Ever dream of retiring and running a bookstore? Apparently, a lot of people do and there’s a bookshop in Scotland that will let you try the dream on for size. There’s a great article in The Independent. The Open Book shop in Scotland’s “national book town” of Wigtown has been listed on room-letting website AirBnB offering wordy holidaymakers the chance… Read more
“At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.” – Alberto Manguel, Argentine-born writer and essayist Read more
More new books – this time, a legal thriller. (Love those!) From Kevin Egan, The Missing Piece: The Salvus Treasure is a fabulous hoard of ancient Roman silver, worth a total of seventy million dollars. Uncovered decades ago under disputed circumstances, the treasure has been claimed by various parties, some of whom will stop at nothing to secure full ownership of… Read more
If you haven’t been following the controversy swirling around this year’s Hugo Awards, there’s a great article over at Wired that explains it all. Definitely recommended reading. I don’t read as much science fiction as I used to, sadly, but I still use the Hugo Awards to guide some of my choices. I don’t want to see them hijacked for… Read more
Now, here’s the mark of a very limited mind: I don’t read books by people who have betrayed the Motherland. – Vladimir Putin, president of Russia Read more
This one comes from my local library. I heard a bit about it on the radio and was so intrigued I ran right to my computer and requested it: My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past by Jennifer Teege: When Jennifer Teege, a German-Nigerian woman, happened to pluck a library book from the shelf,… Read more
This week in New on the Shelves, I’ve got the final installment in Gillian Philip’s Rebel Angel series, Icefall: Death stalks Seth MacGregor’s clan in their otherworld exile. Kate NicNiven is close to ultimate victory, and she is determined that nothing will keep her from it. Not even the thing that took her soul: the horror that lurks in the sea caves. But… Read more
When is a vampire story not a vampire story? Suffer the Children by Craig DiLouie is a story with vampires, but it’s not really about them. It’s about parents and children, and what a parent will do to save their child. It’s about what one is willing to give…and what the other is willing to take. The setting is the small… Read more