Book Reviews

"My favorite book is 'Runaway Ralph' by Beverly Cleary. The main character, Ralph, wants to run away to go where his friend Keith is, but it is hard to get there. However, he finally gets there by avoiding obstacles. I know you will love this book because it is exciting, thrilling and amazing."-- Alexander YabutJoppa View Elementary"My favorite book is 'The Berenstain Bears' Science Fair' by Stan and Jan Berenstain. Not only is it fun to read, but it also informs you about solids, gases, liquids and energy.

Jimmy Korderas is a friend of mine, so I wanted to unequivocally love “The Three Count.” But unfortunately, in the end I'm left more with mixed emotions. My problem with the book, if you can call it that, is one of perspective. There are two parts to the book in my opinion: the first I enjoyed and found quite fascinating, and the other part just wasn't for me. The part of the book that I loved was the “getting there” portion of his story.  Jimmy's journey from fan to WWE referee is a remarkable tale, one I doubt will ever be duplicated.

Abe Bortz, the Social Security Administration's first historian and a voracious book collector and reviewer, died Tuesday of lymphoma at his home in Pikesville. He was 93. Dr. Bortz grew up in Cincinnati, graduating from high school there in 1937 and earning a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Cincinnati in 1941. He was drafted into the Army the next year and served first as a lieutenant and then as a captain in the military-supply Quartermaster Corps. He saw Buchenwald, one of the German concentration camps, soon after the Army liberated it in 1945.

Eileen S. Tarcay, who had taught English and journalism at what is now Coppin State University and was a prolific contributor of freelance articles to The Baltimore Sun, died Feb. 18 from complications of a stroke at a Salt Lake City nursing home. The former Homeland resident was 97. The former Eileen Schultz was born in Hiawatha, Utah, and was raised there and in Latuda, Utah, both coal-mining towns. After graduating from St. Mary of the Wasatch High School in Salt Lake City in 1931, she earned a bachelor's degree in English in 1935 at the University of Utah.

Charles Adam Fecher, a self-taught Baltimore scholar, author and editor who undertook the formidable task of editing the controversial diaries of H.L. Mencken, died Monday of respiratory failure at St. Agnes Hospital. The longtime Govans and Rodgers Forge resident, who was living at St. Elizabeth's Home for Nursing Care in Southwest Baltimore, was 94. "Charles Fecher was an erudite and superior writer, the giant among Mencken scholars," said Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, author of "Mencken: The American Iconoclast," and editor of "Mencken and Sara: A Life in Letters.

"The past is obdurate. It doesn't want to change. " The past is also a dangerous, fickle place - and woe to anyone who dares alter it. That's the mantra coursing through "11/22/63. " Stephen   King's  mammoth, generous and thrilling novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He is Jake Epping, a divorced, 35-year-old high school English teacher from Lisbon, Maine, who discovers a time-travel portal in the pantry of a neighborhood diner.

'Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City,' by Antero Pietila (Ivan R. Dee, 320 pages, $28.95) Builder James W. Rouse is remembered as a visionary because of his shopping malls and new towns, like Columbia - promoted as free of racial discrimination. But Rouse had another, less egalitarian side, according to Antero Pietila, a former Baltimore Sun reporter and editorial writer. That side had shown itself a few years earlier in 1951 when, as vice president of the Northwood Co., Rouse looked the other way as blacks and Jews were excluded from the Northwood community.

Noah's Compass, by Anne Tyler. Alfred A. Knopf. $25.95 "You're the only Baltimorean I know who leaves his front door unlocked," Liam Pennywell's ex-wife tells him. "Even though you've had a burglary. But then any time someone walks in you complain that they're intruding. ... Here's solitary sad old Liam, only God help anybody who steps in and tries to get close." The main character in Anne Tyler's 18th novel, Liam sometimes senses that his life is "drying up and hardening, like one of those mouse carcasses you find beneath a radiator."

When I heard that Brian Billick had written a book, I was pretty stoked. Finally, I thought, we'll get the inside story on his surprising dismissal by the Ravens, his up-and-down relationship with team owner Steve Bisciotti, that strange Super Bowl news conference during which he chastised the media for its treatment of Ray Lewis ... and a lot of the other behind-the-purple-curtain stuff that we've all been wondering about since he was fired after the...

How to Train with a T. Rex and Win 8 Gold Medals Michael Phelps and Alan Abrahamson (Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, $17.99) In the interest of full disclosure, let me say upfront that I really wanted to make fun of Michael Phelps' new children's book, How to Train with a T. Rex and Win Eight Gold Medals. I wanted to make a bunch of jokes about a cartoon version of Phelps telling a cartoon Ms. California that everyone deserves the right to get married, and reminding kids that cell phone cameras will be confiscated every time he and his cartoon posse walk into a room.

Let's cut to the chase: Does Harry Potter, teenage wizard, survive to the very end of the blockbuster series by J.K. Rowling? Is Severus Snape, the greasy-locked Potions master at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a misunderstood double agent on the side of Truth, Justice and Muggle Rights, or merely the cleverest and most diabolical minion of the Dark Lord? And, which of the book's lovable major characters meets a premature, albeit noble demise?