Cogan’s Reviews “Breaking Even” starts out thus: “What Val saw as his long period of involuntary servitude was about to come to an end. In the prison movie parlance he liked to affect, he had done his ‘hard time.’ He had finally reached his eighteenth birthday, and Texas law entitled him to make his own […]
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Cogan’s Reviews One of the problems with reviewing this short but interesting novel is that the plot is based on a couple of surprises. To say too much about it would spoil the story. Once the action gets well underway the reader is presented with a surprising development involving one of the main characters. At […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews I must confess I had never seen or heard of this volume until very recently and I was rather surprised to see the publication date on it – 1989. Obviously it has been around along time. The Dictionary is based on a rather neat and simple idea to help us learn new words […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews The story begins in 1941, at the time America went to war with Japan and Germany. It concerns the Salazar family, poor farmers in Chihuahua. The grandfather, Sebastian, knows he is dying and he advises the family to move to the United States. He reasons that because of the war the Americans will […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews Here’s an unusual volume with ten individual authors, each of whom is independent of the other nine except for the fact they all reside – either full or part-time – in the Lake Chapala area of Mexico. Their book consists of some 45 or more pieces of fiction and non-fiction plus a poem […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews Here is the history of Mexico in the last two or three decades – and what a history it is. It’s the story of how a dictatorship eventually found its way toward becoming a democracy. As stories go, this one has everything – political corruption, student demonstrations leading to a massacre, earthquakes, citizen […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews Here’s a story that takes in a complete life, from childhood well into adulthood, and from rags to riches. It’s a story that is of interest to we residents in the Lake Chapala area as it starts out in Ajijic and covers a fair number of years there – or should I say here. […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews There are two occasions when writing a book review is a particularly pleasant experience. One is when you hated the book and now you have the opportunity to punish the author for wasting your time and money. The other is when you really loved the book and you just want to say nice […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews Frankly, I find this a rather lightweight collection of stories. And, as I’ve never read anything else by Garcia Marquez I’m left wondering where he got his great reputation. I guess I should get around to reading those better known works of his, like One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera and […]
Continue ReadingPosted by Renee on July 27, 1999 Ah–the adventure continues! I received my permiso last week and the boda civil is planned for 8/7. For those of you who have seen my previous postings, this is an update. For new readers, this is one gringa’s encounters with Mexican bureaucracy–my fiancé is from Monterrey, we live […]
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