Underrated Reads

We Are Taking Only What We Need: Stories – by Stephanie Powell Watts

Posted on May 31, 2018 by J D Jung

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “What was I thinking? The restaurant was a fishbowl full of floor-to-ceiling windows. Just beyond the parking lot Highway 18 looked like a runway, a straight shot, launching me anywhere…until my eyes settled on the across-the-street hamburger joint…making me forget that I was in the middle of my life, in the…

Posted in Culture, Short stories | Tagged African-American, North Carolina, rural America | Comments Off

15 Steps to Healthy Living: Learn how to naturally lose weight, gain energy and live a healthy enhanced lifestyle – Gordon Fimreite

Posted on May 29, 2018 by J D Jung

(Reviewed by Jeyran Main) 15 Steps to Healthy Living is a well-being, self-help book written primarily to assist people in naturally losing weight and living a healthy life by gaining the right energy. The author demonstrates 15 ways of achieving such a goal by using his grandmother as an example. He uses her success in…

Posted in Health and Fitness, How do I do that?, Your Best Self | Tagged health, nutrition, supplements | Comments Off

An UnderratedRead Revisited: The Dying Crapshooter’s Blues – David Fulmer

Posted on May 27, 2018 by J D Jung

(Reviewed by JD Jung) Atlanta, 1923: In the midst of Prohibition, the city is seething with corruption, bootlegging, narcotics, gambling, and counterfeiting scams. This would seem the perfect scenario for Joe “Indian Joe” Rose to drift into town, as he does every year or so, to try to make some cash. Actually, Joe couldn’t have…

Posted in Revisited | Tagged crime fiction, Historical fiction, jazz | Comments Off

The Skin Room – Morgan Fleetwood

Posted on May 22, 2018 by J D Jung

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “…I was already imagining her insides ---I am not one to stop at the body naked. My imagination ran behind the flesh, into the pulp. I imagined her glistening innards, her yellow and purple heart, the cool pink exit of her colon.” Alex Melville: 32 years old, freelance translator, serial…

Posted in Crime, Mystery and Thrillers, Dark/Sordid/Bizarre | Tagged crime fiction, psychological thriller, serial killers, suspense | Comments Off

The Ghetto Swinger: A Berlin Jazz-Legend Remembers – Coco Schumann (Author), John Howard (Translator)

Posted on May 18, 2018 by J D Jung

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “I am a musician, a musician who was imprisoned in a concentration camp, not a concentration camp inmate who also plays some music. The camps and the fear fundamentally changed my life, but it was shaped by music and music did its work well." Coco Schumann considered himself both a…

Posted in Bios and Memoirs, Music inspired, Reviewers' Top Picks | Tagged anti-antisemitism, Berlin, Germany, jazz, music, Nazism | Comments Off

Songs to New York – Myrtle Brooks

Posted on May 15, 2018 by J D Jung

(Reviewed by Pat Luboff) “Does she live in the subway?” “Non, non, mon fils. She rented an apartment across from the park because the Washington Square Arch reminds her of L’Arc de Triomphe.” “What does the Lamplady eat?” “Hmmm…the moon is her favorite dish.” Songs to…

Posted in More non-fiction, Reviewers' Top Picks | Tagged book reviews, fiction, New York City, short books, short stories | Comments Off

A Tongue in the Sink: The Harrowing Adventures of a Baby Boomer Childhood – Dennis Fried

Posted on May 13, 2018 by J D Jung

(Reviewed by Pat Luboff) I swear I am going to die laughing if I have enough wits about me as I breathe my last to remember one particular sentence in this book! I’m not going to tell you which one, because yours may be a different one, but amid all the many hilarious sentences, I…

Posted in Bios and Memoirs, Humor & Satire, Reviewers' Top Picks | Tagged baby-boomers, New York | Comments Off

Woodcutter – Shaun Baines

Posted on May 10, 2018 by J D Jung

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “He made you as indifferent to human suffering as the fucking moon. I’ve done my fair share of evil, but he went too far with you. You were his atom bomb, something that couldn’t be stopped once it exploded.” Ed Dayton, the patriarch of a powerful and brutal crime family…

Posted in Crime, Mystery and Thrillers | Tagged book reviews. fiction, British crime, suspense | Comments Off

Verklempt – Peter Sichrovsky (Author), Ari Roth (Foreword), John Howard (Translator)

Posted on May 6, 2018 by J D Jung

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “Thomas remained a man without a past, without memories, without old photographs and without stories from earlier years.” He is just one of the many Jews who chose to live in a land where their parents were once hunted down. It’s around 1985 and whether it’s Berlin or Vienna, “The children…

Posted in Reviewers' Top Picks, World Literature | Tagged Austria, Germany, Judaism, Poland, Prague, short stories | Comments Off

Hemingway’s Havana: A Reflection of the Writer’s Life in Cuba – Robert Wheeler

Posted on May 3, 2018 by J D Jung

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “So much of Havana, and Cuba, centers on the sea, and in this beautiful but merciless sea lies a part of Hemingway’s spirit and a vast part of his literary genius.” The sea, along with Cuba’s landscape, architecture, and most of all, its people, affected Hemingway’s writing and prompted him to…

Posted in Bios and Memoirs, Travel | Tagged Cuba, Havana, Hemingway | Comments Off