Book Review: Cross Creek

By Neil Hoffmann

We are in Maine and I have been reading voraciously. Not since childhood summer vacations have I read so much. I am bewitched.
    Nothing contemporary. I am reading Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's Cross Creek, a trip into another time and place, her home in rural Florida orange groves in the 30’s [the book came out in 1942, when the author, whose life spanned 1896-1953, was 46]. The copy I found on a book shelf in the rental we’re staying in is a first edition and inscribed “Ruth Lunt April 1942,” a month before my birthday. Someone I know visited the house represented on the book’s dust jacket not long ago. She reported that the house was virtually as Rawlings left it, including her typewriter and car.

Movie Review: Genius

Who is the genius?

By Jonathan Price

Genius is a movie you’re likely to miss, but shouldn’t. In our little burg it got two stars out of four, an invitation to skip it, and ran for perhaps one week at the local art theatre downtown. It was previewed in advance a number of times, but apparently never made it out of its dim downtown venue, and may have been seen by 300 people – perhaps – in a metropolitan area of one million.