I often get book recommendations from friends – we all do, I suppose. You generally know whose taste in books is in line with your own and you sort the recs out that way. In the case of Haruki Murakami, my reading friends are at different ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, a friend with excellent taste (but… Read more
I hate the cold. I really, really, really hate to be cold. Still, I have always loved tales of exploration and adventure, and I have several books about the exploration of the Arctic Circle in my library. The Terror combines a bit of history and a bit of mystery with excellent descriptions of the frozen north and a little Eskimo… Read more
This is the best thing I’ve read from Stephen King in years. Nothing he’s written since The Green Mile kept me as consistently interested and engaged. (Cell was close, but possibly because I liked the idea of all those folks walking along, jabbering on their phones, being slaughtered in one fell swoop; I’m mean that way.) The early King books… Read more
I love Angela Carter’s writing. The stories in this collection are full of atmosphere – dark and moody, sensual, sometimes playful. Here, she takes an assortment of fairy tales and reworks them with a ‘sexier’ and more ‘feminist’ slant. If you know your fairy tales, that might be very effective. Personally, I thought her retelling of Puss-in-Boots was adorable, but… Read more
In the introduction to this book, Christopher Golden says of the author: Joe Hill is one stealthy bastard. Indeed he is. This is a nice assortment of stories – some obviously horror, some strange and disturbing, some rather sweet. The title piece read more like a love story than a ghost story. “Best New Horror” makes me think a bit… Read more
I read this book on a flight between Cleveland and Minneapolis, where I frequently travel on business. I had finished my previous book while waiting to board and opened this one while waiting to taxi – since the first scene takes place on an airplane, it seemed a good omen. Ruth Reichl spent 6 years as the restaurant critic for… Read more
A woman is found wandering along the side of the road, dazed and confused, after a hit and run accident. She tells the police officer at the scene that she is one of the “Bethany girls”, two sisters who disappeared from a shopping mall almost 30 years earlier. But that is virtually all she’ll tell them – she used to… Read more
Let me start off by saying this: I strongly, strongly recommend getting this as an audiobook. Unless you can read it with a variety of strong Irish accents in your head, pronounce the Celtic placenames and sing in Gaelic, you are really missing out. Gerry O’Brien does a fabulous job and his work really adds to the story. This is… Read more
I’ll admit that the deciding factor in buying this book was the photo of the author, Myla Goldberg, on the back cover. I took one look at her big glasses, chunky shoes and Pippi Longstocking tights and thought, “oh, I definitely want to read what she has to say!” And I was not disappointed. Eliza has never been the standout… Read more
Victorine, a young married woman with two children, leaves an unhappy marriage and escapes to Indochina with her childhood sweetheart. They build a life there in the hot, humid weather, exotic flowers and swirls of opium smoke. Then, after 10 years, she goes back to France, back to her husband. She starts out planning to finally end things with him… Read more