Note from Craig: It is great to be back in the music saddle writing for the Icon(s)! I hope everyone is doing well in my hometown area, and as always, thank you for reading. What songs do you use for daily motivation? Let the Icon(s) know in the comments!
Before building the nice field out at Village Park, the baseball teams for Bluffton High School played at the southeast corner of Harmon Field, near the railroad tracks. It also served for softball games. This was after Triplett Corporation used to sponsor excellent baseball teams. When they played, the diamond was in front of the stadium. I used to go to their games. They had talented players who were out of school. The games were highly competitive.
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny co-authored the intense political thriller State Of Terror, (Thorndike Press ISBN-13-1-4328-8983-8) a page-turning thriller on a grand scale. If you like insight into the intrigue of our political system, this book is written to your taste.
When I read for pure pleasure, I read Alice Hoffman. And nothing brings me more joy than her “Magic” books.
Beginning with Practical Magic from 1995, then enhanced by The Rules of Magic in 2017, also Magic Lessons in 2020, and now finishing with The Book of Magic (Simon and Schuster, ISBN: 978-9821-5148-5), Hoffman’s novels are masterworks of extraordinarily vivid magic-realism. These books are about books, family and love, in enchanting prose that opens your heart and mind to the possibilities that life has to offer.
With sixty nonfiction books to his name, Michael Benson speaks with an authority that's hard to deny. That is especially true with his latest, Gangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in Wartime America (Kensington Press, ISBN: 978-0-8065-4179-2).
In this April 2022 release, Benson's genius particularly shines. His research is unparalleled and easy to follow in this engaging page-turner. His skill in writing nonfiction results in a flowing scene of visualizations of the people and places in the time they occur in, 1938. All of the action is accurate and true; he's committed to the story and willing to go the distance it takes to present it.
It's been a while since I've written a review, as my wife had an emergency back surgery and an extended stay in the hospital that has kept me busy doing other things than writing.
But even as immediate as my time has been recently this book has been on my mind quite a bit. Once again, it comes recommended by a member of the Ada book club, and is justified as a good read.
