn what happens to characters when placed in different hands.
Through the omniscient narrator of "The Last Time They Met," Thomas, a lead character in both books, comes across as a flawed yet tragic hero.
Yet, in "The Weight of Water," he comes across as a selfish, uncaring creature who is easily flattered.
The omniscient narrator saw Thomas' noble brow. His wife Jean, who is the lead speaker in "The Weight of Water," eventually only sees his feet of clay.
Tragedy defines both books, and Thomas' self-preoccupation provokes the disasters that define the novels.
But to understand why such a character would even be considered lovable -- and more importantly, to understand Anita Shreve -- the reader must go to a place we in this politically correct world are discouraged from visiting. That's a place where we're willing to admit that the differences between men and women are much greater than anatomical. The two sexes are hard-wired with disparate sensibilities as lasting and unforgiving as a computer's hard drive. Men and women react differently to love, and often possess different standards of what fidelity means.
That we are one of the few species that take joy in the reproductive act may not be the real delineating variable in separating us from the lesser creatures.
Rather, that we've established a matrix of sin and commitment against which we judge our loyalty -- and against which we often beat our souls in frustration -- may be what truly makes us human beings.
Harry Turtledove makes his own history
When Southwest American Indians chew peyote buttons, or other people with old-style common sense choose to engage in means of gaining an alternative reality, chances are they do so less to get high than to make better sense of the real world.
Alternative histories can accomplish the same purpose, and few volumes do that better than those produced by California professor Harry Turtledove.
The prolific writer, who's written 29 books, is at his best in his work based on the south winning the Civil War. From "The Guns of the South" through "The Great War" and "American Empire" series, Turtledove does a superlative job of showing us what an untied United States would have been like.
But it's his grasp on reality, his sense of understanding history well enough to find the hinges upon which to turn his alternative world, that makes his books work.
Consider the "Great War" series. The South had won the Civil War, leaving the North encircled by the dominion of Canada on one side and the Confederate States of America to the south.
History buffs will immediately recognize that sense of national encirclement as one of the justifications for Germany's march to nationhood and two world wars. So it makes sense, in an alternative sort of sense, that the United States and Germany would join forces in the Great War, which we now know as World War I.
The basis for the odd allies (France and England join with the Confederates States of America in the struggle) is explained in an earlier work, "How Few Remain," which opens with a flashback to that fateful day in 1863 when the battle orders of Robert E. Lee were discovered by some Union soldiers. The orders, wrapped around a few cigars, revealed just how Lee would conduct his first major invasion of the North.
Of course, that's based on real events. The North had suffered a series of setbacks, and England and France were beginning to consider recognizing the Confederacy.
But in Turtledove's world, the orders were found by Confederate troops, who turned in the directives and got to keep the cigars. Lee's army successfully carried off its invasion, winning such a victory that England and France chose to recognize the Confederacy.
"How Few Remain" then jumps to the Gilded Age as Mexico, strapped for cash, decides to sell the Confederacy its two northwestern-most provinces. The sale gives the Confederacy a nation that stretches from sea to shining
sea, and evokes a stiff letter of protest from the North. War results, and in the next few months, the United States suffers battlefield reverses in Kentucky and the indignity of a British raid on the San Francisco mint. French and English battleships bombard United States ports, and the sole success of the war is the joint action of a young volunteer colonel of volunteers named Theodore Roosevelt and a pompous George Armstrong Custer.
This is good stuff, complete with fantastic encounters such as Frederick Douglass led before Stonewall Jackson as a prisoner of war, Custer and Roosevelt establishing a rivalry that would last for years, and other occurrences well worth imagining.
Jackson's weird habit of holding one arm above his head to restore his body's circulation and Custer's vanity about his golden locks are among the historically accurate personal quirks Turtledove uses to make his other-worldly history believable.
In the "Great War" series, the horrors of trench warfare in France are recreated on the Roanoke Valley front, as a bellicose Roosevelt leads the North to victory.
Turtledove's understanding of the historic and inevitable emotions of war are evident throughout. For example, the Confederates call the Northerners damnyankees. That's reminiscent of how the French, during the Hundred Years war, called the English les goddammes, partly because the Brits muttered that phrase as they wandered through the French countryside.
The coarsening of society, as people learn to hate and dehumanize "the enemy," and the corrosive effect of such behavior, is a grim reminder of how our society could have evolved if the Civil War had gone the wrong way.
Turtledove, who has a strong reputation in the fantasy venue and has produced a series in which alien invasion brings earthly enemies together, may be at his best in the "Great War" series and its follow-up, "American Empire."
One thing for sure. His mode of achieving an alternative reality is certainly safer, and much more legal, than some other means.
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