Don Bott (Author of 40 Years, 40 Stories)

Don Bott wants to read The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Sep 06, 2026 07:22AM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Don Bott rated a book really liked it Case Histories (Jackson Brodie, #1) by Kate Atkinson	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
As August is winding down, I realized that I’ve not enjoyed many “summer reads.” Hearing a NYT book critic highly praise “Case Histories,” I decided to check it out. Overall, I enjoyed the book. In ways, it was outstanding, specifically the richness o ...more
Aug 23, 2026 01:21PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Case Histories by Kate Atkinson <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Don Bott rated a book it was ok Now I Surrender by Álvaro Enrigue	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The idea behind this book is ambitious — perhaps overambitious. There really multiple storylines: 1) Mexican woman, Camila, is captured by Apaches, who had previously destroyed her ranch and killed her family; 2) A lieutenant colonel gathers a ragtag ...more
Aug 20, 2026 02:00PM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Now I Surrender by Álvaro Enrigue. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Now I Surrender by Álvaro Enrigue <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Don Bott rated a book it was amazing Land by Maggie O'Farrell (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is a phenomenal story — about a family, about a people, about a land. If this book were not such a powerful tribute to this troubled country, it would still be a compelling story about a family made up of six remarkable characters. Tomas is the tr ...more
Aug 12, 2026 04:28PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Land by Maggie O'Farrell. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Land by Maggie O'Farrell <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Don Bott rated a book liked it Angel Down by Daniel Kraus (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
My book club almost always chooses titles that are highly praised, especially by critics. Upon finishing the work, I am inevitably impressed by the overall structure or the sentence crafting or the risks taken. Sometimes I love the reading experience ...more
Aug 12, 2026 07:12AM · like · see review
Don Bott wants to read The Dry (Aaron Falk, #1) by Jane Harper (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Aug 05, 2026 10:48AM · like
Don Bott wants to read Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jul 16, 2026 12:12PM · 1 like · like
Don Bott rated a book it was amazing The Goddess of Warsaw by Lisa Barr (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I always go into Holocaust literature with more than a little trepidation. How disturbing will this story be? How much will I want to toss away the book? Was it disturbing? To be sure. But also, it told a story in a new way — several new ways, in fact ...more
Jul 03, 2026 02:50PM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Goddess of Warsaw by Lisa Barr. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Goddess of Warsaw by Lisa Barr <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Don Bott wants to read The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jul 01, 2026 08:06PM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Don Bott wants to read Old Filth (Old Filth, #1) by Jane Gardam	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jul 01, 2026 07:57PM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Old Filth by Jane Gardam. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Old Filth by Jane Gardam <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

Don Bott wants to read

The Stone Diaries
by Carol Shields

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Case Histories (Jackson Brodie, #1)
by Kate Atkinson

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As August is winding down, I realized that I’ve not enjoyed many “summer reads.” Hearing a NYT book critic highly praise “Case Histories,” I decided to check it out.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. In ways, it was outstanding, specifically the richness o As August is winding down, I realized that I’ve not enjoyed many “summer reads.” Hearing a NYT book critic highly praise “Case Histories,” I decided to check it out.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. In ways, it was outstanding, specifically the richness of characters and the narrative voice. In other ways, it fell short, especially at the end, when the author seems to be desperately trying to wrap up the many (too many?) storylines.

The author, Kate Atkinson, chooses an unusual way to present what is largely a crime/investigation story. She tells the stories of family members both when a crime occurs many years ago and again in the contemporary time. Yes, we are looking at people who are suffering from loss and a lack of answers, but these characters are interesting and quirky. They often make us laugh.

The three cases — we would call them cold cases — all orbit around private investigator Jackson Brodie, a sad sack who has run into a lengthy run of bad luck. He deals with a three sisters who could hardly be more different as they try to figure what happened to their youngest sister decades before; he consoles a retired lawyer who years before lost his teenage daughter to a shooting in his workplace while he was out of the office (talk about survivor guilt); and finally he is tasked to find the daughter, long given up to adoption, of a woman who killed her husband.

There is a lot of unhappiness in this novel, in part because of the tragedies endured but also because of poor life choices. Amelia is a great example of someone who is miserable in her life and amusing as a character, especially when she is around her carefree sister Julia.

For all the fun of these characters, I think the book has two main flaws. One of the three stories does not hold up as well as the others, i.e., the Michelle / Caroline / axe murderer story. It could have been eliminated with more time devoted to the remaining stories.

The other flaw, already alluded to, is that there is just too much action at the end. It’s almost like the author was told that she had 30 pages to wrap things up for all the storylines. Answers came fast and furious, whether they made any sense at all. And mostly they didn’t.

The buildup for about three-quarters of the book is outstanding. I enjoyed how each chapter presents the story from a different perspective, often retelling an event we had already encountered one chapter before. But the end, the craziness of those final chapters, made me lose some of the love I initially had. Would I recommend “Case Histories”? Sure, but not as enthusiastically as I would have. ...more

Don Bott rated a book it was ok

Now I Surrender
by Álvaro Enrigue

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The idea behind this book is ambitious — perhaps overambitious.

There really multiple storylines: 1) Mexican woman, Camila, is captured by Apaches, who had previously destroyed her ranch and killed her family; 2) A lieutenant colonel gathers a ragtag ...more

Don Bott rated a book it was amazing

Land
by Maggie O'Farrell (Goodreads Author)

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This is a phenomenal story — about a family, about a people, about a land.

If this book were not such a powerful tribute to this troubled country, it would still be a compelling story about a family made up of six remarkable characters.

Tomas is the tr This is a phenomenal story — about a family, about a people, about a land.

If this book were not such a powerful tribute to this troubled country, it would still be a compelling story about a family made up of six remarkable characters.

Tomas is the troubled father, left alone to wander country roads as the Great Famine ravaged Ireland. His escape from a workhouse is because of his keen mind and his ability to read and write in both English and Gaelic. He becomes a surveyor, working for the British. He wants to preserve the old while the British want to overwrite it. At the beginning of the book he discovers a mystical water source amidst a dense copse of trees, and he is suddenly convinced he cannot conspire with the enemy, even if that means his family will descend into poverty.

Phina is Tomas’s strong wife, the family’s backbone. He once saved her, and later she saves him. She does what she can in very difficult times.

Enda is the oldest child, denied her hopes and dreams because, of course, she is a girl. She is the school’s top student, and her ambitions are limitless, even when society is constantly putting limits on those ambitions. Somehow she finds a way: taking on the role of an apprentice when such a role is expected to filled by a boy; learning to play the fiddle and dazzling every audience she encounters; finding a way to forge her own way to the New World. She is quite the character to root, but that doesn’t mean she can escape hardship or sadness.

Liam is the oldest boy. Like many in that role, he grows up idolizing and then emulating his father, only to suddenly and drastically shift to opposing him. As Tomas rejects the Catholic church, Liam begins his training to become a priest. He leaves Ireland to spread the gospel but returns hungry for family and home.

Rose seems like a lost character. She watches her two older siblings wander away in their personal searches for meaning. She, meanwhile, is left to be a caretaker, to be the responsible one. She does everything properly, follows every rule, until it just doesn’t matter and she must leave everything behind.

Eugene is the youngest child. He never speaks and yet, despite his obvious disabilities and social inadequacies, he is deeply tied to the land — the desolate but nevertheless rich piece of barren peninsula, where they live.

This story, especially in the middle, is a catalogue of catastrophes. At times, reading of the family’s many struggles can be painful. And yet this is the story of Ireland, especially around the time of the Famine and the decades following. There is hunger, rage, sadness, loss, confusion and a constant quest to hold onto some piece of national identity.

I have many Irish ancestors, and I feel I experienced in this family many of my own family’s heartbreaking stories. Maggie O’Farrell is a powerfully descriptive writer. Although I frequently called up an Irish map to try to acquaint myself with where this story takes place, I never really needed to do so. Her words set every scene perfectly. ...more

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Angel Down
by Daniel Kraus (Goodreads Author)

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My book club almost always chooses titles that are highly praised, especially by critics. Upon finishing the work, I am inevitably impressed by the overall structure or the sentence crafting or the risks taken. Sometimes I love the reading experience My book club almost always chooses titles that are highly praised, especially by critics. Upon finishing the work, I am inevitably impressed by the overall structure or the sentence crafting or the risks taken. Sometimes I love the reading experience; other times I respect the effort, even though reading was a struggle.

In the case of Angel Down, my experience was quite the struggle, though, as I write this, I am committed to being respectful of the writer’s accomplishment.

The action takes place during World War I, which is an interesting choice as warfare has dramatically changed since then. The narrator is a cynical American named Bagger, who prides himself on his ability to manipulate people and, not surprisingly, tends to look down on everyone he sees. He is part of a team of soldiers that is sent off to rescue shat they perceive to be a screaming soldier in No Man’s Land. However, they soon discover it is not a soldier but a fallen (wingless) angel.

For this group of five, the angel is almost like the gold in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre: beautiful and tempting, nothing like what it appears, a destroyer of alliances.

This element out of magical realism forces us to contemplate the madness of war, and the five soldiers who interact and compete for this angel represent different aspects of humanity. The author does a great job in choosing the characters who surround Bagger.

So is the book deep and provocative? Absolutely. But it is still difficult to read.

Most reviewers, in describing the writing style, will fixate on the appearance that the entire book is one sentence. I say “appearance” because, in fact, there are breaks everywhere, creating the illusion of paragraphs, and the long passages that resemble pieces of one neverending sentence are, in fact, smaller sentences with commas instead of periods. It is not one sentence; it’s a bizarre series of sometimes connected run on sentences.

To me, what is most worth focusing on is the writer’s use of figurative language. He writes like a poet, the phrases rich with metaphor that is not easy to grasp, the layers of description dense and overwhelming. I often thought, while reading, that I would love reading poetry from this author, knowing I could reread a poem several times to try to make sense of the ambiguity and to deconstruct the density of detail. But since this is prose and close to 300 pages, the task of multiple rereadings of passages was daunting and ultimately frustrating. To repeat what I said at the outset, I appreciate Krause’s style and the labor that went into this, but I didn’t love being a reader and slogging through it.

In terms of its literary value, it deserves higher than a 3, but my reader experience was lower than a 3, so I settled on that compromise. ...more

Don Bott wants to read

The Dry (Aaron Falk, #1)
by Jane Harper (Goodreads Author)

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Don Bott wants to read

Yesteryear
by Caro Claire Burke

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Don Bott rated a book it was amazing

The Goddess of Warsaw
by Lisa Barr (Goodreads Author)

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I always go into Holocaust literature with more than a little trepidation. How disturbing will this story be? How much will I want to toss away the book?

Was it disturbing? To be sure. But also, it told a story in a new way — several new ways, in fact ...more

Don Bott wants to read

The Sense of an Ending
by Julian Barnes

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Don Bott wants to read

Old Filth (Old Filth, #1)
by Jane Gardam

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Don’s Year In Books

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Don’s Friends (126)

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Preview — The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

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Preview — Land by Maggie O'Farrell

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Don’s Friend Comments

	40 Years, 40 Stories: Lessons for Educators in their First or Final Year of Anytime in Between it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 6 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	being Lehigh: an essay in photographs by H. Heist, Don Bott (Goodreads Author), Marvin Simmons 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1997 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Don’s Year In Books

Don Bott’s Followers (4)

Don’s Bookshelves

Don’s Friends (126)

2026 Reading Challenge

Don Bott

Goodreads Author

Combine EditionsDon Bott’s books

rssDon’s Recent Updates

See a Problem?

Preview — The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

See a Problem?

Preview — Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

See a Problem?

Preview — Now I Surrender by Álvaro Enrigue

See a Problem?

Preview — Land by Maggie O'Farrell

See a Problem?

Preview — The Goddess of Warsaw by Lisa Barr

See a Problem?

Preview — The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

See a Problem?

Preview — Old Filth by Jane Gardam

Don’s Friend Comments

Combine Editions
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