Category: Book review
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Review: “That’s My Moon Over Court Street — Dispatches from a Life in Flint” resonates with “improbable happiness” and moving beyond ghosts
By Robert Thomas That’s My Moon Over Court Street: Dispatches from a life in Flint is an intimate time capsule of a life in Flint composed of Jan Worth-Nelson’s collected columns from East Village Magazine, 2007- 2022. “My adult life in Flint,” she writes in her Introduction, “has had some dark times, and I haven’t…
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Commentary: Are YOU being represented? Flint council members are elected to take a stand. Abstaining shirks their duty
By Christopher Frye Editor of Flint: Our Community, Our Voice Election Day 2022 is upon us. It is the day that We The People make our choices known on various ballot issues and elect Representatives to diverse legislative bodies from local school boards to our representatives in Congress. Allow me to repeat…we are voting…
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A Review: Starry Messenger – Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization (2022)
By Bob Thomas To gain a fresher perspective on the state of our current human beingness, I stepped into space with astrophysicist/educator Neil DeGrasse Tyson as my starry messenger. His book opens with an astronaut’s perspective: You develop instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a…
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Totem Books hosts Carrie Walling’s “Human Rights and Justice for All” book launch
By Paul Rozycki Carrie Booth Walling introduced her new book “Human Rights and Justice for All: Demanding Dignity in the United States and Around the World” at a well-attended kickoff event Thurs. Aug. 11, at Totem Books in Flint. Dawn Jones of ABC 12 TV conducted the interview and was moderator as Walling discussed the…
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Review: Connor Coyne’s URBANTASM Book Four: THE SPRING STORM finishes the gripping allegory with a hammer blow
By Robert Thomas The publication of the fourth and final book of Flint author Connor Coyne’s serial novel, URBANTASM, marks the finale of his epic allegory set in the heart of the American Rust Belt in the fictional city of Akawe, Michigan, somewhere north of Detroit. As befits any gripping serial, The Spring Storm delivers…
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Profile: “What if he had opened his eyes?” Kelsey Ronan on grief, healing, breaking a curse in “Chevy in the Hole”
By Jan Worth-Nelson Twelve years ago, Kelsey Ronan found her longtime partner Bryan dead of a heroin overdose in their Flint apartment. Out of what she describes as an onslaught of grief, anger, loss, and finally, a hard-won, unsentimental hope, the novel Chevy in the Hole was born. For Ronan, the book emerged from one…
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Book review: Flint, perplexing attractions loom large in Kelsey Ronan’s “thoughtful, fascinating” debut novel “Chevy in the Hole”
By Bob Campbell Reading Chevy in the Hole, the debut novel by Flint-native Kelsey Ronan, a question continued to nag me: What did Monae see in August that would allow such a relationship to take root? He’s a nerdy, recovering drug addict who nearly died after overdosing in the bathroom of a Detroit farm-to-table restaurant…
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Book Review: Connor Coyne’s mighty opus compels in URBANTASM: Book Three — The Darkest Road
By Robert Thomas Urbantasm is categorized as a magical teen noir serial novel composed of four books. The Darkest Road is Book Three of the series created by Flint writer Connor Coyne. But it is much more than a teen novel. It is a massive creation from Coyne’s omnivorous mind, and an often gripping evocation…
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Book Review: “Standpipe–Delivering Water to Flint” an ode to one man’s witness of troubled times
By Jan Worth-Nelson I was prepared to dislike and resent David Hardin’s new book, Standpipe: Delivering Water in Flint. I expected to rail against it and pronounce my irritation with the tedious audacity of yet another out-of-towner carpetbagging into town and making something of the Flint Water Crisis for their own aggrandizement. Hardin, David Standpipe: Delivering…
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