Friday Favorites: June 13
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- June
- 13
After a lengthy discussion about free speech with Robert Freeman, executive director of the Department of State’s Committee on Open Government, this afternoon, I couldn’t help turning to a more relaxing topic and I asked him to offer some personal book suggestions.
Without pausing for more than a second, Freeman, an attorney who really seems to enjoy helping us reporters understand Freedom of Information and Open Government laws, tossed out titles of two neat-sounding novels:
A favorite book:
“The Bel Canto” (HarperCollins, 2001; Harper Perennial, 2005) by Ann Patchett, who also wrote a novel called “Run.” Freeman said he likes Bel Canto because it considers the means in which we communicate — love, art and politics. It takes place, I think, in Lima, Peru and I thought it was a great novel.” In 2002, she won the PEN/Faulkner award for this novel, her fourth, published in 2001.
Her biography says she graduated from Sarah Lawrence College.
What he is reading now:
• “Brookland” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Emily Barton.
It is a very unusual novel, he said, describing it as a sort of historical fiction about a young woman who runs her father’s distillery in Brooklyn and has a dream to build a bridge to Manhattan at the turn of the century.
“I didn’t think I was going to be interesting, but it really is,” Freeman said.
This entry was posted
on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 5:44 pm by Barbara Nackman.
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A municipal reporter for The Journal News since 1997, 
