I loved this book so much that I posted a pre-review review, urging you all to go out and buy the book. It has been a long time since a book made me want to shout out loud and dance around my hotel room, but this book did. It is the story of the survivors of the Go-Away War, a… Read more
This is one of those reviews that needs to percolate for a little while, but I wanted to give you just a taste of how I felt about this book: I was in bed, in my hotel, enjoying a quiet evening of reading. In the big climactic scene of this book, when a certain character (who must remain nameless in… Read more
The Spanish Bow is an amazing look at a tumultuous period in Spanish history. Feliu Delargo is a young man who always seems to profit from his tragedies. His father’s death brings him his first real treasure: a cello bow. Because of a hip injury during his birth, he cannot play his violin standing up, so he plays it sitting… Read more
What I learned from this book: if you are about to drive your car over a cliff so that it crashes and catches fire, this is not the time to spill a bottle of bourbon in your lap. That is catastrophically bad timing. The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson is a love story, but an unusual one. The Narrator (who is… Read more
It kills me, sometimes, how people die.–Death This is an unusual review for me. Normally, I like to let a book settle a bit, think about what I want to say and give my opinions time to come together. I finished The Book Thief only 9 hours ago. By the time I got through the last CD I was a… Read more
“REPLACE THE GOD ANCHORS! WHO IS GUARDING THE NATION! WHERE IS OUR BEER!” These are the sort of gods I can relate to. In Terry Pratchett’s new book, Nation, the gods are angry and churlish. They berate Mau, lone survivor of an enormous tidal wave, for not singing the proper songs, doing the proper chants, or bringing them their daily… Read more
The problem with reading a book about the Salem witch trials is that you know how it ends, and you know it is going to end badly. It’s like reading a book about the Titanic – you know the boat is going to sink, and even if the characters survive, they’re going to get wet. This was the undercurrent running… Read more
Twelve-year-old Ren is an orphan. He was pushed through the tiny gate at St. Anthony’s on a rainy night when he was just an infant and already his life had been more difficult than most: Ren was missing his left hand. Despite that dreadful beginning, Ren’s life seems steady enough. He has a roof over his head, food in his… Read more
Harry Sullivan reads renovations the way a fortune teller reads tea leaves: he can predict the course of your marriage by the tiles you’ve chosen for the master bath. At the end of a project, when he has been part of your family and had access to your most intimate spaces, he knows more about you than anyone else. In… Read more
I’ve been reading a lot of short story collections lately, not my usual fare, but short stories are a good way to get a sense of a writer, seeing how he or she handles a number of different plotlines, looking at the way stories develop, the way characters are presented and the patterns that emerge over the course of the… Read more