January 2012
4 posts
6 tags
The Queen's Man: A Medieval Mystery by Sharon Kay...
I will always have a soft spot in my heart for stories involving Eleanor of Aquitaine. Her biography has intrigued me since middle school, where I dressed up as her for a history project and made a pretty cool poster board. Eleanor was one of the most powerful women of the middle ages: she participated in the machinations behind two crusades, patronized the arts, supported a revolt against her...
8 tags
All Other Nights by Dara Horn (2009)
This stunning example of historical fiction has so much on its plate you’d think it would crack under the weight of its subjects. Happily, All Other Nights weaves its varying threads into an enthralling tapestry of cultural exploration and dedication. Set during the American Civil War, the novel follows a young Jewish spy whose missions force him into committing deep personal betrayals...
7 tags
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson...
This is a ride, to say the least. It’s the sort of thing you can read in three days, not because it’s fast-paced, but because the mystery is so intriguing you want to see how Larsson will puzzle it all out. Tightly wound and meticulously edited, this novel, while absorbing, was also profoundly disturbing. I’m not squeamish when it comes to tormented psychosexual literature...
9 tags
Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons (1938)
Oh, it’s so charming. I wasn’t surprised, but I was a touch relieved. I only knew Stella Gibbons from the delightful Cold Comfort Farm, which is just so much fun, and I was worried it might have been a one hit wonder. I’m talking about both the book and the film, but I love love love the film. Have you seen it? You should. Young Kate Beckinsale on a farm, with Rufus Sewell and...
December 2011
2 posts
8 tags
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (2005)
If you think, as I did upon first picking up this novel, that it is only about romance, know now that that is an underestimation of its depth and poignancy. The History of Love speaks of romantic love, and tenderly, but mostly from afar and in flashbacks. It is a remembrance of love. This exploration of what occurs in the human heart when that rush of passion has not faded, per say, but more...
8 tags
Dissolution by C. J. Samson (2003)
Ever since I read The Name of the Rose in high school, I’ve had a fixed interest in monastery-set mysteries. The cloistered atmosphere makes an excellent milieu for a detective story. It’s set up much like the grand estates that populate detective novels of the 1920s & 30s where everyone was up at the manor for the weekend and someone just happened to inconveniently die horribly,...
November 2011
1 post
7 tags
The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee...
A good friend of mine once said to me that he often finds young adult fiction frustrating because he considers it implausible that preteens are quicker on the uptake than adults. How is it that a bunch of eleven-year-olds are able to deduce rather complex mysteries while every nearby adult remains oblivious?
For him, I will now suggest The Mysterious Benedict Society because in this adventure,...
October 2011
4 posts
8 tags
World War Z by Max Brooks (2006)
Max Brooks’s fictional oral history is a fully developed, haunting take on what would happen if our world was overrun by the living dead. Told by the men and women who made it through this zombie apocalypse, each tale relates a unique experience of survival. World War Z’s means of describing the Great Panic of a zombie epidemic and its aftermath is surprisingly broad. I appreciated...
8 tags
The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant...
Helen Grant manages to capture that elusive, deliciously creepy atmosphere so often missing in modern-day horror stories. It’s not outright terror or gore that delivers such enjoyable fright, but a slow build of suspense. The Vanishing of Katharina Linden gives you enough room to catch your breath after each scare, which means you can remember how much fun it is to be spooked.
Set in the...
10 tags
City of Silver by Annamaria Alfieri (2009)
Alfieri’s dynamic debut thriller transports the reader to what I now recognize as a woefully underused setting: 17th century Peru. High in the mountains perches Potosí, a mining city that could nearly claim total responsibility for Spain’s extraordinary wealth during that time. But such fortune is not without a greater price (naturally), and here it breeds malignancy, desperation,...
9 tags
Anno Dracula by Kim Newman (1992)
It’s steampunk meets True Blood in this highly entertaining novel of Victorian England: Dracula has married the Queen, his offspring aim to take over every level of society, and Jack the Ripper is out there dispatching vampire prostitutes with sheer, grisly abandon. Charles Beauregard, a loyalist spy, has been dispatched to stop the murders, but the growing anti-vampire faction means there...
September 2011
4 posts
8 tags
Last Seen Alive by Dorothy Simpson (1985)
A classic cozy mystery, Simpson’s fifth novel featuring Inspector Luke Thanet fulfills any needs you might have for a charming detective novel that can take the edge off. My edition (pictured above) has “Murder Most British” across the cover, and it is that to a perfect T. The novel features a picturesque town, gossipy neighbors, and very little violence. It’s all quite...
10 tags
Eragon by Christopher Paolini (2002)
I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that so shamelessly displays its influences with only minor stabs at originality. It’s as though Paolini spent a weekend bingeing on Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and a documentary on Joseph Campbell and thought, “Hey, I can do that. Troubled hero + wizened guide + mystical order and associated creatures = multimillion dollar...
8 tags
The Outlander by Gil Adamson (2008)
There is something about a hunt. Regardless of which side is telling the story, the pursuer or the pursued, I find it inherently compelling. In this case, we follow the hunted: 19-year-old Mary Boulton, who has just murdered her husband and taken off into the mountains to escape the vengeance of his brothers. It’s a taut, lyrical journey into the wilderness of both of 1903 Idaho and the...
10 tags
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (2003)
The Devil in the White City is both riveting and carefully researched, which means it has shot to the top of my recommendation list for those who don’t mind a bit (er, a lot) of horror with their history lessons. Larson balances the story of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago with the despicable life and times of H. H. Holmes, one of the first documented serial killers in America. The...
August 2011
3 posts
5 tags
Warrener's Beastie: A Novel of the Deep by William...
Of all the things I was expecting when I picked up this giant novel “of the Deep,” crippling nostalgia for the 1960s drug scene was not one of them. At face value, Warrener’s Beastie attempts to relate the perils and adventure of cryptozoology when a somewhat fearful crew of intellectuals and seaman sally forth to prove the existence of the Vardinoy Monster, a decidedly more...
8 tags
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by...
As soon as I spied this novel at the bookstore, I knew it had to be mine. Illustrated with eerie, turn-of-the-century photographs, this young adult romp has all the qualities of a seriously spooky mystery: fantastical stories, a suspicious death, a trip to an isolated Welsh island, a sinister enemy with tentacles spewing out of its mouth… The set-up for this novel is strong and unique, and...
7 tags
Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg (1992)
The eponymous protagonist of this dark mystery is as harsh and unyielding as the ice she has studied throughout her life. Half Inuit and half Dane, Smilla was ripped from her native Greenland as youth by her Danish father and forced to westernize, an act she is never able to forgive or get over. Now unable to fully assimilate anywhere as an adult, Smilla awkwardly straddles both worlds by...
July 2011
4 posts
7 tags
The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (2011)
If you scroll down a bit, you’ll see a glowing and slightly worshipful review of The Name of the Wind, volume one of the Kingkiller Chronicle and the formal debut of Patrick Rothfuss. Given that, I’m even more happy to say that day two of the story is no less epic than the first. The journey of Kvothe continues: his lessons at University deepen, but, it being Kvothe, things naturally...
7 tags
Ratking by Michael Dibdin (1989)
“A ratking. Do you know what that is?”
Zen shrugged. “The king rat, I suppose. The dominant animal in the pack.”
Bartocci shook his head. “That’s what everyone thinks. But they’re wrong. A ratking is something that happens when too many rats have to live in too small a space under too much pressure. Their tails become entwined and the more they strain...
7 tags
Watchers by Dean Koontz (1987)
I’ve never picked up a Dean Koontz book before. His prolificacy overwhelms (somewhere around 75 novels and counting, I think?), but it also makes me suspicious. To see that many novels on one author’s CV make me think I would be reading the same story over and over again but with different locales. I don’t have anything against a good formula, but I tend to look for things that...
7 tags
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough (1977)
Hah, I may be the only person who picked this up not knowing about the whole scandalous priest-love bit. Looking at the cover (which is often how I shop when I’m at Half Priced Books and there are endless walls of mass market reprints), I thought: Australia, sweeping family saga, man vs. nature, love, struggle, etc. A basic summer read! Alright! I had no idea that an illicit affair was...
June 2011
3 posts
6 tags
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (2007)
This, to me, is fantasy at its finest. Rich and utterly crafted, The Name of the Wind is tapestry-level work. I’m gobsmacked that this is Rothfuss’ first novel. First time out, and he creates a veritable masterwork. It’s just so…. good. Allow me to set the scene: several men are sitting at the bar of an inn, trading stories and the like, when another man suddenly stumbles...
9 tags
The Maze Runner by James Dashner (2009)
I wanted to like the book so much. The concept is simply brilliant: a young boy wakes up in an elevator. He remembers nothing about himself except his name. The elevator ascends, opens and he finds himself surrounded by other boys, all of whom arrived in the exact same fashion. They have carved out a life there in this post-elevator land - food, shelter, tenuous friendships - but dominating it...
8 tags
Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz (1956)
Hrmm, how can I talk about this beautifully written book that also rather disgusted me? I suppose I should clarify - it wasn’t the book itself, which examines the inner workings of a Muslin family in Cairo, that was so repugnant. Not at all. The novel actually reminded me of I, Claudius (always a good thing, no?). You start reading and it’s dull. Family history, banal everyday...
May 2011
4 posts
9 tags
The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins...
These books should really come with a warning, I think. As in, “Careful! Do not attempt to read The Hunger Games Trilogy unless, one, you have all three books at your ready disposal and two, you have at least 5 days during which you can devote yourself entirely to reading these because once you crack open the first novel your brain will absorbed into the pages and you will be simply...
8 tags
Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski (2007)
This novel was filled with all sorts of unusually crossing paths: a writer and an inmate, an anthropologist and a family of missionaries, one of those missionaries and the Grateful Dead. Berlinski seems to cram as much as he possibly can into his first novel, which makes it a little bumpy. At its best, Fieldwork explores the intersection of cultures in Southeast Asia, both native and Western....
6 tags
Bossypants by Tina Fey (2011)
I love this woman. If you love her too, you’ll really like Bossypants. If you’re not on the Tina Fey train, then chances are you weren’t going to pick this up anyway so never mind.
As the cover beautifully advertises, this is not a melodramatic celebrity memoir. It’s a collection of vignettes that start with Fey’s childhood and end at around a year ago. She shares...
9 tags
An Absolute Gentleman by R. M. Kinder (2007)
Well this one is definitely going on the creepy shelf. Kinder’s novel, a fictional memoir of a creative writing professor/serial killer, is made doubly unnerving due to the author’s own experience with Robert Weeks, a neighbor of hers who was arrested and sentenced to life in prison for two murders in the late 80s. I didn’t know this back story until I got to the end of the...
April 2011
9 posts
11 tags
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan (2006)
If you’ve ever read an ingredients list and wondered exactly what maltodextrin, xanthan gum, or any other 13-letter chemical-esque word truly is, chances are it’s corn. Corn in some way, shape or form. Organic food? It’s hardly as wholesome as you probably wish/want. And the meat industry? Even less so, though that’s hardly a shock.
The narrative, personal journey of...
“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”
– I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Submitted by senortupperwarebox (via novelfirstsentences)
5 tags
Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)
I’ve been thinking about how I should approach my review of Dune all day. This feels like an abnormally long time for me, so I’m chalking it up to the pressure of only briefly covering something so massive in both scope and excellence. Well, there is also the fact that Lazy just held an essay contest on the awesomeness of Dune. With those factors in mind, I feel like the basic bits...
8 tags
The Order of Odd-Fish by James Kennedy (2008)
James Kennedy creates a fully realized and whimsical world in his debut novel. The externally ordinary Jo Larouche finds herself whisked off to a strange world and realizing that she’s perhaps not so humdrum after all — being pursued by a master villain named “The Belgian Prankster” will make one wonder. Along for the ride are members of the titular Order of Odd-Fish,...
9 tags
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan...
Flavia de Luce - observer, chemist, and all around astute eleven year old - ranks highly among my favorite heroines of the past several years. We originally met in the disarmingly titled The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, where she unraveled a case of theft and murder. Though she did all that while simultaneously plotting a poisonous comeuppance for her torturous older sister, to call...
9 tags
Drood by Dan Simmons (2009)
I was enthralled by Dan Simmons’ The Terror this summer, so I was very excited to start his novel about Charles Dickens. Told from the perspective of fellow author Wilkie Collins, Drood explores the last years of Dickens’ life and the inspiration for his final novel: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Simmons’ historical accuracy and fleshy characters were gripping in The Terror. ...
7 tags
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa...
A touching story about a woman who begins working for a former mathematics professor who has a memory of only eighty minutes. Beautifully written, it reminded me of how much power there is in the small gestures and personality quirks that make us human.
“I feel this so profoundly—that works of literature are living things, that they...”
– Marjorie Garber, The Future of Reading (Hint: It’s Not All Bad) - The Atlantic
10 tags
Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental...
This was a powerful book for me. It may be the fact that I am currently going to school for library/info science (5 more weeks! 5 more weeks!), so that Steinberg worked in a prison library particularly resonated with me in a vocational way. But regardless of that, his experience with the different types of people he met and worked with was incredibly moving — people who want to change, ...
March 2011
13 posts
6 tags
Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor (2009)
This is one of those books that makes me want to see the giant messy whiteboard that plots out the whole thing. You know, with character names, story lines and red herrings all stringed together in freaky web. Taylor’s board for this mystery probably looked like a deranged family tree. Packed with twists, his tightly knit story presents a great atmosphere and a truly insidious villain. The...
7 tags
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle (1962)
For some reason, I have no memory of reading this book as a child. I’m sure I did read it because, one, I still own its sequel, A Wind in the Door, (though my reading memory there is hazy as well) and I’m not one for reading a series out of order, and two, one of my friends around that age was obsessed with L’Engle. L’Engle, L’Engle all the time. So I doubt we could...
7 tags
Atonement by Ian McEwan (2001)
Suffice it to say that I now understand why McEwan readers are so reverential/obsessive about the man. I saw the movie a few years ago and enjoyed it, but the book itself deeply surpassed all of my expectations, even beyond what I thought I knew from the film. I won’t go into the plot details since it’s by now a widespread story, but there is something I simply must touch on. The...
7 tags
Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge (2006)
Alert: graduate course assignment.
It’s been a while since I’ve read some pure science fiction, so it took me a little while to get into the rhythm of Vinge’s anything-is-technologically-possible future. Here, it’s 2025 and a post-pandemic world. Everyone wears contact lenses that enable them to see a virtual overlay of their choosing - as in a building’s schematics can suddenly...
6 tags
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro (1996)
This was my sole read this past November and I’m thankful it was a good one. Ishiguro’s unsettling, gem-like novel follows a renowned musician who tries to ready himself for an important concert, but continually gets sidetracked by exasperating tasks and obligations. Reading it was a disorienting experience.* I found myself utterly drawn into to each situation presented, much like the...
7 tags
Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu (1865)
This gothic novel has it all: a naive and isolated female protagonist, eerie mansions, a fortune at stake, and a thoroughly despicable governess. That’s so many good elements it almost hurts, which is why we love the Victorians to begin with, really - painfully excellent reading. Uncle Silas is sumptuously descriptive and vivid, almost unusually so. It made getting into the pace of a...
9 tags
The Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh (2007)
While I no longer wear braces or believe that I too will stumble into a chimerical world while haphazardly searching for something in the coat closet (not from lack of trying!), young adult fiction remains one of my favorite genres. Especially when there are elements of fantasy or science fiction. Marsh’s debut novel goes down the re-visioned Greek myth route, which I also appreciate when...
7 tags
The English Passengers by Matthew Kneale (2001)
Kneale’s excellently detailed historical fiction oscillates between farce and factual tragedy, which is always a delicate endeavor. The English Passengers presents several intersecting story lines: a crew of smugglers determined to hold on to their haul and their ship, three men who charter said vessel for Tasmania in search of the Garden of Eden, and the thoroughly cruel colonization of...
7 tags
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (2002)
Waters’s The Little Stranger had a profound affect on me when I read it last summer, so I expected a similar atmosphere of gloom and spookiness with Fingersmith. Well gloom there was aplenty, as well as sexual tension, Victorian repression and some very slick turns. Unlike The Little Stranger, this novel was good and soapy. Waters’s stories are ones I can fully revel in as a reader, so...
8 tags
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster (1985-1986)
Alert: graduate course assignment.
Only the first novella in this trilogy was required for my class this semester, but Auster’s jumble of characters and personalities compelled me to see it through to the end. Each tale alternately fascinates and unsettles. The first narrative, City of Glass, sets the noir stage. Mistaken for a real private detective, a hermitic mystery writer decides ...
9 tags
Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of...
My reaction to Gaarder’s novel is decidedly mixed. The portions on philosophy were well-rendered enough, but a few biases reared their heads toward the end (so little to say on Nietzsche? Really? During a course on the history of philosophy?). There also could have been more discussion between the teacher and the student. In many of the chapters, Sophie’s only purpose as the student...
8 tags
Summer Half by Angela Thirkell (1937)
Thirkell’s barbed wit is set loose yet again among the British upper class and the results are simply effervescent. She’s never cruel in her assessments of people’s foibles, which is perhaps what keeps her novels charming as opposed to snarky.