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Joe’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Joe’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Joe Kraus’s Followers (136)
1,420 books
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21 friends
1,107 books
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23 friends
14,879 books
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3,881 friends
1,715 books
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2,436 friends
3,823 books
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283 friends
3,198 books
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18 friends
127 books
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4,513 friends
1,860 books
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34 friends
More friends…
Joe Kraus
Goodreads Author
Member Since
June 2009
URL
https://www.goodreads.com/joekraus
More books by Joe Kraus…
Joe’s Recent Updates
"Zweig's last work focuses on the effects of psychological torture practiced by the Gestapo on a Viennese attorney. The unnamed man faces the world chess champion to a game while the two are on a ship headed to South America. So short, yet so profound"
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"I Never Saw Another Butterfly (1959) is a book collection for poems and drawings by children who were murdered in a Nazi concentration camp. I own the book. I am only writing this “review” now because someone liked my having rated it four stars. This"
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"in 1960’s “I Like it Cool,” Lariar, writing as Michael Lawrence, again returns to his beatnik themed detective stories. This time the cover screams that private eye Johnny Amsterdam is the “eye with a beard” and that he “squares off with the world of"
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Joe Kraus
rated a book it was amazing
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If I could, I would ask Nicholas Lemann to blurb the memoir I am trying to write now. That’s because, in this book, he does many of the things I hope I can do. And he does them well. At one level, this is a multi-generational family history. We get fai ...more |
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Joe Kraus
rated a book it was amazing
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When my son thoughtfully gave this one to me for my birthday, I thought it was Tolkien kitsch, a series of drawings by people who’d read the trilogy once or twice and who wanted to share their fan-fictional imaginings. This turns out to be a serious c ...more |
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Joe Kraus
rated a book liked it
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This is a book you can tell from its cover. Look at that illustration and you’ll see something quirky and colorful…but also two-dimensional. And this book is quirky and colorful but, ultimately, without much depth. I was excited to read this one becaus ...more |
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Joe Kraus
rated a book it was amazing
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I heard about this one from the New York Times when the reviewer said she’d read it in one sitting. Well, it took me a little more than two sittings, but I get the point. This one opens with our protagonist, Callie, the newly appointed chief of police ...more |
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Joe Kraus
rated a book really liked it
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I am reviewing this one for an academic publication so just a few informal reactions. I spent a good bit of time on Hecht’s A Flag is Born in a long-ago life as editor of Chicago Jewish History. My friend Walter Roth wrote a piece on it, and I edited, ...more |
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Joe Kraus
rated a book really liked it
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We’re in something of a golden age of the “Groundhog Day” style time-loop story. Groundhog Day itself, the movie, is a masterpiece, and I love Claire North’s The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. Ken Grimwood’s Replay is pretty good, too. The trope ...more |
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“You can't choose where you belong, and where you don't. But what if the place you don't belong is the only place you have left?”
― The Ghosts of Belfast
― The Ghosts of Belfast
“"Wonderful things can happen", Vincent said, "when you plant seeds of distrust in a garden of assholes."”
― Glitz
― Glitz
“Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing
1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
―
1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
―
“I see no reason to keep silent about my enjoyment of the sound of my own voice as I work. ”
― Loitering with Intent
― Loitering with Intent
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