Don Noble's Book Reviews

Mondays at 7:45 a.m and 4:44 p.m.

Now a retired English professor at The University of Alabama, Dr. Noble's specialties are Southern and American literature.  He also hosts Bookmark on Alabama Public Television.

Don Noble's reviews can be heard most Mondays at 7:45am and 4:44pm.  and have been made possible in part through grants from the Alabama State Council for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

To listen to the audio version of Dr. Noble's reviews, just click on the book title to be taken to the full page.  Audio is found either at the very beginning of the transcript or at the bottom of the page.

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Credit Alabama State Council on the Arts

Dr. Noble's Book Reviews are made possible in part with a grant from The Alabama State Council on the Arts, with the support of The University of Alabama, and from the generous support from our listeners.  Thank you!

A Tragic Honesty

By • Nov 10, 2003

In conversation, Yates was courteous, but not very communicative. Since he smoked four packs a day, had terminal emphysema, and had had pneumonia, pleurosis, and tuberculosis, he had little breath to spare.

By Don Noble

Beyond the Burning Bus

By • Oct 27, 2003

The mob, which had followed in a convoy, attacked, burned the bus, and beat, brutally, the riders who fled the flames.

By Don Noble

Beyond the Burning Bus

Lunch at the Piccadilly

By • Oct 13, 2003

"We need a worldwide movement that will work to make churches and nursing homes interchangeable."

By Don Noble

Lunch at the Piccadilly

Clyde Edgerton is without doubt one of the funniest authors working today. But, in his sixth novel, Lunch at the Piccadilly, he has chosen as his subject the nursing home: old, ill, crippled, even dying people. Is this funny? Can it be made funny? Yes, it can, and at the same time a thoughtful and respectful tone is maintained.

In a Temple of Trees

By • Oct 6, 2003

Do not think you can give this novel to your old aunt for Christmas, but it may be, if you are made of sturdy stuff, you can read it yourself.

By Don Noble

In a Temple of Trees

The Keeper's Son

By • Sep 22, 2003

German submarines sank over 400 merchant vessels and some warships before the United States got convoys organized and protected and began to bring to bear the technologies of radar, sonar, air patrols, coastal blackouts, and all the rest.

By Don Noble

The Keeper's Son

Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe, Vol. II

By • Sep 15, 2003

In "A Roadside Resurrection," by Larry Brown, the first piece in Sonny Brewer's second volume of Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe, one might wish the idiot in question had been locked up by the state, but he hasn't. He's in the basement.

By Don Noble

Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe, Vol. II

My Mother's Witness

By • Sep 8, 2003

Carolyn Haines, who has for the last few years been writing the delightful "Bones" mystery series, set in Mississippi, has here written her first nonfiction book. My Mother's Witness: The Peggy Morgan Story is a kind of dual biography of both Peggy Morgan and her mother, Inez.

By Don Noble

My Mother's Witness

A Thin Difference

By • Sep 1, 2003

The prolific Frank Turner Hollon has just published his third novel. At first, A Thin Difference seems like many another crime novel you have read.

By Don Noble

A Thin Difference

Goodnight, Nobody

By • Aug 25, 2003

Goodnight, Nobody follows the novel Divining Rod and the story collection Dogfight and Other Stories. Knight, originally from Mobile and now at the University of Tennessee, is building himself an impressive career.

By Don Noble

Goodnight, Nobody

Summer Snow

By • Aug 18, 2003

Harris recounts the day in the third grade when a group of white dentists came to her elementary school and provided free services. They took no pay, but neither did they drill and save teeth: they only pulled decaying teeth.

By Don Noble

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